The Energon Pub

Do you - or would you collect a Manufacture's whole product line ?
Say would you say : "I'm going to collect Maketoys toys" ?
Or Fanprojects toys ?

Lets say you bought something like the IDW derived 3rd party toys wouly you buy all of them - even if there was a duplication in the official line - simply as you had the others already ?
Essentially what I am asking is where is the line between a Transformers Collection and a collection of a line by a specific manufacture.

There is also the scale question as one thing I do is buy bigger versions of things and I know a lot of people enjoy the oversize KO AOE dinobots and the like.
I've even considered starting a 60cmm KO collection. I also keep pondering collecting as many as possible of the KFC cassettes too.

So what is the divergence point between Transformers and size or Transformers and 3rd party Manufacturers ?
Would you ever decide to collect a 3rd party Manufactures entire output ?
Like Toyworld, Maketoys, Perfect Effect, Fanstoys, Unique Toys, Wei Jiang, KFC etc...?

I'm doing just that with MMC .

The MMC Reformated line is the best 3rdp product out there IMO

Their Feral Rex Fembots and DJD sets are just outstanding , i expect the rest of the DJD and Titanika to follow suit .

Commotus is for me the best figure to date detail sculpt transformation is top notch and it's got me wanting Spartan asap .

I cant wait for Lockdown they have mixed a whole bunch of ideas and created their own take on the character , Even Nova Prime who i was'nt a fan of in the beginning has won me over , Also they have a Obsidian Thunderwing and the mindblowing Overlord in the works .

I'm down for all that and more . Studio Ox is a little different being MP focused but i will be getting the Cassettes and insecticons and a Red Mirage if they do one , who knows after those i might get hooked

I dont really follow those type of guidelines. My main guidelines is scale and my secondary guideline is the character itself. Unless the hasbro version really sucked (like impactor) I wont double up on a character. I turn to 3rd partys to fill gaps. Not to start over from scratch. I have no loyalty to any particular company, neither hasbro or a particular 3rd party. I love fansproject, but im skipping grimlocks "throne" and the dinoking "shells" because the concepts are just too dumb for my CHUG collection. Ill be skipping MMCs lockdown and drift because hasbro did decent versions of those characters already in CHUG scale. And maketoys already did nova prime so im good there too. I would rather save my money for characters I dont have. I have no interest in upsized versions of my favorite characters. Other than a select few pieces I bought for fun, ive pretty much snubbed MP scale because the figures are just too big for my taste.

I buy whatever I think looks best- if HasTak does a better job than a 3P I'll go with them, and vice versa. I very rarely double dip on characters, unless I either really like the character or like the design enough to justify having both the HasTak and the 3P version (or 2 separate 3P versions or whatever). I don't have particular "brand loyalty" to either "side"- I'm a toy collector with a wide range of interests, from Evangelion figures (from many manufacturers) to Transformers to Figmas from various properties and basically everything in between.

That said, whilst I don't feel particular loyalty to any one company I do respect both HasTak and the many 3Ps out there enough that I would never buy a KO of any Transformer- official or 3P- except for custom parts perhaps (I have considered buying a KO MP Rumble to repaint into Flip Sides, but I would never buy a KO Rumble instead of a real one for my collection).

To answer the topic question: yes I would collect a 3rd Party manufacturer's whole product line. MMC and FansToys are likely my favorites, and if prices were cheaper I'd work on other companies too. But I wonder if by "whole product line" you also mean variants and exclusives? Because for FT I'm not double-dipping on their other-colored Dibot line.

To the rest of your post, I'll buy other transforming robot products because they look good, fit into a current collection, or simply because it is unique and fascinating to me. I do have large eyes, so I dabble a bit in everything. But saying "I won't buy iGear's Raptor Squad because I already have 18 Classics Seeker figures" doesn't work for me. Those figures make more sense in my display, but that doesn't mean I'll dump off my official versions any time soon. Maybe it's because I'm coming from a different perspective (ie - able to enjoy some privilege/having disposable income) but I'm not at the point where I only need 1 version of any particular character. If that were the case, it might be problematic collecting several different lines ("Classics" vs Masterpiece, as an example).

Is there a line/manufacturer you are collecting?

I have 3P companies that I prefer, but I'll buy whatever fits my aesthetic taste. Scale and sculpting is what it comes down to for me.

I wouldn't, because that involve buying repaints at some point. As it stands I seem to be a FansToys fanboy and I'll end up buying a lot of their products, but not all. Aside from recoloured dinobots I'm just not interested in Perceptor or Reflector. Everything else they've announced so far will end up in my collection though.

Nope. Wouldn't even consider it.

I collect the characters I like. I don't even care to have copies of the characters. If there is a CHUG version and an MP version, I pick the one I like best and sell the other one. I only collect the characters I know.

I'm collecting Gcreations Dinobots right now. I love them, even if grimlock seems a bear to switch back and forth... lot of finangling on that figure... If they make another set of characters I like, i'd buy them too.

If they switch to headmasters or beast machines or G2 or IDW or Bayverse or any of the other dozen incarnations I don't care for... I'm not paying $100+ for thing I don't like regardless of who makes them.

Transformers is WAY too big a franchise for me to EVER be an 'All in' completist.

I plan on collecting all of DX9's war in pocket series if they keep up the quality of these little beasties.