The Energon Pub

Is it just me or are the third party companys totally outclassing hasbro/tommy at their own game?
I have seen plenty of figures come out or in the works as of late that have been begged for by the fans and never done by hasbro and they all look terrific!!
The constructicons are just kick ass as is the city commander. The insecticons sea spray and I also love the power master prime that is in the works. A bit large though.
I imagine that we will get our much asked for dinos if things continue to go smoothly fot third party developers.
I may be wrong but I thought I remembered hasbro shuning third party and their supporters in a post. I believe it was over the city commander add on. Are they serious? I would love to buy a cheaper priced quality magnus that is a bit more to scale right off the store shelf but they offer none.
Also I dont see hasbro besting that piece. I just looks awesome as do the constructicons. I know they gave us energon devastator but that was a hunk o junk. They werent even tryin.
Anyhow I just wanted to give kudos to the third party folk.
Your product looks great. A bit pricy at times but I will continue to buy if they continue to put out quality product.
Thanx for picking up the ball.

Now, Hasbro/Takara has done A LOT lately to cater to us G1 fans at regular retail price, so let's not have a total Hasbro/Takara hate fest. Hating Hasbro/Takara is way too much in vogue here. 3rd party products average $100 per piece now ... you get what you pay for. At least you should.

That said, as a Neo G1 fan, I've been buying a LOT of 3rd party stuff now that Hasbro/Takara has taken an extended break on that. I love what we're getting. I just assimilated Herc into my regular display (he was sitting on my desk for the longest time) and he's awesome. Really towers over everyone, including MP Megs and FP Bruticus. And I'm loving the new PM Prime we've been shown.

The only problem is the price! I'd love to get almost everything we've seen so far from 3rd party producers, but it'd just break the bank. Thankfully market saturation seems to have kicked in and there's no longer that rush to secure a preorder. So maybe I will get everything on my wish list (yes, even from Takara).

I'm not much into a LOT of 3rd party stuff. I just bought FWI-2, am interested in Trailerforce, and definitely can't wait to see if the Animated Menasor kit becomes reality. Other than that, I can't think of any to interest me.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Now, Hasbro/Takara has done A LOT lately to cater to us G1 fans at regular retail price, so let's not have a total Hasbro/Takara hate fest. Hating Hasbro/Takara is way too much in vogue here. 3rd party products average $100 per piece now ... you get what you pay for. At least you should.

That said, as a Neo G1 fan, I've been buying a LOT of 3rd party stuff now that Hasbro/Takara has taken an extended break on that. I love what we're getting. I just assimilated Herc into my regular display (he was sitting on my desk for the longest time) and he's awesome. Really towers over everyone, including MP Megs and FP Bruticus. And I'm loving the new PM Prime we've been shown.

The only problem is the price! I'd love to get almost everything we've seen so far from 3rd party producers, but it'd just break the bank. Thankfully market saturation seems to have kicked in and there's no longer that rush to secure a preorder. So maybe I will get everything on my wish list (yes, even from Takara).

I didnt mean to come off as if I were rallying an all out hate fest against hasbro.
They have some great figures under their belt but I have to wonder if they realy think about us gewun fans as much as wed like to believe they are.
I just cant imagine why they would offer us gewun figures in weird color scheemes such as voyager megs, astrotrain etc. It seems to me they are giving us the illusion of catering to us by releasing those gewun figs but revamping the colors to appeal to younger market effectively destroying the gewun feel completely.
The asian based tommy/takara folks are doing the damn thing though. Take classics convoy prime for exam[le. He looks the part on both accounts but the u.s. release has bits of blue, no autobot symbols in the shoulders, and a giant yellow spatula over his crotch where as the henkei version is perfection. Why not have simply done the colors just as the gewun toon had him for the u.s. as well?
I can only imagine that some bung hole at hsbro sold the high ups on the idea that the children would love to buy a prime with a yellow spatula on his groin and voila!!
Then theres astrotrain. I believe that just as I said above, someone said to the high ups that children would idenify beter with a white shuttle because they are colored white in reality and so us gewun fans are stuck with a completely miscolored astrotrain unless we wanna spend the extra dough to get the henkei version.
Im just sayin if your gonna do a figure for the gewun fans that put you on the map and kept you afloat through hard times then do it all the way or not at all.
A white astrotrain is just not going to feel like astrotrain anymore than a neon yellow and purple voyager megatron is gonna feel like the real megatron.
In the end I am happy with my collection but the bulk of it had to be bought from asians because I simply dont want anything that isnt strictly gewun in my gewun collection. That includes color scheemes.
I might also add that I forgot to mention the kick ass third party alpha trion, quints and bruticus. All amazing pieces.
Do you know if the power master prime "shell" will transform into a trailor as did the original?

