The Energon Pub

Is it just me or everytime a 3rd party brings out a new product it makes hsbro/takara look like douches with there products.

I know the whole corporate thing applies for hasbro/takara but 3rd party toys and add-ons are getting way cooler as the days go by

I think the title's really refferring just to Fansprojects. They're definately the king of the 3rd party stuff. Other companies, while still offering some good items, haven't been as quality as FP.

But, remember, they don't have to put their products to the rigors of safety tests, or fit their product into size classes, or a market strategy, or worry about selling millions as opposed to, maybe, hundreads in stores as opposed to throught the internet. They also don't have to worry about things like logical marketing (would you really be happy if Hasbro sold you just a trailer?), or getting their product out at a certain date (a problem FP, despite being king, is not immune to).

yeah your right on all of that. im really hopeing that the TFClub Devestator is going to be really cool. and i was quite looking forward to the masterpeice conehead seekers by Igear theres all these little 3rd party stuff thats coming out that looks really cool and theres just a few things from hsbro that i want to get like just Dirge

Gauntlet101010 hit the nail on the head. I've written a similar assertion previously and state it again: The TF fan community loves Fansproject products for the most part, not 3rd party products in general and yet the two are confused as the same thing.

Now before I go on, I want to make it clear that I'm not speaking about anyone in particular, just the general attitude I've observed in TF fandom, here and elsewhere, with respect to 3rd party products...

The majority of 3rd party products that are lauded as great successes are, as far as I've seen, solely FP products. Every other 3rd party product company has shaky performance records at best. Only FP seems to produce products, time after time, that seem to cause TF fans to say that "Hasbro should have done this!". Other 3rd party producers may provoke such a reaction, but on a far less frequent basis and from a far fewer amount of TF fans.

Other 3rd party product companies make mediocre products that fans will enjoy and buy but can any other 3rd party product company claim that their work has resulted in inflating the price and increasing the demand for official HasTak products such as Henkei/Classics Convoy/Optimus Prime/Ultra Magnus?

All 3rd party producers get the credit that mainly should go to FP with respect to non-official products that are consistently well made. Even so, as much as I enjoy my City Commander set, it doesn't impress me on a toy engineering level. It's a great product that adds much enjoyment value to my Classics Ultra Magnus but it's nothing without HasTak's Henkei/Classics Convoy/Optimus Prime figure. Add ons NEED official products. Please don't let the coolness factor of add ons disillusion you to their sole role as enhancement products.

Now as far as stand alone, complete figures, well how many are actually durable and functional product designs? FP's Warbot Defender is one...iGear's Faith Leader and repaints are another. However, the former is a unique design built from scratch while the latter is a resized recast/carbon copy of an existing HasTak mold so I would only name FP's WD as a true 3rd party figure while iGear's FL is a copy of an existing product design. At any rate, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I know of no other 3rd party produced figure that can even come close to FP WD and/or iGear FL with respect to engineering and durability for use(transforming on a reasonably regular basis).

Don't get me wrong, I do see merit in 3rd party products and I enjoy them as much as anyone else here but let's not kid ourselves and ignore all of the toy design and innovation that HasTak's designers have developed over the last couple of decades every time we see a new and potentially fangasmic 3rd party product. HasTak makes TF figures, especially within the last several years that are affordable and well engineered. Many figure designs originating in the Classics line, for example, have numerous examples of molds adored by fans or at least lauded as examples of great TF toy design(Deluxe class Mirage, Voyager class Optimus Prime, etc.). Are such achievements by HasTak to be ignored every time we see something potentially good but unfinished at this time(TFC Devastator) or a singular instance of a well engineered yet extremely expensive of 3rd party action figure design(Fansproject's Warbot Defender)?

Seriously. Are some TF fans simply ignorant of the existence of relatively recent(within the last few years) developments in TF toys or are they simply ridiculously myopic to the point of willfully ignoring numerous toy designs by HasTak in the presence of a relative few 3rd party products that pique their interest?

I don't think that we really should be comparing 3rd parties vs Hasbro. Why? They are two completely seperate entities marketing towards two completely different groups of people.

Hasbro markets to children, and as such their designs and marketschemes have to work to win the children's money. They make great sweeping toylines many months (maybe a full year or more) in advance knowing that the kids will happily gobble up most things that Hasbro makes. They may placate us collectors with many of their products, but we're not their target. Hasbro has access to large factories and produces several hundred thousand figures per month. They have a design budget, a production budget and several other budgets. They have to follow legal stuff such as safety testing and copyright/trademarking For example, they cannot show off prototype images like 3rd parties can (unless they're stolen). They work off of the demand of the stores and their price-point scheme. That means things have to not always come out as the original intent (universe Galvatron anyone?)

3rd parties target collectors. They make whatever the heck they want to make on their own timetable with less resources. They have no timetables to produce their stuff so they can revisit it as much as they want (Protector went through at least 6 prototypes to get here) to ensure that they get it right, or in some companies' cases; close enough. They produce runs in the low thousands (10-20 only, and that's a generous number) in shops where labour is probably rented instead of owned. They don't do safety laws and they, at least for now, operate with general impunity due to Hasbro wither unwilling, or unable to anything at this time. They make things that Hasbro doesn't due to the fact that Hasbro markets to kids, and kids not need a Prime-accurate weapon set or a headmaster, or a triplechanger.

3rd parties typically work on a few things at a time, I suspect the average Hasbro designer work on probably between 5-10 different figures a day, maybe touching 30-40 a week (rough guestimates).

So yeah, some 3rd party products do outshine Hasbro's, but does it diminish HasTak's figues in any way? IMO: No

we all know that without hasbro we wouldnt have have our beloved classics line and without them we wouldnt have alot of the great 3rd party toys we are all able to our grubby hands on.

All in all we will just have to be content with hasbro/takara toys that are in the works and the small amount of fans toy. And that the 3rd party companies will just continue to bring out and improve the products they have because im looking forward to see whos going to be bringing out the coolest toys in transformers history