Very true now that I think about it. Small Etailers like Brandon's and CP, even Toy Dojo would hurt badly.

I might prefer TT over 3P, but I wouldn't want that to happen.

IMO, 3P should stick to do things TT doesn't do, but I know that won't happen. It's a way to be safe.

 

SAVAGE.

 

I think Hasbro might wonder what WOULD happen if they C&D'd major e-tailers like BBTS and TFsource. ARE they the major source of profits for those retailers? Those store cater to collectors, not casual toy buyers (like kids and parents), and at this point I kind of feel like a majority of the "Transformers" collector toy market actually IS dominated by third parties. So it's not a foregone conclusion they'd pick Hasbro over the 3ps! (Granted, Hasbro makes lots of other toys, like Star Wars, so they have added leverage... still.)

Also, the fact is that official MP stuff always sells out, even when it sucks, and 3rd party MP toys actually have BOLSTERED the official market (3Ps made the prospect of a 'complete' MP collection plausible, thus investing collectors more in that toyline than we otherwise would be... it was easy to pass on a lackluster official MP when it was just a few random characters and there were only 1-2 releases a year, now even questionable official figures have value just as 'cast-fillers')

Finally, 3rd parties showed that it was worth Has/Tak's time and money to make MP-scale versions of secondary characters.

I think it's ironic that FT even gets all this flak, IIRC their creation of Quakewave and especially their announcement of the Iron Dibots definitely BOOSTED interest in the relaunched "MP-10 scale" line. Until they came along, we all just kind of accepted that we would never see Masterpiece versions of many, if not most, of our favorite figures. Like, we were cool with having an MP Grimlock even though we were pretty sure he would be the ONLY Dinobot they did at that level.

 

Glad to know I am not alone in liking the original Grinder head.

 

I only want the variant head now because I know it bother hasbro.

 

Your sig has inspired me to further shorten HasTak to HaTa...at least in the context of this thread...  

 

You might be surprised just how much business HasTak accounts for at the larger etailers, if you think that.

 

Especially if a store also sells Marvel Legends and SW Black.

I'd also say that the majority of TF collectors still just buy Hasbro stuff too.

 

I rarely buy 3rd party, so I would be fine. Mostly because 3rd party is mostly MP and I'm a chug collector, where most of Hasbro's money comes from on this market

 

Glad I got mine

 

haha...got your pm  ...it's on its way  

 

I honestly think it would be a bit of a sh*tfest disaster if Takara really bucked down and tried to destroy the 3P market. You'd have ton of angry customers mad that their 3p company of choice won't be able to deliver their products to them and it's not like they'll all be thrilled about buying TT instead. The big retailers would be hurt by it and some might even drop HasTak stuff in lieu of 3p stuff if the store is specialized enough. I also think that you'd see more company owned stores spring up like what Maketoys and Fanshobby has so that products would just be delivered directly to the customer.

tl;dr It would be dumb if Takara tried to wreck the 3P market and it wouldn't work anyway.

 

I want to fit it to MP8, take a pic and tag Takara on instagram.

 

Well, they've not been blocking Caesium sales (that I've heard about anyway).

Grinders head is probably one of the smaller and (depending on taste) least vital items that anybody's releasing right now. I'm guessing/hoping that this is just them making an example out of him. Just a thinly veiled threat to make sure company's are keeping well clear from whatever Hastak is working on or has released already.

 

Problem is they have left 3rd party alone for too long, they should never have been allowed to exist. Kinda hard to get rid of them now with the sheer amount of 3rd party companies now. In the beginning it was upgrades to compliment official products. They kinda crossed the line when they started doing full figures. I own a few 3rd party figures but try to support Hasbro over 3rd party. Afterall, without them we wouldn't even have this hobby.

 

Well written sir

 

Well fuckballs.

Yesterday I discovered that the ebay seller I bought Grinder from was a scammer so now I have to reorder one... gah...

Don't you dare!

 

Welp, the day 3p stops is the day i stop collecting Transformers. Fuck HasTak and their shit quality and unimaginative engineering.

 

I guess I should probably ship my stash from TCP just in case this propagates across the pond.

 

Hasbro made the decision to kill all the 86 transformers, 3p is bringing them back to life. What's the issue here?