New FansProject G3 Trailer Images

Both G3 Trailer & Powered Commander are so BOUGHT!

These were definitely worth the wait & I'll be crying if I had chosed BTS Trailer over this one. (Phew!)

I'll gladly pronounce this "Godginrai!"

Oops! *Double post!*

I get the impression that Fans Project has never looked at a truck with a trailer before.

That thing is HUGE. See that fin on top of Prime's truck? its to cut wind resistance. the trailer stand SO MUCH HIGHER than that. If this was a real trailer, the weight and poor aerodynamics would keep this truck from running faster than 30kph.

More crap from FailProject. Can't wait for Hasbro to shut these nuts down.

Look who has a poor grip on the concept of copyright law.

Hasbro own Optimus Prime, cab and trailer. They get to decide how Optimus Prime is used. these yahoos sell a giant trailer thats exactly like the G1 trailer, it should be no shock that this is a violation of the IP.

Take Greg Lambardo at his word, he said none of these companies have come to hasbro for a license. Which means, Fansproject could very well work within the law and legally produce these items if they wanted to, but they decided not to. Thats why they'll get the C&D order, not because hasbro hates fans.

And its not hard to say that any $100 trailer sold means $100 less for hasbro in deluxes, voyagers, etc.

So until you learn the law and how the real world works, kindly be quiet.

Why the utter hatred?

Actually... If you compare the Prime cab to a real-life semi, you'll notice that his fin is WAY smaller than it would be in real-life. They made it to fit the transformation and didn't really pay attention to realism.

The FP G3 trailer is a little tall (maybe a little long, too), but it looks nowhere near as ridiculous as the ladder TFC tried to throw onto the Classics Inferno (which is a pump truck, not a ladder truck). I think any realism issues are more the fault of Hasbro's Prime truck being WAY out of proportion with real-life Semis. FP is just trying their best to balance realism and the necessities of toy-making. If the trailer were any smaller, it wouldn't fit the deluxe classics cars!

i really want that hound upgrade

He's mad about his TF con exclusive.

Bah, beaten to it.

ZoeNoes. it's not scaled perfect in Trailer modes so it can accommodate holding a deluxe inside and be scaled when it's open up. Sheesh.
what's 'crap' about it, the fit and finish of these guys stuff is NOTHING but top-notch. Did they kick your dog?

I mean, if it's purely from the legal standpoint, i get it, but you sound like you've got a serious axe to grind... the likelihood of Hasbro going back and doing a trailer for a 3 year old figure is so low though, i'm ecstatic we're getting one.

I'm happy enough with my BTS-01.

Because I've been disappointed with every single one of these unofficial add ons.

Do I want a trailer for prime? Sure. but not the quality they make, and not the price they charge. This beast is way out of scale for the rest of the truck, and I wasn't nuts about City Commander either.

I know I'm in the minority, but if this thread can be 10 pages of "OH I WANT IT PREORDERED" and blind love for what I think is an inferior product, then certainly it can stand a couple posts of "OH I HATE IT WASTE OF MONEY" from me.

I think the only thing we have against your comments is that you haven't really provided a reason other than saying it's an "inferior product" (and the comments re: realism, which are, as I said, highly subjective). There's a difference between blind hatred and constructive criticism, and I think a lot of us would value hearing your grievances with the product... If only because it would help us inform our decisions regarding it.

Because it's hard to TROLL with good intentions alone.

Exaaaactly. The trailer is a bit oversized, true... so I guess all the awesomeness it contains is completely negated, because TF toys are always about ABSOLUTE REALISM. Way to FAIL, FP!

And Hasbro has NEVER used dodgy scale or taken dubious liberties with vehicle dynamics EVER, right Shipley? Because that would make Hasbro a big ball of utter FAIL, correct? Thank god everything they do is perfect, and beyond reproach, because we fans don't deserve Hasbro's love. All we do is whine about every little thing. Poor, poor Hasbro... shhhhhh... Shipley still loves you, don't worry.

[/sarcasm]

I mean seriously... talk about a weak excuse for bitching...

Which is especially funny because said cab and trailer are Diaclone rip-offs based on real-world vehicles that Takara paid no royalties to replicate.

I guess Lamborghini, Porche, Volkswagen et al. should come looking for damages based on all the money that has been made trading on the reputation and iconic aesthetic of their Intellectual Properties, eh?

