Ironhidensh wrote:If Hasbro wanted to end the 3rd party market, they could do it virtually overnight. They just have to make the products fans are craving. They are not, and are leaving a huge void in the wants of consumers.
Who are they catering to? Fans or consumers?
You know where I'm going with this, Hasbro, for the bulk of Transformers history, hasn't been catering to "fans". They've been producing products for mass consumption by the general populace, or more specifically, children.
It's only in recent years when they've sat up and seen there's a non-kid fanbase that has an interest in their product.
So they try to walk the fine line to appeal to both.
Of course 3P is going to appeal to fans, they have the freedom to do so. Hasbro dip their toes into the fan pool and mass consumption pool, some times it works, some times it doesn't.
But people need to get over this notion that Hasbro should be catering to the fans. They do what they do, but for the most part they need to create products that are within budget and appeal to masses.
JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:It's... complicated. For starters, it's pretty hard to break through in any market, let alone one where "robots converting into different forms" is synonymous with Transformers (and to a lesser extent Power Rangers), and anything similar to them is viewed as a pale imitation in the public eye, thus avoided. Trying that with new IP's is taking a big risk, especially when Transformers is a staple, going strong for years, and covers quite a bit of ground leaving hardly anything undiscovered. Think "Simpsons did it!". And I'm not talking about just toys, but media tie-ins (a necessity nowadays) as well.
It's that sort of attitude and thinking that stops people from moving forward.
Of course it's going to be hard to establish something new. I don't doubt that.
These companies already have their consumer and fan base. If they said "hey, we're looking to produce something entirely new" you can pretty much guarantee the bulk of their followers would be interested.
It doesn't have to be JUST transforming robots. It just has to be new and different, not a different take on something old.
Black Hat wrote:The analogy kinda falls apart given that aside from being based on the same character (which the HasLab crew didn't create either; the actual designers of the character aren't even involved with the franchise anymore AFAIK) the two products are both utterly distinct. If this was an improved KO then sure I'd understand the complaints, but the tooling and engineering and actual hard work of Zeta's is 100% distinct from the HasLab version- they don't even look that similar to each other beyond both being horned robots that turn into balls.
You've taken my scenario and completely interpreted it a different way, but hey, let's twist it around.
Individual - Hasbro - Entity. Same thing.
Sometimes an individual owns a copyright, sometimes it's a company (entity). Point remains, it's still owned by someone.
You work for a company, you tend to sign over your creation.
Steve Jobs didn't create. He just put his name jointly on the patent with those who created.
I mean, I hear you, but at the end of the day "Hasbro" isn't an individual. "Hasbro" hasn't created anything. People who WORK for Hasbro created those characters, but they aren't even with the company anymore. Do we expect Hasbro to seek Floro Dery's approval every time they make a figure based on his designs?
See above. You've twisted it around to suit your own narrative.
A more accurate analogy would be if you owned a model company and were making a kit based on, say, the Panzer IV, and another company made a subjectively better Panzer IV model, based on the exact same tank but was completely original in tooling. I'd be sad my model wasn't liked as much as the competitor, but if the competition was better than mine then I kinda have to suck it up. Unfortunate but not everyone can be winners.
Should I assume that both companies have the rights to produce a Panzer IV model? In which case, that's a far more inaccurate analogy.
If both have the rights to produce it, then that's not even releavant to this discussion.
Obviously which Unicron is "better" is highly subjective, but the Zeta offering definitely has SOME advantages that to SOME people make it the better buy than the HasLab version (or else we wouldn't be having this argument).
This isn't about what's better, because that's always going to be subjective and up to the individual.
I'd also like to present the argument that maybe this should have been a limited run of 5000 guaranteed produced figures, which almost certainly would have sold out in no time, rather than an "If we get 8000 pre-orders we'll make this figure" uncertain gamble.
But that's just me.
We don't know for certain, we just work on the assumption that 8,000 is what the accounting department told them they needed to make to make this profitable.
5,000 may have only seen them break even, it may have seen them take a loss, we simply do not know.
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