Igear - stolen, MP Prime mould, MP Seeker mould.

Original - Ironhide, Ratchet, Seaspray, Huffer. edit - I forgot the Ark set which no one wanted at $120 but now many are paying $400+ IF they can find one for sale.

Teased Original - Dinobots, Impactor, Sharkticon, Wheelie, Cosmo, Beachcomber, Powerglide, Pipes, Brawn. There are a couple more.

I think you are holding on to the past when iGear is trying to move forward.

 

Oh   cause of course their minibots and PP05's are stolen molds too   their PP05 design is one of the best ORIGINAL 3rd party designs full stop. Get past the KO of the seekers and prime cause their original designs are some of the best, if not the best imo.

Just ordered the FP Insecticons - my first FP products and i hope i get the bug like the rest of you (Bazinga!) if i find them to Ninja esque i'll just display them without the weapons or get the G1 garage kit thing if i can

 

The best for me:

Fansproject - Their Bruticus kit is one of their best "Art-work" pieces made. They took a piece of shit of combiner and expanded it to pure greatness. FP Insecticons are fabolous and I know many don't like their Warcry & Flameblast but those 2 are awesome as well.

Igear- My first potential buy was their Kup head and I was impressed which then I turned around and recently bought their minibots, which are excellent figures!

Maiden Japan WreckGar parts are out of this world!

TFC Toys- The only products I own from them are the Gears of War Gun Set for Optimus and Coronation Kit for Leader Starscream which are very high quality pieces!

Headrobots- Pure awesomness!

Reprolabels!!

Middle:

Perfect Effect - Although their Reflector was awesome, they are just so tiny. There Eject and Rewind was great but their Frenzy and Rumble, IMO were not all that great, they're ok but they could of been better.

Worst:

CrazyDevy - I own their Devy Head and leg pieces and they are just not that great. The ball joints on the leg pieces are loose and the head piece that connects to the other half of the head do not line up right. Prices are ridiculous.

These are based off what I own and my experience with them. I do not own any other 3rd party company products so I cannot comment on those.

 

It's a painfully expensive bug, but good luck.

 

pp05 is based on the inferno mold and impactor is based on warpath.

If you like fansprojet's style or not you have to give them that they have had the most consistently good origonal enginering.

 

I agree with the FP thing, but the PP-05 mold being based on Inferno is the most ridiculous claim in the world. Have you seen the test shot video?

To be fair, I haven't liked the stand alone Fp robots half as much as their add-on kits. Which are brilliant.

Presser won't look a thing like Impactor when you have the two next to each other, which is taking longer than it should to be able to do.

 

Best:
1. TFC - climbed that mountain with Hercules
2. Perfect Effect - Love their "cassette bots" and Not-reflector
3. Fansproject - used to be on top, but the insecticons didn't convince me, and they have been very quiet lately.

Worst:
1. CrazyDevvy - too expensive, have ruined old and valuable toys, no interesting products IMO
2. igear - great looking figures, but practically nothing they've made have been in a scale I want it. And the whole stealing of molds thing.
3. BTS - if you're gonna do Soundwave, you've got to do him right.

Up and comers:
1. MMC - loved knight morpher commander, love the look of HoS Shockwave and Hexatron
2. Fanstoys - MP Soundwave looks amazing
3. What's-their-face who're doing Hegemon/Megatron
4. Maketoys - I would be all over Giant if Herc didn't exist. Not too impressed with anything else they've shown so far though.

 

FP best Igear worst for the simple fact they produce blatant KOs and figures based on the KOs, which is sad as they do make fine original figures when they want to.

 

Best is without a doubt in my mind, Fansproject. Incredibly consistent with quality. Although they have been quiet lately, I have no doubt they are working on something great. Runner up is TFC. Hercules is turning out fantastic. Their PPC limb bots look pretty great too. I like what I have seen from Maketoys, but can't form a solid opinion yet.

Worst is Xovergen.. but not for lack of trying. I like a lot of what they were trying to accomplish with Grand Patriot but it could have spent some more time in design phases to tighten up the design and get rid of that weird white piece on the torso. It doesn't help that when I tried to swap heads, the second head doesn't stay on at ALL, and now the original one is loose.. I really do hope their Powermaster Prime set is better. Runner up here is igear. It it wasn't for some of their original designs they have had recently igear would have beat out Xovergen. Even still Ironhide and Ratchet are borrowing heavily from Inferno as mentioned, and Impactor from Warpath. That's disappointing. The mini-bots look promising though.

 

FansProject is king thus far (City Commander and the Crossfire Bruticus sets are wonderful, as are the not-Insecticons; G3 trailer is tits too; I just preordered Warbot Defender; I just think they need a new designer to work on some of their unmasked face sculpts; yech).

iGear is aces in my book too (I love my Faith Leader and still amazed by the engineering required to shrink down the MP-01 mold; Coneheads look nice; PP05 van brothers are eagerly anticipated; Delicate Warrior is probably the best G1-inspired Arcee to date; Kup heads/guns are made of win, as are their minibots).

TFC is coming up in the world with their Herc bots too (though I have yet to pull the trigger on these guys -- I do have some of their weapon add-on sets and those are nice).

PerfectEffect does great mini robots (I have and love fiddling with their Scouting Force X not-Reflector figures).

Ones to watch out for (in a good OMG-nerdgasm way) -- MakeToys (it's all about Giant!), FansToys (really have high hopes for their MP not-Soundwave), and ToyWorld.JP (their Hegemon not-Megatron looks hella nice -- sorry iGear, you dragged your feet too long with PP02 Horror Monarch).

Ones to watch out for (in a bad don't-touch-with-a-10-foot-pole way) -- BTS (Sonicron was such a huge let down and their not-Cassettecons look subpar too design-wise).

