Fall of Cybertron figures! (images added - post 21)

[kup]

I'm so tired of all this 3rd party nonsense. Why can't these companies differentiate themselves like the Transformers & Gobots did back in the day? Make your own show and/or comic, create your own damn characters and stop stealing others intellectual property! /rant

IMO 3rd parties exists because Hasbro has neglected a clearly profitable section of their market.

If Hasbro continue releasing stuff like this Bruticus, then there won't be a need for 3rd parties. It is really all up to Hasbro's as it has always been.

[Sutton]

I still plan on picking up a Maketoys Giant when (if) it gets released in Green/Purple, regardless of whether Hasbro makes a great FOC Bruticus. For every classics Warpath there's a classics Ironhide, so I just don't trust them enough at the moment on the basis of one announcement and a few select pictures.

Murphy's law says that once the fans have all forked out big $$$ for either Hercules/Giant, Hasbro will reveal a true Classics Devastator that pisses on both of them.

[griffin]

I'm so tired of all this 3rd party nonsense. Why can't these companies differentiate themselves like the Transformers & Gobots did back in the day? Make your own show and/or comic, create your own damn characters and stop stealing others intellectual property! /rant

If Hasbro/Tomy don't care to intervene about mass-copying of character-likenesses that are currently being licensed by other companies (like IDW & ShoutFactory), I've found that there's no point us fans complaining about it.

For them though, it's just easier to copy existing franchise characters, and sell them direct to those fans, than go through the legal and safety processes that toy companies do.
If they took on the role of a regular toy company, they'd have to safety-test their products, register/patent them, pitch them to retailers, provide support services, promote their products to consumers... to make them legal.
And those 3rd party producers wouldn't have much success with items if they didn't copy existing character properties - it's the only reason fans of Transformers buy their "Transformers" items. Their profitability requires character models that are currently in use (by Hasbro, IDW and ShoutFactory) to sell their items.

But like I said, this is Hasbro/Tomy's issue... endless debate by fans over it wont change their stand on the matter.

[kup]

I still plan on picking up a Maketoys Giant when (if) it gets released in Green/Purple, regardless of whether Hasbro makes a great FOC Bruticus. For every classics Warpath there's a classics Ironhide, so I just don't trust them enough at the moment on the basis of one announcement and a few select pictures.

Murphy's law says that once the fans have all forked out big $$$ for either Hercules/Giant, Hasbro will reveal a true Classics Devastator that pisses on both of them.

I say that is still highly unlikely that Hasbro would release enough interesting stuff to supplant the 3rd parties. So far this Bruticus as awesome as it may seem, is just an oddity from Hasbro plus we don't even know how it'll turn out since we have seen very little.

If we start seeing this sort of release reasonably frequent instead of say...that Kreo Devastator ()..then we can say that Hasbro has picked up the ball well enough to threaten 3rd parties but I am still skeptical that we'll see more great releases such as this (assuming that it does turn out good).

[SkyWarp91]

It's about FOC-king time.

Get it? YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'll get these toys by the way lol Swindle looks awesome and Bruticus oh yeah oh yeah

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Close. Every Toyfair (in around March), Hasbro (all toy companies really) pressure retailers to pre-order as much as they can convince them toy buy, and using the success of the second movie, Hasbro were able to fool the Retailers into thinking that the third movie toys would be even more successful. Retailers bought up big, and they got burnt.
Now the kids, fans and collectors suffer because retailers cancel any future stock orders they signed up to at Toyfair, and lose money on the brand by clearing stock out at a loss... making it less likely to order new stock of that brand when they finally do clear their shelves.

"fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me"

So in essence, the current way of marketting for Transformers is not helping Hasbro, retailers or consumers.

Hasbro loses sales from cancelled orders. Reatilers lose money by having to discount. Consumers lose by having the same characters for the next year with no new stock.

This would suggest to me that the current method is flawed. Perhaps a new way should be considered. But then I am a logical thinking dude who wonders about Astralian Business practices.

[Sky Shadow]

I'm so tired of all this 3rd party nonsense. Why can't these companies differentiate themselves like the Transformers & Gobots did back in the day? Make your own show and/or comic, create your own damn characters and stop stealing others intellectual property! /rant

+1/Like/Thumbs Up/Smiley Face.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I'm so tired of all this 3rd party nonsense. Why can't these companies differentiate themselves like the Transformers & Gobots did back in the day? Make your own show and/or comic, create your own damn characters and stop stealing others intellectual property! /rant

IMO 3rd parties exists because Hasbro has neglected a clearly profitable section of their market.

If Hasbro continue releasing stuff like this Bruticus, then there won't be a need for 3rd parties. It is really all up to Hasbro's as it has always been.

This might not be the place for the latest round of this topic hey.

For my part, the Odieverse doesn't have a Bruticus/Combaticons set yet and the FP set is a tad pricey for my liking (and big compared to the G1 gestalts), so if it's a good set this'll probably be it. If not it'll be back to keeping an eye out for affordable G2 Combaticons, but I'd like to support Hasbro doing decent combiners again if possible. I'm quite happy with what little 3rd-Party stuff I've got and they are all things HasTak probably won't ever do (Reflector & CC armor) but official stuff is just more accessible.

[Hursticon]

Umm...
Someone needs to check on Bruticus, I think he may have exploded with joy!?!

I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of this before I pass final judgement but from what I've seen so far, things are looking pretty awesome and this wont be replacing my FansProject Enhanced Classicsverse Bruticus ever; more so this Hasbro effort will merely compliment him but this does lead me to wonder as to what the current state of FoC Grimlock & the other Dinobots are, I have a feeling though that the FoC Prime figure will end up being a repaint however.

[Doubledealer]

Umm...
Someone needs to check on Bruticus, I think he may have exploded with joy!?!

Haven't seen old mate on the boards for a little while. If you can hear us Bruticus, let your presence be known.

...this does lead me to wonder as to what the current state of FoC Grimlock & the other Dinobots are, I have a feeling though that the FoC Prime figure will end up being a repaint however.

I'm really interested to see what they do with the FoC Dinobots too. From a scale point of view, the Dinobots (or at least Grimlock) appear to be absolutely ginormous in the game (we see Grimlock seemingly readying himself for a clash with Bruticus himself!) so it'll be interesting to see what size-class they choose for the toys. Leader Class would be nice.

Considering how ugly the FoC Prime model is, a WFC repaint for his toy would be an absolute blessing. I still struggle to accept a Prime without any transparent plastic on his chest though.