JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:Razorclaw0000 wrote:I think the Fallen just screams "Vamp". However, I think the eHobby stuff failed miserably because none of the colors really matched. They just used the names.
Correction: Takara
wanted too. But they decided against it since the names referred to Bandai products, their main competitor. While the chances of it actually infringing copyright is minimal, Takara decided to play it safe. All the e-Hobby G1 Gobots ever got were individual designation numbers, no official names.
While the official toy release failed to give them proper designations, Takara did release them as the "G1 GoBots" Team and the bios included with them make it quite clear the they are the same characters as Pathfinder, Small Foot, Road Ranger, Treads, Bad Boy and Bug Bite. They were also added to NA G1 do to the BotCon BugBite release with the fiction showing that he is the upgraded version of the Takara release.
I find where the pack failed was A) that it wasn't that the colors didn't match the originals, It's that the colors were the original concepts for Powerglide, Warpath and Cosmos toys making it harder to match them to different characters, and B) where Hasbro acquired the old rights for GoBots, and many Fans have waited and expected these homages, the same doesn't exist for Takara, and even the toys which we think of as GoBots, were seen in a different light there, making the connection much more of a stretch.
For the record, from Hirofumi Ichikawa, Fan and Takara Employee. Regarding lack of Character knowledge and Takara/Bandai concerns:
Hirofumi Ichikawa wrote:"When e-Hobby first announced the G1 GoBots, hardly any Japanese fans understood their background info. When it was learned the character's names were 'American brand names for Machine Robos,' some people on the net apparently said that 'Takara has infringed on Bandai's copyrights.'
In Japan, brand name copyrights basically depend only on title (which in this case is just the 'G1 GoBots' part), so however Takara named the characters for the content, there shouldn't have been any conflict over questions of rights. From what I hear, though, a "well-informed" person said, 'Bandai's the kind of company for which there's no telling what they'll do if they get upset,' and he rather firmly recommended the use of the names be discontinued. As expected, even Takara had to reconsider, and as a result, the personal names of the GoBots were completely eliminated from the product. I think it was a pretty ridiculous idea, myself, but since I can't make a client bear risk, even if it's a one-in-a-million chance, I didn't really try to refute it.
(By the time I heard about the situation, it was already a done deal, so opposing it would've done squat-all anyway.)"
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