I sure hope so, I feel like it's the 3p that keeps Hasbro in check with their pricing for now. Hasbro knows they can price anything they want but seeing 3p's competitive prices they tend to hold back. I honest to goodness don't see MP-44 as $450 USD when Magic Square and TE are half as cheap even though they don't have a trailer or accessories. I honestly feel as well that the accessories are not worth that extra $200 that makes the $450 of MP-44 when MP-10 had a bit less in accessories but also a lot cheaper than 44.

 

Half? I paid $100 for each of them.

 

Oh yeah I kinda lost my chain of thought halfway through lol. I was originally talking about the 3rd party but when I got to the prices part I kinda went the way of the official MP-10 reissue from 2017. That was a mistake on my part. I forgot that TE and MS are waaaaaay more cheaper. Good catch.

 

If I personally owned the Transformers franchise I would've sued everyone's asses years ago.  

Good job Hasbro, reclaim your ish like a boss.

Until you do, I will be enjoying my 3p's and K.O.s  

 

Well if this is "in check" I'm leaving when 3P goes!

 

3rd Party has nothing to do with retailers not ordering their products, The prices got to high the quality got to low and the lost to many people - not to mention there is only so many times you can actually sell Bumblebee to people before they are sick of the sight of him. I think the core cast issue doesn't help long term brand growth (same with Avengers) and yet retailer won't buy things that lack a TV show as often.

Even Botbots might petter out sooner than it otherwise might have due to a lack of a cartoon and lousy distribution.

 

What kind of delusion makes someone think "Transformers is surely dying, 3P is the only thing keeping it alive!" on the same year that we objecticely have the highest amount of new molds, releases and luxury items made in the last 8 years.

 

Well, I think if we lost 3P/KO the MP market would be on life support. At least until Optimus 4.0 and Bumblebee 3.0. The mainline would keep on CHUGing until the quality dips again and the price gets too high.

There's just too much 3P offers that Has/Tak will never take the chance on. If you've got an MP collection with no 3P in it, then you've got a pretty boring collection.

 

If you ask my opinion 3rd party has greatly affected the attitudes of collectors so it’s the collector that has formed an attachment. But the transformers brand would probably be fine. Hasbro isn’t cashing checks on MP, it’s mainline and 3rd party is largely absent there. Even in design aesthetics, Takara has lead the way there, with 3rd part following them. What 3rd party has contributed is engineering.

 

Such an odd reason to bump this thread back up after it had finally died.

 

Eh, I think engineering improvements are a two way street. Competition tends to bring out ingenuity. I'm not going to dig around finding every example of who did what innovation first, it doesn't really matter. I look at where 3P and Takara started with MPs and what the standards are now, and I think no companies would be on the level they are without trying to out do one another.

 

Usually, necessity tends to bring out ingenuity. Competition just leads to mutual destruction, which is what we have been seeing in the third party scene lately with the "wars" now claiming more and more real victims.

 

Laziness, laziness brings out the best in ingenuity.

 

Just separating the wheat from the chaff. Ultimately competition breeds innovation and that's good for the consumer/fan. Yeah, we've lost a few companies but new ones pop up or they rebrand. My bet is talented designers with strong credentials have little problem finding new companies to work with.

 

Yep the failure for Hasbro to produce excellent media for the franchise is what's killing retail interest, the brand was living off the bayformer movies for years and the recent bumble bee movie I'm sure spurred some interest again.

They need that Netflix siege series out now, not next year. I feel by the time it hits it will be too late since most of the product line will have come and gone.

 

Well, if you say so.
I don't see how losing options is good for the consumer and like I said before: the "wars" never brought us innovative designs of the same figure. Just a bunch of figures of the same character of which every one had a different flaw and a different good thing but few that managed to create a figure that merged the good things while what we needed was for those other companies to tackle other characters.
For the companies we are losing we are getting a few new ones that go into other territory. So in fact the new companies are eschewing competition and that benefits the customer because we get more different things: movieverse, legends scale...
What we have lost is the possibility for more options in G1 MP, because the companies who could have offered those options chose not to and instead went into direct competition with their "wars". As a consequence we lost several of them and are poorer for it in regards to G1 MP offerings.

 

They made that choice no one demanded 6 MP Springers. Free market direct competition, likely everyone but the consumer was going to lose. Still those "wars" sparked some major improvements in materials, design, articulation, and aesthetics across the entire 3P landscape.

What are we supposed to do? Buy things we don't want to keep companies afloat so they can continue making toys we don't like? That's certainly not good for the consumer.

How are we poorer by not having access to more figures we probably wouldn't buy? The successful companies have upped their game and new companies have entered the MP market, that's great for fans. Frankly it's not our responsibility to keep anyone in business, and I refuse to feel guilty if they fail.

 

This appeared to be Hasbro's marketing strategy for GI Joe and Transformers (pushed by fanboys) when I got into collecting around 2007.

"By X toy you don't want so that maybe they will make something you do want in the future or the line is doomed!!!"

   

 

Those improvements would have happened purely because designers were getting more experienced with every figure they designed. Nothing to do with competition.
And the customer did lose because of the "wars" because instead of four of the six Springerd we could have had figures of other characters. And we lost a few companies because of those "wars".

Of course not. It's up to the company to have the insight not to make those mistakes so that they can offer figures people want and remain profitable.

It seems to me like the remaining companies are releasing at a slower pace.
Their designs have become better in certain cases, but that would have happened if they hadn't gone in direct competition with othet companies.
I totally agree it's not up to us to keep anyone in business.
But I'm bummed that the "wars" cost us companies that if they hadn't engaged in those afairs might have brought figures to the table that we went without and now they won't produce anything anymore.