3rd party transformers..

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Yeah, right, I should totally just start buying the third party toys! Absolutely, I'm totally wrong to even question them! Never mind the fact that most of them are to me, and this is far more important to me than anything (I really don't care about the copyright too much, but I really hate entitlement (and that's what it is) and I'm becoming more and more resigned to the fact that I have to accept the people who keep using 'privilege' as a negative are completely right), incredibly aesthetically unpleasing.

Not at all. If you don't like/want 'em, by all means don't buy 'em. But that doesn't mean you're entitled (and a sense of entitlement is exactly what it is) to condemn those of us who do choose to partake of them without our having the right of reply. You're just as free to share your opinion and/or to vote with your wallet as anyone else - but that cuts both ways.

This supposed high-end collector market keeps jumping up and down for attention, but I really don't see it as big. Just loud. I see no proof that it's something that would be worth the investment from either company. Otherwise it would be there from Hasbro or TakaraTomy.

You mean, like this?
The market for high-end TFs is by definition there, or else 3PPs wouldn't exist.

Oh right! Which they did illegally not getting any licenses or anything, right? It was completely Hasbro just doing what they want regardless, right?

There's a slight difference between creating something yourself and buying up someone else's work and claiming it for your own, hey.
And again, if we're talking legality, then as long as the 3PPs skirt that thin line between 'outright rip-off' and 'just different enough', they're in the clear. If we're going beyond legality and into the somewhat more complex realm of moral integrity, then as mentioned your righteous ire is just as applicable to HasTakTom themselves and your defense of them while condemning 3PPs is a tad hypocritical.

Again, it makes more sense without replacing what I actually wrote with a bunch of clumsy strawman argument(s).