I have a fair few micromachines, I really liked them, but I think my parents present budget skewed towards transformers, which I'm fine with.
Apart from City Commander/Ultra Magnus, has an unofficial third party transformers design element ever been incorporated into an official toy/design?
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do you mean, where an element of the third party toy is later used in an official design? What part/element of City commander has since been used by Hastak for UltraMagnus?
Perhaps the upgrade kit Fans Project did for Hot Rod. The latest PotP rodimus is a bit like that.
I never bought those military limbs that were designed to go with the power core combiners (I came very close) but they may have elements that might be similar to the execution of combiner wars.
I mean like how City Commander had 2 missiles on each shoulder, which was then incorporated into CW Ultra Magnus. Also are there any engineering elements that first showed up on a third party toy but later appeared on official stuff.
Also the as yet unreleased Imaginarium Devastator statue is a direct copy of MakeToys Green Giant. Third Party Transformers have been commonplace for so long now that I'm wondering if any "cross contamination" has occured.
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If anyone lifted design elements from City Commander it was IDW as CW Leader Mangus is an IDW design.
As for engineering being copied it's probably a matter of there are only a certain number of ways to design a Transformer without resorting to MP level engineering.
As for a licenced product using a third party design, I bet Hasbro has probably told them to redesign it hence why it's not been released.
Not arguing that CW Magnus is heavily based off IDW. But whoever designed IDW Magnus obviously had a City Commander in the room at the time.
As for the Devi statue, Imaginairium Art last showed an update in May, so it's probably still happening.
I only thought to ask these questions because the unofficial market has been around for quite a while now and has grown significantly. I have been wondering in what ways Hasbro and Takara have adapted around this market, if at all.
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Officially they rightly want to sue the third party market into oblivion, but the third parties incorporate in China where the courts are a joke and don't care about international copyright law.
Beyond that Hasbro have never said anything and anything beyond that is speculation.