The new PM Prime will transform into a somewhat unconvincing trailer; there are pics online. While it looks good on G1 and G1 PM Prime it doesn't seem to work too well on Classics Prime; it seems to have this wierd tilt. But there's only one picture of that, so they jury's still out.

Now, as for Hasbro's odd color schemes, I agree, they are odd. But I think you're failing to see the greater point: Hasbro never had to make these molds at all.

The Classics line was a filler line to keep toys on the shelf in the dead time between Cybertron and the first movie. It was just supposed to be a limited thing. But they're still doing it. And, although the failures and shortcomings of that line stand out like a sore thumb, there've been a great many successes. I mean ... did you ever really think we'd get a new version of G1 Wreck-Gar? Or Perceptor? They did not HAVE to make these guys. They cater to children and no child is really aching for a G1 Wreck-Gar homage. All of those guys are for us.

Now I have no idea why it seems that Hasbro purposefully uses terrible colors sometimes. Part of it is that Takara can make different prices per figure depending on how much paint they use while all of Hasbro's figures MUST cost the same, so Takara's figures can have more details. It doesn't explain everything and I won't pretend to know why they made some of their choices. But the very exisence of the Classics series, the Alternators line, the MPs we got, the Titanium line, AND the various homages in the mainstream TV lines all tell me that Hasbro does care about G1 fans. Nobody is forcing them to make ANY of those lines or homages and they really have been going on for a lot longer than most people think (since most people just look at the three main Classics lines).

BUT we are not their main target. We just have to realize that. Personally I'm really glad there's the 3rd pary market out there to give us what Hasbro isn't. But that isn't to say that Hasbro hasn't given us a lot already. People really need to step back and take a good look at what we've already been given.

sorry to be a prude but tracks,wheeljack,scourge,cyclonus,optimus,galvatron,jazz,perceptor,hound and everybody else would like to have a word with this notion.
dont get me wrong there are some great third party figs out there but just think where theyd be without hasbro.
no magnus goodbye cc
no hot rod good by protector
no bruticus maximus all youd have would be a couple of 50 dollar scouts everyone would claim were mediocre.
no classics prime no dia/shadow or that new trailerforce which also is INCOMPLETE without g1 prime as well.
as far as devy/herc/giant as much as i love these new updates show me one other 6 member combiner that uses construction vehicles that predates devastator and ill gladly stop defending them.
point is w/out hasbro creating the charachters we grew up loving almost 30yrs ago wed have 0 homages today.

alternator77 wrote:sorry to be a prude but tracks,wheeljack,scourge,cyclonus,optimus,galvatron,jazz,perceptor,hound and everybody else would like to have a word with this notion.

Agreed. Over the last 3 years, Hasbro has made somewhere around 30-40 figs aimed solely at the G1 crowd, as well as several other figures of popular characters from other series such as Lockdown and Lugnut. AND they're planning on releasing an additional 40 Generations figures throughout 2013.

The fasination that people have with 3rd party products somehow being "better" baffles me. Yes I have almost everything FansProject has made, and all the Hearts of Steel figures, and Hercules and MakeToys Battle Tanker, and... so on and so forth.

And my Hasbro figures STILL outnumber all of them by at least a 10:1 ratio.

So yeah 3rd party toys are a nice suppliment, but going on about how they're "Beating Hasbro" is stupidity and a very ignorant mind-set.

decepta-scott wrote:Is it just me or are the third party companys totally outclassing hasbro/tommy at their own game?

It's just you. There are some fantastic 3rd Party pieces, no doubt. However, get some First Edition Prime figures in your hands and then see what you think about all this. The complexity, the level of detail, the paintwork, etc...all for $20-40, compared to $80-175.00 for something that's close.

My complaints haven't exactly been with Hasbro's toys themselves, more their offerings, their distributions, their inability to follow through on promises.

And don't think 3rd parties are incapable of pulling a Hasbro, because they are. FansProject is one such company.

