My understanding of this relationship is based on the terminology used to refer to video game developers. For instance Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are First Party, companies like Retro Studios or Naughty Dog, which only develop for one system but are not part of the bigger company are 2nd Party, and companies that are completely independent like EA, Ubisoft, or Konami are 3rd Party.

 

Third party works for me too, though like Curamen, if I were describing what these are to non-collectors/TF fans, I'd call them unofficial. Third party works within the collecting community.

Heheheh.

 

Just to make things a little more confusing, in a 3rd person shooter you see the character you control. So, while I just use "third-party" because it is common vernacular now, it technically doesn't make sense. How is it a third party? Maybe I'm just dumb.

Third-party, or 3p, works. I'm fine with it even if I don't get it.

 

Third person shooter is called that because you see the world from the eyes of an imaginary unrelated person who is hoving beind your character several feet. The "third person" is the invisible person viewing the action - it's the floating camera. Most movies and TV shows are shot from a third person perspective.

A first person shooter have you seeing what your character sees from his eyes (like Doom).

 

You're not lying. I've had a hell of a time explaining to my 6 year old why Quakewave isn't called Shockwave or why Hercules isn't Devastator.

 

Most fall under the category of Unlicenced Transforming Robots [UTRs] based on Hasbro or Takara's characters. But then you have things like Fansproject's Steelcore, Riftshot and Recoiler, and Glacialbots works, which are Original Transforming Robots [OTRs].

But third party has stuck and become the most entrenched name for them, plus it isn't technically inaccurate.

 

I've always understood it as:

1st Party: Transformers made by Takara/Hasbro
2nd Party: Transformers made by other companies, licensed by Hasbo/Takara
3rd Party: Transformers made by other companies, unlicensed.

I believe the definitions stem from the video game industry. Been awhile since I read about it... and looking it up now, I'm getting conflicting information compared to what I read a couple years back.

I think the term fits the definition of what 95%+ of all this stuff is. No need for a "better name" unless you want to be even more specific, like FP's "Warbots".

 

Thanks Scaleface.  

Side comment: I used to play the hell out of the first Doom. That's some memories right there.

 

3rd party works great for me.

 

Why the hell didn't you just call them Shockwave and Devastator?

Thats my biggest gripe with the whole industry. They put minimal effort into renaming these iconic characters instead of just giving them designators, and then fans insist on trying to make those names stick. Its bad enough half of them want to be cool and try to give them Latin or Greek names.

 

Nah, that's another name for KOs  

 

How about a nice CHUGURts acrynym?

FansProject
Rerolabels
iGear
Mech Ideas
Perfect
Unique Toys
TFC Toys
Toyworld
Impossible Toys
Keith's Fantasy Club
and others...

Or more simply put... FRIMPUTTIKo!

You mean why call things by their actual name? Well, because that's their name. It makes it easy to know what you are talking about once you know the names. You can say "Rampage, Rampage and Rampage", or you can say "Violence, Tigris and Phlogeus."

This is one of the best things to come out of the Giant vs. Hercules war. If there had not been two of them people would have called the one Devastator, but because they had two they had to be specific and refer to them by their real names, Giant and Hercules.

 

Wouldn't it have been simpler if they had just done designators TFC-1L for Longhaul, etc.? Or maybe people could just say TFC's Longhaul? Thats as hard as trying to remember the "product placement name". People know immediately what you're talking about. There's no confusion because you didn't study the name holders long enough.
Project names are one thing, but there were so many Predakings going at once that Ive seen people forget their real names in the threads and thats not a good thing.
You think it matters to a kid that this or that Devastator is not Hercules, or Giant? What its really saying is hey this isn't Devastator. Thats not how I view these figures.

 

Sometimes I can't remember the actual names so I go with "TFC Predaking" / "MMC Predaking".

I can't blame them for giving their products their own names. They have to sell them, right? I'm more annoyed when they don't put any effort into their names, like MT's "dumptruck". But only infinitesimally annoyed.

 

Okay, I was feigning uncertainty before when I explained my understanding of this terminology. Fact is it's much older than video games.

The first and second parties are the two parties in a contract or relationship. The order is technically interchangeable, but most people will consider themselves the 1st Party (as in, "first person"). The other party in the contract/relationship is the 2nd Party. For Transformers, that is HasTak (as the vendor), and you (as the customer).

Any entity that is not one of those two parties is by default, a 3rd Party. Technically speaking, IDW or any other licensed producer of a Transformers commodity is also a 3rd Party. It's just by convention that we limit the term to unlicensed companies.

 

Unofficial transformers.

But I'm just going to keep saying third party because it's faster to type. And it's not even that bad of a name in the first place.

 

Why not just refer to them by their actual company names (Fans Toys, FansProject, TFC, etc) There really is no need to refer to them as third party, as I rarely use that term any more.

 

thirdparty is to Hasbro
as gold is to gold plastic syndrome

 

Speaking to the actual names of the individual releases (or individual combiners) themselves...yeah, I just think of them (and would still name them, when describing them to non-collectors/fans) as the characters they're meant to capture. It's TFC's Devastator and PE's Fort Max and MMC's Predaking and Sixshot and FP's Ultra Magnus, etc., etc. They're just the third party (or unofficial, for non-collectors/fans) versions of those characters. I'd explain the background, but still identify them versions of these Hasbro/Takara characters, just unofficial, non-KO versions. I struggle to remember their legal third party names anyways, but even if I could remember them with ease it wouldn't matter to me in how I think of them or how I'd describe them to others.

As for (more or less) original characters like Steel Core or the Glacialbots, that's the only time I'll honor whatever name has been given them by the company releasing them since they have no approximate Transformer counterpart I can associate them with.