Optimus21577 wrote:
Change what again??? Try and read the whole page before you slander someone maybe?
Yea.. That's what I thought!Seibertron wrote:Optimus21577 wrote:Excuse me? I'm part of the problem?? It's bigots like you that are the real problem. I have never sold anything to anyone that didn't know exactly what they were getting! I have hundreds of feedback to prove it. What do you have??
Made up stats that prove nothing! So shove it!
You are something else calling me a "bigot". Your misuse or lack of understanding of the word is unfortunate.
If you want to prove that you are not part of the problem, then change the descriptions on your website to state what those products really are instead of preying upon uninformed customers.
And now we have allegations of bigotry being tossed around in a KO thread. Things were actually really civil for about 9 pages, too.
Okay, Optimus 21577, two things:
1.) Seib DID just (unintentionally) give your site a plug and potential bump in traffic by posting that link. You could've smugly thanked him for that and maintained some semblance of a decent argument instead of blowing your stack.
2.) That blue text is hurting my eyes. No one will be swayed by your arguments if they can't even read them.
And Seib: I'm sorry to dig up something from so far back in the thread, but there's one point that needs to be made before this thread gets locked, and it's about a couple paragraphs of yours that I have to take issue with:
Seibertron wrote:Rationalizing that KOs are a good thing in any manner is a selfish view and a view that fails to see the big problem in the long run. It could also be argued the same about official reissues, but they're quality items and in many cases the reissues retain the value of the originals or even surpass their value in some cases. There is a big difference between a quality official reissue and an unofficial unlicensed counterfeit product that doesn't have to meet certain quality standards.
We collectors have a huge responsibility to make sure that future generations of Transformers fans get to enjoy quality Transformers products without having every item run the risk of being a faulty or flawed or counterfeit product. Maybe some of you don't care about this and only care about what you can afford or get your hands on. There is a much bigger picture regarding all of this. I hope that those of you who think that counterfeit products belong in this market will take some time to ponder what items like that do to water down this brand and the enjoyment of collectors in the long run.
From my big-picture perspective, this "future generations" line of reasoning falls apart...well, the moment Black Zarak, G2 Slingshot, the Ultra Pretenders, and Electro
literally fall apart. I agree about us having an obligation to future generations of Transfans, which is precisely why I enthusiastically support KOs: in hopes that the industry will reproduce corrected versions of figures with GPS and other structural defects that Hasbro and Takara have zero chance of ever reproducing, either due to lack of demand or molds degrading/disappearing. In a future where the last example of an official toy has crumbled to dust, the near-exact-repro-KO that fixed its defects is, in fact, a generous public service to fans who want to know what the figure was like from more than just pictures and word of mouth, so I honestly take offense at the statement that any support of KOs is purely selfish, and I'm glad that CHMS is making even the figures I have no interest in ever owning. You, of course, were indisputably generous when you opened your Black Zarak to give us all a gallery, but take a good close look at all those swirls in his shiny plastic before you tell me I'm entirely wrong about this.
We'd all like our toys to last forever, but that's not possible, so the ability to preserve them long term actually means making sure someone out there has the ability to keep reproducing them. It'd be nice if that someone was always HasTak, but the degraded molds of Mirage, Wheeljack, and Sunstreaker, and the missing molds of Aerialbots and Beast Wars basics say otherwise. If the official companies won't reverse-mold, then official versions of those toys have already lost their right to exist in the long run. I therefore feel a moral obligation to support those toys' existence in counterfeit form. I honestly feel that outweighs long-term confusion over what's legit or not, though you're right that it will happen no matter how honest dealers try to be.
I realize this argument I'm making holds the most weight for KOs of GPS figures, and hardly any have been made: Would Killbison be the only one to date? (The pink plastic used in my Scattershot and Skullcruncher developed a softness around the pins over time that led me to buy a real replacement for the former, but has anyone else encountered this problem?) I'd especially love to see some Euro-Exclusives get KOs that fix the GPS problem, since their obscurity + the choking-hazard missiles = no chance in HELL of legit reissues. Skyquake especially: you can't even use the scope-gimmick on his real toy without breaking it! For him to exist (and especially poor Autobot commander Hyperdrive, who only exists in his cursed GPS supersight) I'd say he NEEDS to be KOed.
The issue is only going to get more confusing over time as well. The reason this has to stay debatable is that no one can accurately draw lines between KOs, 3rd Party stuff, and fan-made/custom stuff; or more accurately, if official companies do, it's not going to be exactly where any fan thinks it should be. As 3-D resin printers become cheaper and more accurate, the differences may become so blurry that the only way to legally stop it would be Hasbro passing a policy mirroring ACTA or SOPA/PIPA, which this site stood against over a year ago. And if that's the case, heck, maybe certain toy molds that Hasbro and Takara have both given up on will become public-domain, like some old movies. If people pay producers of those 50-movie box sets for their service of simply making copies of films and TV shows in order to preserve and distribute them, might our grandchildren someday pay KO-producers for the same service? Yes, I know the exact-repro-packaging problem screws up that parallel, it's just food for thought.
...BUT then again, since Hasbro didn't preserve the G1 animated commercials, if some intrepid employee of theirs had stole the masters and made surviving, high-quality copies somehow, would we call them a criminal or a hero stealing Hasbro's IP?