Remember the other Warbot and their Junkion? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Ice Age combiner with the Mastadon as the main bot? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Heartmaster proto? No idea if or when it's coming. Yet they went to the trouble of opening a new site with a fancy redesign.

decepta-scott wrote:I have seen plenty of figures come out or in the works as of late that have been begged for by the fans and never done by hasbro and they all look terrific!!

Yep, and you have to pay a LOT of money to accomplish ownership.

We're talking $15-20 for an ACCESSORY.
$45-200.00 for a FIGURE. (Not a set! A figure!)
$600.00 for a set!

Sure, you can spend that much on a Hasbro item, but at one point, at least...it was $5-50.00

And for those prices, you could collect a slew of figures for the price of one or two 3rd party items.

Sure, they're fantastic.
Sure, they're beautiful.
And yes, they're aimed at collectors, adult collectors who can afford the asking prices.

But Hasbro has churned out some excellent product that EVERYONE can afford and appreciate. EVERYONE.

Imperfection in a figure's design is a small, small price to pay to have what we have.

decepta-scott wrote:I remembered hasbro shuning third party and their supporters in a post. I believe it was over the city commander add on.

...they HAVE to! Do you even really read and comprehend what's said in these posts, or do you just take random words and make them form a sentence that gives your POV even just a modicum of credence? (Which, btw, that credence is valid only in your mind. Almost all of your posts are met with animosity and disagreement, in our minds, FYI.)

Hasbro has to deny them, has to say no, otherwise US law will say "Everyone can make TransFormers now! Have at it!"

decepta-scott wrote:Are they serious? I would love to buy a cheaper priced quality magnus that is a bit more to scale right off the store shelf but they offer none.

Yes, they are serious.
This is one point you've made, with which I agree.
They don't offer what we ask for...SOME of the time.
But it's also well known that they CAN'T. (Various legitimate reasons, I'm not going to list them all. Google-Fu, use it, Grasshoppah.)

Autobot032 wrote:

decepta-scott wrote:Is it just me or are the third party companys totally outclassing hasbro/tommy at their own game?

It's just you. There are some fantastic 3rd Party pieces, no doubt. However, get some First Edition Prime figures in your hands and then see what you think about all this. The complexity, the level of detail, the paintwork, etc...all for $20-40, compared to $80-175.00 for something that's close.

My complaints haven't exactly been with Hasbro's toys themselves, more their offerings, their distributions, their inability to follow through on promises.

And don't think 3rd parties are incapable of pulling a Hasbro, because they are. FansProject is one such company.

Remember the other Warbot and their Junkion? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Ice Age combiner with the Mastadon as the main bot? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Heartmaster proto? No idea if or when it's coming. Yet they went to the trouble of opening a new site with a fancy redesign.

decepta-scott wrote:I have seen plenty of figures come out or in the works as of late that have been begged for by the fans and never done by hasbro and they all look terrific!!

Yep, and you have to pay a LOT of money to accomplish ownership.

We're talking $15-20 for an ACCESSORY.
$45-200.00 for a FIGURE. (Not a set! A figure!)
$600.00 for a set!

Sure, you can spend that much on a Hasbro item, but at one point, at least...it was $5-50.00

And for those prices, you could collect a slew of figures for the price of one or two 3rd party items.

Sure, they're fantastic.
Sure, they're beautiful.
And yes, they're aimed at collectors, adult collectors who can afford the asking prices.

But Hasbro has churned out some excellent product that EVERYONE can afford and appreciate. EVERYONE.

Imperfection in a figure's design is a small, small price to pay to have what we have.

decepta-scott wrote:I remembered hasbro shuning third party and their supporters in a post. I believe it was over the city commander add on.

...they HAVE to! Do you even really read and comprehend what's said in these posts, or do you just take random words and make them form a sentence that gives your POV even just a modicum of credence? (Which, btw, that credence is valid only in your mind. Almost all of your posts are met with animosity and disagreement, in our minds, FYI.)

Hasbro has to deny them, has to say no, otherwise US law will say "Everyone can make TransFormers now! Have at it!"

decepta-scott wrote:Are they serious? I would love to buy a cheaper priced quality magnus that is a bit more to scale right off the store shelf but they offer none.

Yes, they are serious.
This is one point you've made, with which I agree.
They don't offer what we ask for...SOME of the time.
But it's also well known that they CAN'T. (Various legitimate reasons, I'm not going to list them all. Google-Fu, use it, Grasshoppah.)

