A few weeks ago, I wanted to see if they have or plan to have a master piece version of the BumbleBee movie Optimus Prime. It's become one of my all time favorite designs of him. All I found was a simple toy, but in my search, I stumbled onto these 3rd party unlicensed "master piece" versions of the BumbleBee Optimus Prime instead. They look every bit as amazing as any of the license Hasbro/Takara toys! In fact, some of them are even better than the real deal. It's actually kind of insane! The engineering and love put into these are amazing! If Hasbro/Takara is not making a master piece version of your favorite character, there's a chance some 3rd party knock off of it exists, and they look just as good.
Not only that, some of the 3rd party stuff do their own creative spin on an existing character that unmistakably captures the look of the character, but also very different from how the character actually looks in the show.
Here, can you even tell which one is the official Master Piece Optimus Prime and which one is the 3rd party knock off? I blocked out the official Transformers logo from their shoulders to make it harder to tell which is real and which is fake. The fake ones don't have the autobot insignia on it.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I've also seen trash 3rd party figures too. That's why you always look for reviews. The chance of a 3rd party knock off sucking is just as likely as an official toy sucking. The official toys also have had their fair shares of missteps.
A Quick Clarification On What These 3rd Party Unlicensed Toys Mean
1. Third party toys are not knock-offs. A knock-off is a duplicated version of a retail mold, often oversized, and sold as a bootleg copy of the official item. These are original designs of existing characters, which remains a copyright grey area but don't fit the definition of a knock-off. They're basically plastic versions of the art of copyrighted comic characters you get in artists' alleys at comic conventions.
2. Tons of third party stuff is 100% show accurate, or as close as they can be in plastic. FansToys figures are as G1 show accurate as anything being made by Hasbro/Takara. The only copyright avoidance things they need to do are the faction symbols and the character names.
Not only that, some of the 3rd party stuff do their own creative spin on an existing character that unmistakably captures the look of the character, but also very different from how the character actually looks in the show.
Here, can you even tell which one is the official Master Piece Optimus Prime and which one is the 3rd party knock off? I blocked out the official Transformers logo from their shoulders to make it harder to tell which is real and which is fake. The fake ones don't have the autobot insignia on it.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I've also seen trash 3rd party figures too. That's why you always look for reviews. The chance of a 3rd party knock off sucking is just as likely as an official toy sucking. The official toys also have had their fair shares of missteps.
A Quick Clarification On What These 3rd Party Unlicensed Toys Mean
1. Third party toys are not knock-offs. A knock-off is a duplicated version of a retail mold, often oversized, and sold as a bootleg copy of the official item. These are original designs of existing characters, which remains a copyright grey area but don't fit the definition of a knock-off. They're basically plastic versions of the art of copyrighted comic characters you get in artists' alleys at comic conventions.
2. Tons of third party stuff is 100% show accurate, or as close as they can be in plastic. FansToys figures are as G1 show accurate as anything being made by Hasbro/Takara. The only copyright avoidance things they need to do are the faction symbols and the character names.
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