Quote Originally Posted by STL View Post
Oops my bad. I read it as you were meaning that replicas are worse than mass-customised product b/c they hurt Hasbro/Takara's bottom line more and for that reason replicas/KOs are a worser animal. I didn't realise it was expanding on the same point for both.
Overall, yes, my entire post was scaling the different issues instead of just painting all as equally good or equally bad. It's just that the small portion of my post you quoted in your reply post, didn't appear to relate to what you were saying in your reply (to my entire post, assumedly), which confused me.

I see this issue as a scale/spectrum, not a simple black-and-white sorting of the elements being raised.
Replicas (of current/future product) IS worse for the bottom line, but that doesn't mean I'm saying the others are okay because they 'aren't as bad'. I don't support any, but they aren't all equally evil.

On a scale of Worst to Not-Really-That-Bad:
Replica current/future product - hurts bottom line of Hasbro/Takara most, if it is a cheaper alternative.
Replica past product - hurts the bottom line a lot less, mostly from upset customers of the fake product. As for preventing reissues - it would only limit the potential pool of reissue candidates, and we've seen 8 years of reissues with no signs of it running out of sellable candidates (Besides, Reissues aren't a significant product line/money-maker out of all the millions of TFs produced each year by Hasbro and TakaraTomy anyway, so they wouldn't care too much which figures get done if there is enough demand for it - they still took a chance with Metroplex despite the Replica).
Custom figures - would only hurt Hasbro/Takara on the rare occasion an official version of that character in that same form is produced (if Fan-made versions of Drift and Arcee go ahead, I think they would be the first - but knowing an official, well-sculpted/engineered convertable figure is on the way, these probably won't even be produced, or sell much at all).
Custom accessories - doesn't compete with Hasbro/Takara or prevent a purchase of an official product, but instead creates a need to purchase an official item for that Custom accessory, generating sales for the Brand owner.

They might all be illegal, and to some fans are all just as avoidable, but when it comes to affecting Sales, or the Bottom Line, of the Brand Owners, it's obvious that they would prioritise combatting Replicas first, because they have the greater negative impact.
It makes it difficult to claim that Customised accessories have just the same impact to Hasbro/Takara as Replica figures when we see one encourages sales of official product, while the other discourages it. Custom figures wouldn't even be close to the affect Replicas have, because even if an official figure was done later, fan-made stuff is still so different in design/engineering/sculpting, fans would still want to buy the official figure if it is good enough to buy. After all, that's what it would come down to - the existance of a fan-made alternative won't be preventing the purchase of the official figure if that official figure is just a terrible toy. If the official figure is a good toy, people who bought a fan-made figure will still buy it because the fan-made convertable figures just can't compete with the real thing.