Ah, thanks. I now remember seeing that a copule of years ago, but I guess it never stuck. About the top post, I feel that Voltron is something entirely different from Transformers, while Gobots was just a predecessor.

 

You could ask every person on this board for a definition of KO. If there were a million of us, you'd get a million different answers.

Personally, I just want a cool transforming toy. It matters naught to me if it were made by Hasbro, a Chinese elf, or Frank the smelly hobo who sleeps in a refrigerator box on third avenue.

 

I heard Frank makes the best of them.

 

The world is built around the idea of copying other people's ideas. Whether or not anyone wants to accept the fact. It's been going on since the beginning of time and it will continue to do so until we are all good and gone.

If only one company were to make say, a mobile phone, does that mean that every other company that makes a phone that looks and feels, acts and performs the exact same function as the original company made phone make those other phones KOs ??

Like a friend once told me, every car manufacturer buys a car from its competing manufacturer to see what kind of tech it runs. They strip it down and incorporate whatever ideas they find are not theirs into their next models and so on.
Whether this is true Idk, but I have no reason to doubt him.

If I came up with a great idea tmr, I would put money on the fact that in at least 1 years time, my great idea would be copied in one for or another..

That's how I look at it !!

Stolen, copied, IP infringed.. if it didn't happen, there'd be no such thing as computers, laptops, touch screen mobile phones, hell, we'd probably all be driving around in only Fords. And probably not the kind we have today either !!

So yeah, I think fakies are just an interpretation of a great idea from someone else, even if it looks identical !!!

 

...the fuq is a "fakie"?!?

 

Think of poular lines like Voltron that have nothing to do with Transformers, and those of us TFWians that are not major fans of Transformers, think are attempts to copy an idea. THAT, is how the term 'fakie', came into existence. Personally, I despise the term, with every fiber of my being, and want to completely erase it from existence. And no, I do not consider 'fakies' *gags on word* to be knockoffs.

 

So...GoBots and Convertors are called "fakies", by whomever uses this term...?

That. Is. Fucking. ******ed.

 

I like the term 4th party for companies like Wei Jiang & Robot Heroes. Ok it is based on an official product, but they oversized it and improved it to the point that the official product leaks cheap & nasty in comparison. Also it comes in a box with its on brand name & character design etc. They don't use any official logos or trademarked names etc.

For the stuff that is an exact copy of an official figure and comes in a box that is plastered with trademarked terms & logos etc, then I consider that a fake or knock off because it is trying to pass itself off as an official product.

 

If they stole the IP, why does Hasbro still have it?

 

Nicely said.
The way i see weijiang now is: they are better version of the original.
They are knock offs though.
But seeing commander and their coming ironhide with changes, i can't see it as ko's anymore.
In my eyes they are 3rd party now.
Mpp-10 was actually a total ko with longer legs.
I also own a mp-10 now.
And i wonder why peoples are thinking his legs were too short?
I think his legs are just fine.
Is it because of that that we are having mp-36 with super long legs?
We like women with long legs, but not that long.

 

Omg, that bring back memories.
A childhood friend of mine actually owned that.
And he puts those small transformers in it.
And then there was metroplex and tripticon ( dino-city in japan ).

 

Do I have to be the one that mentions both Voltron: Defender of the Universe and Challenge of the GoBots TV shows are older than The Transformers?

Heck, I always considered Voltron more in the style of Shogun Warriors shows like Starvengers as a kid.

 

It would be riding backawards from your regular direction on a skateboard or snowboard.

 

Gundam came before all that and had transforming robots but would you say everything you've listed there is a knock off of Gundam? I certainly wouldn't.

A brand, license, label, whatever getting respected and acknowledged as its own thing really just comes down to quality and unique attributes. Bad clones of things get treated as knock off garbage, good clones of things do not and a big part of why they do not is they tend to expand and evolve their interpretations of ideas in ways the thing they initially borrowed from does not.

 

Exactly.

 

Was ignoring this thread because the term "fakie" in relation to toys sounds like a little kid's term and i'd never heard it before. But the thread keeps popping up so figured there must be something interesting going on inside. Not so sure about that now.

Overly simplistic and doesn't address the distinct difference between an original unlicensed 3P product and an actual knock-off of an existing product, which happens to both 1P and 3P products.

 

A fun point that most rabid HasTak/anti-3P fan's like to gloss over or ignore... Takara didn't have the licences to reproduce the vehicle modes of the G1 figures back in the day. I don't think it was till the Alternator line in 2003 that Takara actually went to the trouble of acquiring the legal right to produce toys that looked like other companies products. All those original G1 toys, and their Diaclone predecessors were illegally infringing on the IP of numerous other companies.
Funny how people like to ignore that fact when raging about poor innocent Takara's IP being stolen. 

So the unlicensed 3rd party figures are technically more G1 accurate than official MP's... "from a certain point of view" 
Generation 1
Even though the original Generation 1 Autobot Cars released in 1984 and 1985, just like their Diaclone predecessors, were closely based on existing car models, none of them were officially licensed. In some instances, sponsor decals of racing cars were slightly altered ("Gitanes" becoming "Citanes", "Martini" becoming "Martinii", "Alitalia" becoming "Alitalla" etc.) in order to avoid legal trouble with those companies.
Licensed vehicle alternate modes - Transformers Wiki

 

As everyone knows by now I'm the most against KOs in the entire TF fandom.  

Kidding aside, yeah I see anything that rips off IP as a KO. and KOs having different categories of KO like 3rd party and OS/improvements etc.

My favorites are the cheap wacky ones made for the 3rd world market (Optimus Primes with Bumblebee heads lol) They're such a novelty and not many people collect them.



One thing that bugs me though is how the G1 and MP KOs are too close to the original. They should at least print KO on the box and figures so people know at a glance. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for me now to track down these factories and persuade them to do that, but it's time I need to spend away from the store.

 

As I see it if a toy couldn't exist without the thing it has copied, and you haven't paid the original manufacturer anything to get rights, then you've made a knock off product.

Knock off isn't a measure of quality, it's just a fact of how a figure comes into being. It's fine to love a figure like MPP-10 and the people who upsized it did great work, but it's still true to say that it wouldn't have existed without the original design work that went into MP-10.

 

I was going to point out the same thing. Transformers isn't a knock off of Voltron or Gundum or any other transforming robot/mecha franchise, though they may be derivative to a degree. However, they were clearly skirting the line on the IP of numerous automobile companies and taking clear steps to avoid legal entanglements as a result.

I think the definitions up thread posted by @Scaleface are pretty good. I might choose different terms (not sure I like homage) but the ideas are solid.