I know that company Kiditoys makes the metros as there was a communication warning floated around ebay about them but where the hell do all the mirages, optimus etcs come from??? I mean I'm seeing encore primes on ebay from hong kong now which say KO?"!?!?! whats real and what isnt. I know how to tell the difference just curious as to where it all started out at
Cheers!! never knew there were so many ways to spot the blighters! But who makes them, its like they all come from some black hole
Yeah I know that but who on earth makes them, surely hasbro must have picked up on them by now, I mean kiditoys even tried to sell metro to tesco here in the uk, thats blatant
China's intellectual property laws are a lot different from ours, so in a lot of cases, its perfectly legal to produce copies of products that would be licensed in the west, such as toys, dvds, even patented industrial technology. Even in cases where the moulds/masters/dies/designs are acquired through dubious means. As for hasbro knowing about them, I'm sure they know knockoffs and bootlegs exist, but in a lot of cases, it may not be possible, or at least, worth Hasbro's time and money to file suit against these producers/distributors. They may have legal protection in china, or may simply be too small and numerous for Hasbro to invest the most likely astronomical legal fees and time to try and shut them all down. Also, and this is just speculation, its entirely possible that these knockoffs are being produced at the same places where Hasbro has its actual product produced. If they shut the company down by suing them, they'd have to find a new source to manufacture their toys, which would incur further losses.
i would love to know where these are coming from too i'v been looking all over the net for them wholesale iv had quite a few customers requesting we stock them. iv got hold of a few of the optimus primes from a HK seller on ebay but the cost to ship makes it hardly worth stocking them in the uk without over pricing them and to be honest they are nice but still knock offs but at a reasonable pirce they are fine for some collectors
Dont do that! they are spreading like a disease as it is anyway with out it hitting the UK high street, all I wondered was if they had walked into an old hasbro/takara factory and starting churning out the old molds again or if they had gone to a lot of trouble and started their own factory, the Kiditoys that make the metro do all sorts of stuff, all the tacky little toys u see on the 99p stands at the seaside
I'd love to be able to walk into Woolies and pick up a set of KO Dinobots, or a KO Metroplex. If you can get them at a decent price Filmfreak, I'd buy.
You can ask agesthreeandup, since you're in Europe, and he's in USA/Canada. But he can still consider you a competitor, so he can tell you to sod off. Or find a chinese forum dealing in toys and ask there, maybe someone over there will PM you a contact info.
A: It's perfectly legal to produce copies of patented products here, too, after the patents have expired, and thank heavens for that. If it wasn't, we'd be stuck in the technological dark ages. A Transformer toy is just so much molded plastic. There's not much on them that can be covered by a utility patent. Lots of hinges, swivels, and ball joints that have been seen before. The patents we do see for them are decorative design patents. They only cover the product's appearance, but even these have expired by now. Hasbro is a practiced knockoff artist, anyway. How many close-enough-but-not-licensed altmodes do we see in TFs? Plenty! The day when every idea is protected absolutely and forever is the day when the balance between creators and users is snatched from both and stuffed into the megacorporate pocket. I don't want that day to ever come.
Runabout: "They're coming out of my BUTT." Runamuck: "Yeah. Heh heh heh heh" Runabout: "Uh huh huh huh"
it would be nice iv trawlled countlees china forums with no joy im still looking at the moment just bought systran so i can view pages in other languages with out too much trouble its just a matter of time like i said i got hold of the primes but only got 20 of them.from a couple of ebayers ideally i wanted to get them in at around !9.99 so i could have put a 29.99 price ticket on them but the best i could getr out of the ebayers was @ £29.00 each including postage and by the time customs got hold of them i ended up having to do them out at 39.99 so made a fiver on each not the best way to go in business but i suppose i really wanted one for myself and a few friends/ regulars really wanted them. reducing the specialist aspect of them and getting them out and about into the hands of responsible, realistic dealers is one of the few sure fire ways of bringing the prices down america/canada have a few good sources but here inthe uk its a tad lacking
