zodconvoy wrote:I just don't think the issue is so black and white anymore. That said, there are still the blindingly obvious KO's, like this one and ones like it, but is the FP Warbot a knock off Springer? The Knightmorpher (HoS Optimus) a KO or the Mastercollectables Nova Prime. Far more design and engineering went into the 200 plus piece Nova Prime than anything Has/Tak has done. And Hal's ARC Arcee model has even been recognized as his IP by Hasbro! If Hasbro legally recognized a third party creation as their IP, the only thing keeping them off of store shelves is funding which a couple of these companies may actually be able to secure. On City Commander and other third party products, Hasbro has far more to lose by having them legally recognized.
On third party products, silence is the best legal strategy Hasbro can take.
I don't see that Hasbro really does have anything to lose with add-on stuff. I mean, if City Commander was going to be in stores in 6 months time, Hasbro could do another run of Ultra Magnus figures and then they'd have another company advertising the product they themselves have on shelves. * In fact, I'd think that Knight Morpher Commander and things like that would probably be less likely to escape the legal wrath of the Has. It's clearly based on a design from a licensed Hasbro product, while the Prime trailers and UM armour appear to be more original. They are obviously inspired by Hasbro designs, but they're not direct translations from the page to 3d. I don't remember a design the same as City Commander appearing in comics or a cartoon or another toy before the piece was released.*
Never happen though. No company big enough to put something like that into mass production would want to give the competition free advertising. It'd think it far more likely that some of the makers of these excellent looking original sculpt add-ons might be picked up by toy companies to create original pieces unrelated to the Transformers brand.
As for knock-offs themselves, I find them interesting, and although I don't really own any (a few Legends size KOs bought at a pound shop is about the extent so far) I do enjoy seeing some of the random colour combos they get, and can see why someone might go for a KO rather than a hard to find original/rare Has/Tak product. I don't like it when they are actually coming close to copying the official packaging, but that's mainly because of the lack of hilarious engrish names.