(of course with the auto industry suffering as it is, maybe that might actually happen soon... )

If we want to start counting the ways that Hasbro makes "minor" changes to their vehicle designs to avoid being slapped with lawsuits, and then compare them to the differences between Hasbro products and FP products... well, I think Hasbro doesn't have much of a moral leg to stand on.

I think FP is working "within the law" as they are right now. Hasbro's claim in this case is entirely debatable... if Lego couldn't beat MegaBloks, what hope does Hasbro have of nailing a company for making a transforming robot that looks only faintly like a triple-changer they once released (except it never actually looked anything like that in any of its incarnations anyway)? If Hasbro's going to break out the C&D's, their main weapon is not the threat of winning a lawsuit... just the fact that the costs of fighting such a lawsuit would be enough to bankrupt a small company like FP. Kind of a dick move, I think.

It's also not going to inspire a lot of goodwill in the community. The logic that these products will replace Hasbro products and rob them of income is equally bunk. There's room for more than one giant robot toy line on the block... fans will buy what they like, come what may. If Hasbro decides to throw their weight behind producing nothing but abominable mutant-Bionicle Bayformers, then they can't really complain when someone else comes along and sells robots in a style that some of us actually want to see.

Additionally, who actually buys FP (and similar) products? They have no real distribution, the prices are prohibitive, nobody outside of the internet fan community knows they exist... they are purchased by an extremely exclusive body of fans who are probably completists anyway.

Hasbro's anti-defamation league is always the first to jump up and insist that the fans are an utterly negligible portion of the market demographic, that Hasbro has no reason to be concerned with us and our "whining"... EXCEPT when a tiny fraction of that negligible market is spending bucks on high-end custom-style collectibles? THEN it's all about their lost revenues?? Gimme a break. Seriously.

When you can convince me that studios like FP are actually taking a measurable chunk out of Hasbro's revenues, then maybe there's a point to be made. But you won't be able to do that.

zmog

The difference between hasbro and lego is that lego was trying to defend a functional patent, while hasbro is defending an aesthetic trademark.

In the end, copyrights patents exist to serve the public as much as possible. For this reason, a functional patent like lego's can only be held for a certain period, so that the company that filed it can not monopolise the market.

Copyrights however, are indefinately held, so hasbro still has full rights to stop a company from making a product similar in appearance to one of their own, regardless of how differently it functions.

Since one of fansprojects criteria when creating a product (presumably) is that it shares its appearance with a copyrighted design of hasbro's, they have little legal standing, and must rely on hasbro's good graces to avoid confrontation. Hasbro revealed at Botcon that they had little concern over products such as city commander and (again, presumably) this new trailer, since they, size aside, are secondry to an offiial product of hasbro's.
What hasbro did state, and in this case I agree with them, is that they would be less impressed by products such as "protector" which essentially imitate one of hasbro's designs (illegally) to release it as a competing product.

In all honesty, if I were in Hasbro's shoes and people were making money off a product that is highly based on my IP, I'd shut them down just for the hell of it. Lawyers get paid a pretty penny, might as well use them.

Of course one would then have to look at any possible negative backlash from such an action, but lets face it, I doubt many people would really stop buying Transformers all together if FP were shut down.

The trailer looks pretty nice, but still a pass for me, I'd prefer to put that money towards the Ark set. Although when it actually comes out, I have a sinking feeling that I'd change my mind and buy the trailer too.

Protector is the Hot Rod upgrade, right? That should be along the vein of City Commander.

It's the "Warrior" and "Wrecker" or whatever toys - the ones that are fully-transforming robots - that are at issue.

That being said, Lombardo qualified that as "Any time a steel mold is being created, that's going too far" or something like that. City Commander may well fall into that category.

I will say whoever invented the wheel and/or car should go after all the automobile and toy manufacturers who are making millions based on their "hard work".

Look pretty awesome to me. Too G1 to be true.

Also, I like how their Japanese Powered Commander has lots more blue in the trailer mode. Kind of makes up for the fact that the cab itself (Henkei Prime), isn't blue.

Derivative work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suspect Fansproject could get away with what they're doing under the link I posted above. They have been very careful about avoiding things that are specific to Hasbro's IP, i.e., symbols and names. Considering City Commander is a completely new mold (as are all of their products so far), in this sense, Fansproject hasn't copied anything that belongs to Hasbro. Its resemblance to Ultra Magnus is really the only thing that is debatable, and though it's obvious to us, Fansproject could probably get away with it in court.