Hahaha, you and that wingsabre guy should start a fanclub. XD

 

IMO TFC knocked the third party business out of the park with Herc. Fansproject is obviously great too, as is Perfect Effect. iGear's orignal stuff coming out looks awesome.

As for worst, Impossible Toys and BTS top the list. I don't mind the BTS Optimus trailer but Sonicron was a pretty big swing and miss. Impossible Toys' Valkyrie is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever seen.

 

FansProject are the only company I've bought from to date and they're pretty damned good. I can't give a 'worst' award based on the aforementioned information.

 

Fansproject wins.

 

To me the list goes like this.
1 Fansproject is still the best so far and CC started me in the hold 3rdparty party.
2.It was PE but TFC has bumped them down to thrid Herc( they are willing to fix problems) and their targetroids are the $^&*(well the prime /megatron are)
3.PE FR ,SFX, kingbat and their backpack for CC (add ons to add ons) are all great(kingbat soso)

Now these are the only 3rdpartytoys ive ever had so the others i cant say to much on. But heres my two cents anyway.
1.Igear have a few items im thinking on getting from Fatih leader to their minibots
2.MMC Hexatron a must have!
3.Maketoys Fallen, and the G2 trailer.
4.The guys making the MP Dinobots (not Igear)
5.The guys making the MP Soundwave and Blaster.
6. The guys making that Heggie mon (megatron with the weed leaf)
7. the Made in japan weckgar sets,The Fp insecticon sets
8.Renderform ( most of their kits)
These are all 3rdparty toys i ether will bepicking up or not depending on reveiws and feedbacks.

Now the worst I would say are the rollingthunder prime ( I was going to get but when I seen a reveiw I was like Im good)I hope their Powermaster prime thingy is better. And that Soundwave with the big a$$ flap on its back(same thing it looked better on paper)But i mite bite on their ratbat if its the same price or lower than their rumble frenzy.

 

Fansproject tops my list. Their projects are original, brilliantly engineered, and incredibly high quality in materials and paint apps, and they've remained consistently good as they've moved into making stand-alone figures

TFC is next. I liked them way back when they released Battle Roller (I still have him), and they've learned and improved over time, coming back onto the standalone market with one of the most ambitious projects any 3rd party company has ever attempted... and pulling it off, too.

MakeToys I've only gotten Battle Tanker from them, but if they can continue with that kind of stellar design (and avoid QC missteps like the head issue), they'll be big winners.

Perfect Effect has settled into the small, insanely detailed and poseable robot niche, and they own it. I only own a couple of their products though, because at their price point they're hard to justify.

iGear... iGear, iGear, iGear... *Sigh*. They have huge talent working for them. They have enormous potential. But they keep on flat-out ripping off other people's work. Stuff like the Kup head set (wonderful little kit) and their Arcee show they can do great things without taking other's work. And, despite the Coneheads being stolen engineering, I can't really fault them for giving us something that we wanted so much, but that Takara was refusing to provide. But then they go and straight up knock off Thundercracker, or produce junkpiles like the Ark Command Center, and lose all the points they gained. They need to focus more on things that HasTak ISN'T making, or upgrading existing products. A conversion kit for existing MP Seekers to give them the iGear leg mod would do a lot of restore my faith in them.

 

best: FP
runners up: HR, PE, TFC

Worst: IT

runner up: Igear

best small 3rd party/garage kit company: Renderform

 

As far as iGear goes, you're faulting them for really ancient stuff when they first started off like their Ark playset, which I hear did have some QC issues but with some DIY fixes, it's actually not half bad (and in demand given the insane after market prices for it). A shame they won't ever release the Nemesis playset now due to fans lambasting them for the Ark playset.

As for Faith Leader, iGear has shown they do learn from their QC mistakes, and each run shows more mold improvement. I won't get into the whole stolen molds legal issue, but I do give them props for shrinking down MP-01 from an engineering standpoint; no small feat given the exacting minute details and small pieces involved (and lack of diecast amd electronics works in the figure's favor big time). Their Coneheads are brilliant, I'll give them that too. No way would HasTak give us MP Coneheads.

As for their Seeker clones, I have no interest in them but I can understand if others want or like them, especially given the scarcity of MP Thundercracker (and the accompanying prices). Note that I said I understand the reasoning behind why some of these figures get made, not that I excuse iGear full stop for some of their morally ambiguous practices. =)

As for the hip kibble mod set idea, that probably wouldn't be practical given how the slots for the sliding tailfins are molded onto the shin pieces themselves. You're looking at replacing much of the legs, nevermind the hip kibble assembly.

But I agree that I'd love for them to continue making and releasing original designs and innovative figures like the PP05 van brothers, minibots, heads/guns add-on sets, and the upcoming PP04 not-BB and not-CJ.

 

Best: iGear

Masterpiece-ish G1 figures ftw!

Worst: ImpossibleToys and BTS

Ugly designs, uninteresting toys.


And, about that critique toward iGear regarding the delay between announcement/teaser and release, I can't believe people are getting unhappy about it. I do understand that patience isn't everyone's best friend but hey, that way you know what's planned, you know there will be alternatives to what is available right now or will be in the future, you can avoid purchasing stuff you'd have to sell later and make choices with more informations, how is that a bad thing?

 

From my experience and opinion, every company is second to Fansproject.

Now, if we're going to go through the catalogs of every companies' toys for the last 10 years, I think one would be better serviced to read/watch reviews and do some searches in the Feedback forum.

 

I love that people keep assuming that "All of Igear's stealing is in the past" Last week... three more Igear Masterpiece Screamer molds... One actionmaster Thrust, One Ghost of Skywarp, and one Acidstorm. Calm your balls about "It's in the past" =P