Hellscream9999 wrote:Sabrblade wrote:Hellscream9999 wrote:Sabrblade wrote:Optimizzy wrote:Anyone else want a Crasher redeco from the drag strip mold? Maybe? Gosh I do.
Well, hope you got the customization skills to paint it yourself, or the money to commission a more adept customizer to do it for you, since that's a deco homage Hasbro won't touch again after the fiasco that was Movie Fracture.
What happened? Mine's pretty great
It was a product that all parties weren't very comfortable with since it walked the thin line of what Hasbro could and could not legally do.
Why? Because of the name, or that it was female, or was the character originally a male, or something else (I have literally never heard of this being a thing until just now)
When it comes to the GoBots franchise there are presently three companies that factor into the ownership rights: Hasbro, Bandai, and Warner Bros. While Hasbro owns some of the GoBots names (not
all of them since some of them are untrademarkable), they do not own the characters or character likenesses. That's where the other two come in. Bandai owns the likenesses that were based on their original Machine Robo toy mold designs (this includes decos), while Warner Bros owns the characters themselves, evidenced in WB's recent release of the cartoon via their special made-to-order DVD releases instead of as regular mass retail DVD releases.
Without the rights to either the characters or their looks, this makes Hasbro hesitant to make a Transformers toy done up in the colors of a GoBot and with the name and identity of said GoBot that its deco is homaging.
And while there have been previous releases of TF toys as GoBot characters proper (not just as homages to them but as the actual GoBots themselves), they were done in ways that got around the legal issues, but which also prevented them from visually resembling the GoBots that they were supposed to be:
When e-HOBBY did their six-pack Minibot G1 GoBots redeco set, they used prototype Transformers decos that didn't resemble any of the GoBot decos, and didn't even give any of the six names or identities. The toys were all nameless and bio-less.
For BotCon 2007 Bug Bite, its deco was based on the nameless e-HOBBY toy, and while Club fiction has established him as officially being the GoBot Renegade of the same name, his toy bio did not directly identify him as such, instead remaining ambiguous about his true nature, writing him instead as an enigma among his peers:
Bugbite is a Decepticon shrouded in mystery. Many serving under Bludgeon are unsure as to why he gained such favor. commander of one of the finest ships within Bludgeon's army, Bugbite enjoys unusual freedom of action, often disappearing for months at a time with his eclectic crew of ne'er-do-wells on missions of which none of them ever speak. Many under his command have abandoned partners and friends without a word leading many to suspect even greater duplicity than is typical among the Decepticons.
Movie Fracture was a very borderline case that played at least a part in TF companies' current reluctance to do any more direct GoBot homages. As that figure was originally intended to
be the GoBot Crasher, such couldn't be done due to Crasher's character and likeness being owned by Warner Bros and Bandai, and so became the different character of Fracture. But, its deco was still very much that of Crasher, making it a very questionable case that made Hasbro feel uneasy afterward. Since then, there haven't been anymore direct GoBot deco homages made, with any other GoBot deco homages being only "loose" or "indirect" homages in toys like ROTF Deadlift. But Fracture wasn't exactly something that all parties felt "okay" with.
So if we ever want something like, say, an official Transformers Cy-Kill toy, it'd likely either have to be a redeco of another TF motorcycle character in some deco that doesn't remotely resemble that of Cy-Kill, or it would have to be just a generic red and blue decoed motorcycle figure that
isn't named "Cy-Kill", and either case's bio would most likely have to identify the figure as some new guy who
isn't the GoBots Cy-Kill character. An official Transformers Cy-Kill toy that's colored like Cy-Kill, named "Cy-Kill", and identified as the GoBots Cy-Kill character would very likely draw unwanted legal action from Bandai and/or Warner Bros that Hasbro does everything in their power to avoid.
Same goes for all other GoBots.
's by poking their ankles, obvoiusly 
) and make him kinda look like cy-kill, they may not be able to make the head similar, but we'd get it obviously, same goes for fracture (plus more fembots could never hurt)
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