Also, does Hasbro, or anyone, know where Fansproject is based? Are they even within Hasbro's legal juristiction? I was under the impression they were running a decentralized operation, which could make legal action difficult if not impossible. Would it be within Hasbro's power to restrict resellers from importing and distributing FP products?

FansProject stated their a group of fans from around the world. And Hasbro could stop retailers like BBTS from carrying their products, which is the only thing Hasbro could do at all. Hasbro stopped A3U from selling KO figures awhile ago, because it couldn't go straight to the KO makers. So the retailers selling the KOs was the next best thing for them. That is the case with the fan companies. Hasbro can't take them to court, but can cut them off from having their products sold by retailers here. It just means the fan groups will have to find other retailers outside of NA to help get their products to fans.

My bad, I meant whichever one is copying springer.

personally, I took it to mean that whenever they made an actual character (such as springer) then they were going too far, but your interpretation is just as valid.

The "steel mold" thing is pretty generic. All that means is "Hasbro doesn't want anyone to make mass-produced toys that might be competition for them." In that sense, it's all about Hasbro not wanting competition, a little to do with legality.

As for "actual characters"... who sees an "actual character"? I see an entirely new mold for a yellow and green robot that transforms into a couple of fantastical future vehicles... that bears only the most passing resemblance to anything Hasbro has officially copyrighted. The fact that we fans see Springer in it has more to do with our own associations and imaginations and little to do with actual hard similarities in the designs.

And as for the Glacial-Bots... there's just no chance at all of stomping that.

zmog

Not quite. Derivitive work can be considered either infringing or non-infringing. There is a specific criteria that defines which way a specific piece of work will go, which doesn't include the amount of similarities between the work and the original.

Usually the line that needs to be crossed for it to be non-infringing is the intent of the work, which is a bitch to prove in court. Is it being created with the intent to mimic or copy the original, or is it altering the original piece in a significant way? There is a lot of grey area, that's for certain.

The one who have cash defines "who" is the actual character.

And I think it is unjust to call every single transformable robot "Transformers" in the first place...
Just like every transformable green chopper being labeled with a "Springer" name tag on them without knowing the actual background of the machine itself.

I think that im the only one here who thinks that Prime is the one thats to small. compared to other classics, prime is barely bigger then a deluxe. just saying he should been bigger! this will be the first product from fansproject that im buying. and i love the brilliance and detail put into this simple trailer. OH and if fans project got licensing from hasbro they could do amazing things for transformers filling in the gaps that hasbro just couldnt (if you know what i mean) now where is that megatron upgrade kit i want a silensor better scope and stock

Cool.

Which is why I would love to see them prioritize that and build a base for their business on their own properties. Otherwise they risk tangling with the giant legally before they can really set roots as a business.

I agree with you 100% about Classics Prime! That mold is DEPRESSINGLY small. I just can't accept it as my definitive in-scale Optimus. If they can give us large Voyager figures like Movie Ratchet and Universe Inferno, they can damn well give us a decent-sized Optimus at that price point (if not an Ultra). I'm still waiting on that count...

A valid concern... but looking at their "springer", all I really see is an awesome robot design, who happens to share some similarities with Springer. If it weren't for the colours, I don't even think it would be a worthwhile issue.

Things like City Commander and Defender are a lot more transgressive, but they're really just add-ons for figures that Hasbro sells, so they're naturally more accommodating.

Agree completely.

zmog

IP court is not a good place to land by any means as I have seen people with original add-on kits be sued to oblivion because of the uncharted world of IP law.

Pretty much if you can convince a judge that "it is trying to be my character" no matter how unique it is, you can win hands down. After years of watching Games-workshop win in the wargame arena even extremely poor examples of infringement, City commander and 'Springer' feel like slam dunks if Hasbro decided to take it there.

I can't make a unique doll that looks like Micky mouse and call him Ricky Rat and get away with it no matter how original the doll was in manufacturing or how there are no trademarks used. If that springer toy looks like a single licenced image of Springer anywhere, hasbro wins.

Have you purchased their items? I have read nothing but glowing praise for most, if not all, of their products.