Should the Trasformer line be classed as bootlegs?

Having recently bought a Trasformer MC-18 and researching it to make sure it was legit, it got me thinking. When it comes to the "Transformers" toy releases, do you count this line as the first bootlegs ever of TFs.

On one hand they had the licence from Takara to release Diaclone and Microchange toys so in terms of releasing the toys, they were legally entitled to release the toys.

On the other hand as they didn't have the Transformers license at the time; technically the toys they released in TF colour-schemes were unauthorised.

So where do these guys lie: official with Hasbro playing politics, bootlegs in spite of legally being entitled to release Diaclone and Microchange toys, or somewhere in between?

Trasformers were released in Italy by GiG under license from Takara, so are Legit in Italy because Hasbro had no jurisdiction at that time.
It was just unethical for them to use toy colours and a brand name that was similar to Hasbro's (who was also using the moulds under license from Takara), without some sort of payment or authorisation (Hasbro spent a lot of time and money on setting up the brand & characters).

So we had two license holders of those Takara moulds releasing the same colour versions in two separate jurisdictions, but Hasbro eventually forced GiG to buy their license as well (if they wanted to keep using Hasbro's toy colours with Takara's moulds).

They were more like third-party TFs than KOs, as they were allowed to use the moulds, but were using character colours that another company developed (Hasbro), to profiteer off of that company's efforts.
(like Gen1 characters done by third parties - while the characters are currently being released on licensed DVDs and IDW comics, anyone other than Hasbro selling toys that aim to look like those current characters, with or without their actual names, may not be copying moulds, but is copying and profiteering off those current characters Hasbro spent time and money creating)

That was more what I was getting at though- where do you draw the line on what's classed as a bootleg? For example, I know that with VCRs there used to be so many different circuit designs all doing the same thing, because each design had been trademarked and copyrighted. So where do you draw the line on a bootleg- the basic mold or the entire toy down to the colour scheme and tooling?

To me a bootleg is something that is using a copy of a physical IP without any permission whatsoever from anyone regardless as to how exact or different the bootleg product is from the original. :cool:

GiG had a license so to me, they're legit but take iGear for example... ;):p

But then there are some interesting questions there in terms of licensing and juristiction. Do you class a license as pertaining to the assembled parts of a collection of plastic and metal molds, or as being more specific than that? If Hasbro had no juristiction there, then why were they able to pressure GiG into getting a 2nd licence? How much of a dog's breakfast had the original distribution situation between Hasbro and Takara been for this situation to arise to begin with? It gets into some very interesting and ethical teritory where depending on the angle you take (not to mention the figure you're talking about); you can very quickly go from talking about legit toys to talking about bootlegs.

I just saw gok post on Facebook about this... but can't comment there coz of work restrictions...

But he is defebding TRANSFORMERS..... whoops!!