What? The Mastodon got shafted? Finally something more daring, something that shows a little creativity and it gets killed? Crapola.

Autobot032 wrote:

decepta-scott wrote:Is it just me or are the third party companys totally outclassing hasbro/tommy at their own game?

It's just you. There are some fantastic 3rd Party pieces, no doubt. However, get some First Edition Prime figures in your hands and then see what you think about all this. The complexity, the level of detail, the paintwork, etc...all for $20-40, compared to $80-175.00 for something that's close.

My complaints haven't exactly been with Hasbro's toys themselves, more their offerings, their distributions, their inability to follow through on promises.

And don't think 3rd parties are incapable of pulling a Hasbro, because they are. FansProject is one such company.Remember the other Warbot and their Junkion? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Ice Age combiner with the Mastadon as the main

bot? Poof. Gone.
Remember their Heartmaster proto? No idea if or when it's coming. Yet they went to the trouble of opening a new site with a fancy redesign.

decepta-scott wrote:I have seen plenty of figures come out or in the works as of late that have been begged for by the fans and never done by hasbro and they all look terrific!!

Yep, and you have to pay a LOT of money to accomplish ownership.

We're talking $15-20 for an ACCESSORY.
$45-200.00 for a FIGURE. (Not a set! A figure!)
$600.00 for a set!

Sure, you can spend that much on a Hasbro item, but at one point, at least...it was $5-50.00

And for those prices, you could collect a slew of figures for the price of one or two 3rd party items.

Sure, they're fantastic.
Sure, they're beautiful.
And yes, they're aimed at collectors, adult collectors who can afford the asking prices.

But Hasbro has churned out some excellent product that EVERYONE can afford and appreciate. EVERYONE.

Imperfection in a figure's design is a small, small price to pay to have what we have.

decepta-scott wrote:I remembered hasbro shuning third party and their supporters in a post. I believe it was over the city commander add on.

...they HAVE to! Do you even really read and comprehend what's said in these posts, or do you just take random words and make them form a sentence that gives your POV even just a modicum of credence? (Which, btw, that credence is valid only in your mind. Almost all of your posts are met with animosity and disagreement, in our minds, FYI.)

Hasbro has to deny them, has to say no, otherwise US law will say "Everyone can make TransFormers now! Have at it!"

decepta-scott wrote:Are they serious? I would love to buy a cheaper priced quality magnus that is a bit more to scale right off the store shelf but they offer none.

Yes, they are serious.
This is one point you've made, with which I agree.
They don't offer what we ask for...SOME of the time.
But it's also well known that they CAN'T. (Various legitimate reasons, I'm not going to list them all. Google-Fu, use it, Grasshoppah.)

Amazing!!! I was actually intimadated!! Really I was!! DID YOUR GRANNY KICK YOU OUTTA HER BASEMENT FOR NOT TAKING OUT THE TRASH AGAIN SPORT?!?!?
Id love to run into some of you internet toughguys In person.
So anywayI never said hasbro failed to deliver a good product. What I said was that they should not drop the ball on COLOR SCHEME!!!!!At least that was the bottom line.
And as far as your little price arguement goes I have bought almost my entire collection on ebay as have most folks who have started collecting in the past year or two and lemme tell ya your gonna pay jacked up prices REGUARDLESS!!!
and Idk where your getting masterpiece figure for 40 bucks from but Ive not seen one for under 100 dollars on ebay let alone in stores for 40 bucks
If you dont support third party companys fine but dont jaw off at me a$$hole. I don know who you mods think you are sometimes but Id wager most of you need a little play in your day.
My question "is it just me" was rehitorical. I happen to know it isnt just me. Read a post or two and youll see that.
I also know the legal issues that face third partys and unless they are an exact likeness with an auto/decepticon insignia on the figure with the same name then guess what champ? THEYRE FINE!!!!! Hasbro never had to wine and get their panties in a not like you have just done just because someone gives prais to a company that one uped them, at least in this dozen or so instances. There is a word that both you and hasbro could have refrenced to make you look less like dolts and that word is professionalisim.
They came off as jealous. not like they were defending their product. Certainly not conduct becomming of a billion dollar toy company or someone who is supposed to be a moderator.
Having said that I agree that hound, clasics prime and megs(henkei) wreckgr cyclonus and a whole mess of other bots made by hasbro look great. Give them the detail of some of the third party figures and I would gladly pay 50 to 100 dollars a figure since I already do in most cases ANYWAY.