What's Takara Tomy's and Hasbro's stance on 3rd party bots?

[llamatron]

I would guess that currently the total sales of 3rd party figures are a teeeeny tiny drop compared to the massive ocean of sales that Hasbro makes with it's Transformers toys.

[Lord_Zed]

I would guess that currently the total sales of 3rd party figures are a teeeeny tiny drop compared to the massive ocean of sales that Hasbro makes with it's Transformers toys.

Sounds about right, when you look at all the TF products released by Hasbro this year, the ones focused on the same sort of collectors the 3rd parties target would only be a small percentage of the amount of merchandise they pump out.

I'm sure of third party products started selling their wares in Wall Mart and departments stores then Hasbro would be spurred to action. But I doubt they would do that and as long as they remain a niche market I doubt it's too much concern to Hasbro. The extent of 3rd parties influence the situation probably appears larger than it is to people like us who are the niche the 3rd parties target.

[Paulbot]

Most of the fan-awareness of the unauthorised items is from the two global fansites treating them as Transformers news, so they are splashed on their news pages for everyone to see without trying to hunt them down.

Which two sites do you mean? Seibertron stopped front paging news of 3rd Party stuff a while ago.

[Sky Shadow]

Well, it looks like Hasbro just started caring. TFW2005 is down right now, because it "got hit with several DCMAs from Hasbro at around 3am this morning. Apparently the site had been "Overenthusiastically promoting products not licensed or produced by Hasbro that were protected properties." Things are not looking good right now. That's all I can say at this time." Big news.

[griffin]

Hmmm... I was just asking about that elsewhere.

I'm surprised that there was no warning and such drastic action was taken, but it doesn't surprise me that it happened, because TFCon has been focussing on unauthorised items because Hasbro isn't willing to be presenting products there.

It also wouldn't surprise me if FunPub didn't have something to do with complaining to Hasbro, as TFW is behind TFCon, and if TFW gets shut down, TFCon has to remain a Canadian-only venture.


I think I recall that the US Government has the power to shut down and redirect browsers on sites that are even suspected of pirated or illegal goods. Even if it is proven false, the sites can be caught up in limbo on mere allegation for a long time until it is proven otherwise.

[Paulbot]

A news site should be able to cover "items that exist". Shouldn't they focus on sites selling said items rather than one 'promoting' them? If it is to do with the convention, and timing suggests maybe, it's an interesting move.

[griffin]

Which two sites do you mean? Seibertron stopped front paging news of 3rd Party stuff a while ago.

Yeah, they were good on that, and it seems that it may have just protected them from being shut down as well (as TFW).

But the problem was that it was still on their news page indirectly - from their constant inclusion of dealer advertising that you have to scroll through for ages - which is full of 3rd party items each time. Dealers like TFsource include all the images as well, which gets posted on Seibertron's news page, and becomes "news" by stealth.

[Trent]

I predict nerd-rage.

[griffin]

This has massive ramifications to the fandom.

It could kill off the biggest transfan site in the world.
Even if the owner is able to create a new site (with a new name) there might be little chance of him gaining access to archives on the TFW server, which will see 10-12 years of archived images and info on Transformers lost. Much of which isn't archived anywhere else, or is not as easy to search for on sites like Seibertron, TFormers or Allspark.
It's like having all the eggs in one basket, and I wasn't archiving their news images because I never expected that site would ever disappear.

They still have their Canadian site working, so might just transfer to that... and be safe outside of US jurisdiction.

I thought they'd at least tweet about it, or make a mention on their Canadian site if this happened several hours ago.

[griffin]

I predict nerd-rage.

Yes, there will be...

(snip)
if and when they choose to... so fans shouldn't get upset if they suddenly decide to put a stop to it, because them ignoring it doesn't equate to them accepting it.