Octobotimus wrote:Black Hat wrote:thedistinctroom wrote:Hilarious how it's essentially Giant Type-61. People always say Hasbro should just use the 3rd party molds to recoup lost income. And lo and behold... they finally did it. In yo face Maketoys.
Actually, they didn't use the molds. They used the base design but the tooling is 100% original. If they HAD used the molds and reproduced Maketoys' Giant wholesale, then A: that would be seriously scummy of them, and B: it could land them in hot water.
also not sure how that would land em in hot water..... they own devastator. that would be like "you copied our design !" hasbro: "ya, and we copied a design you made of a character we made,and your design isn't even licensed"
Three things here:
1: Maketoys, despite not creating the character of Devastator, DID create that specific design of Devastator, and engineered/tooled it themselves. Had Giant been a barely-altered KO of an existing figure then maybe, but at absolute best it would be morally dubious to profit off their work so directly.
2: Technically, their figure isn't Devastator, as HasTak/IP law apologists will harp on about endlessly. So when Hasbro says "You made an unlicensed Devastator!" they can quite rightfully reply "No, we made our own design called Giant". Whilst one might argue this is ethically unsound, if you're going to go down the "letter of the law above common sense" road then again, it all checks out. Though given that (at least IMO) trying to stamp out the 3P scene is equivalent to trying to stamp out people making and selling fanart (that is, incredibly scummy and not a good idea) then HasTak is STILL in the wrong.
3: Maketoys, like many 3P countries, operates out of China, and as such is basically immune from HasTak's lawyers. If they even
tried to go after the 3P market, they'd not only most likely lose, but they'd probably lose exclusive rights to the Transformers brand. Whether or not you agree with that being a good thing is up to you, but I would just like to point out that the US copyright system is only in the ridiculous state it is today because a certain mouse-loving corporation refuses to allow a nearly hundred-year-old cartoon to go into the public domain.
Now I doubt that HasTak and Maketoys will come to blows because again, it's a known fact that HasTak and 3Ps are fairly chill with each other and have numerous "gentlemen's agreements" but if sparks DID fly it wouldn't be that cut and dried.
"Decepticons! Transform and Rise Up!" 
