My prediction is that this will be a new dawn for 3P. With the Hasbro banning of Zeta’s Core Star, all the kids will now want in on the action to show how they are so cool and rebellious.

This is how the Jordan I became so hot.




“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” How ironic.

 

Their combiners are good, I cannot deny from a technical standpoint, but slavish G1 and MP scale just isn’t my thing so I’ve never payed much attention to them before. But for engineering of this Caliber, i’ll GLADLY make an exception. Now I’m gonna be keeping an eye out.

Nothing wrong with them branching out, especially when they can make something THIS good. With that skill, I’d even argue that they are wasting their talent by restricting themselves to being Combiner ‘one trick ponies’.

 

It's Hasbro's own damn fault if Unicron doesn't get funded. Crowdfunding is supposed to be for startups looking to get off the ground, not for giant corporations who have plenty of resources but refuse to move forward on a project unless they can guarantee profitability, an unreasonable expectation for any business. If Hasbro really wanted to kill off the 3P scene, they could just go ahead and make all the toys that fans want to buy, then there'd be no reason for anyone to go for an unlicensed knockoff in the first place.

 

Can we get back to topic? I think both this thread and the Haslab one have both derailed into arguments that wont win anyone anything other than divide the community or bring out the worst of us. We get some people are Hasbro purists and others are not. We get some are happy that Zeta might never happen and others the same way if the Haslab fails. We get both did dirty moves on each other with their marketing campaigns. However, lets just all agree that we are all fans and as such we each have our rights to compliment or critique designs from both companies.

 

Haslab reached out to Zeta?

Hope they're forcing Zeta to hand over the CAD files so they can blow it up to 30" with improvements and replace the current crowdfunding one!

 

For the time being there is nothing to discuss because there will be no new information until the dust clears, which will probably be some time after October 6.

Until then, there are only Hasbro fanboys coming in here screaming that this is the beginning of the end for 3rd party and 3P guys freaking out.

A mini-version of this happened last time with the FT Grimlock head. It will all die down and life will go on.

 

Well, the ‘cancellation’ is the most relevant point of conversation about this one at the moment. It’s kinda hard to ignore...

I mean, we’ve all seen the video. Core Star is one of the most impressive displays of engineering I’ve ever seen in a toy, ever. I really want to see it get made, and if it doesn’t I beleive that will be a sad loss to ALL collectors and toy enthusiasts.

 

this thread was more fun with it was about digibashes

 

Agreed.

ALL, Lets keep this about Zeta Toys Unicron, I know it's difficult with the little information we have, but all the speculation and arguing needs to stop.

It may come to a point where we have to lock this thread until we have a verified confirmation either way.

Until that time, if people come in here and start trolling, they will be thread banned and/or disciplined if need be.

Thanks

 

I've been giving this situation a lot of thought over the past few days. I think that Hasbro is missing out on a huge opportunity here with the 3rd Party companies. Whether their policy really is to ignore 3rd Parties unless officially complained about is true or not, Hasbro should be be partnering with 3rd Parties, not ignore/compete with them. Let me explain my opinion:

If Hasbro would change their policies to make it VERY VERY EASY for 3rd party companies to request a license for a product, at the same time making the cost of the license REASONABLE, then everyone could win. Say Hasbro charged 10-20% for a license, a cost that 3rd party would pass onto the consumer. HOWEVER, this price increase would guarantee the product is legitimate and won't be torn down some day. What if we were waiting for the last member of a 3rd party combiner when Hasbro decides to take action for whatever reason. It would leave a lot of people very upset. Personally, I'd gladly pay a few extra dollars to make the 3rd party design fully legal and approved by Hasbro.

So how would Hasbro implement such a plan? I think it should be as easy as becoming an Apple Developer (Not sure the process of Android, but I would imagine it's similar). Basically, the company would register themselves as someone would like to design and create a product using Hasbro's platform/IP. This would allow Hasbro to put in place any contractual obligations the 3rd party needs to agree to, but its a one and done thing (maybe with renewals every so often). Once the company has registered as a 'designer', then they could begin submitting designs and plans to Hasbro for license approval. I'm thinking this would need to be short and sweet. Less than a 2 week process and once approved, then the 3rd party can begin promoting the figures and ultimately finish the work needing to bring them to life and as a viable product.

Hasbro now has 10-20% of income form 3rd Parties that they NEVER HAD BEFORE. With this "free money" they could use a portion of it to strictly control the stragglers that won't adhere to the new system. However, this would only work if the new system is reasonable in cost and EASY to use/get approval for products. Hasbro would also have the opportunity to deny designs that may directly compete with an up-coming masterpiece release.

I know this won't necessarily work for KO companies.. Even companies doing Oversized products may have a hard time with this, but for the many 3rd Parties creating new and original work, this would be a way to bring them all into the fold, but give them the freedom to be who they are and produce what is interesting to them. Hasbro would have no say on price/number of units made/or whether or not its a good plan! Hasbro would care less if the product failed, as it would not impact them. But if the product was successful, then it would make Hasbro money, and give us legal and legitimate figures. (no more silly character names!)

Sorry for the long post, I usually don't do these, but I really wanted to write this idea out. If you are still reading this, thanks for taking the time to hear me "dream".

<edit> Sorry Axiom. I was typing my post as you put the note in to talking specifically about this one product.

 

NP 

 

An excellent idea. Unfortunately large corporations are not so altruistic and reasonable. Your example of Apple would be a prime example. They slice 30% right off the top for not only the app itself but any transactions in the app and any other transactions made possible or accessible through the app. It's insane. And now the source of lawsuits that hopefully break their monopolistic authoritarian ability to demand such fees for merely hinting about a purchase outside of the app itself.

With Zeta's product being independent there's no need to even enter those waters. That's a better situation for both producer and consumer. While it would be nice if they could work cooperatively with Hasbro and make it official, it's unlikely to get done in a cost-effective manner until or unless Hasbro becomes a more open-minded company about 3P homages to characters from a TV programme 30+ years ago that they aren't doing hardly anything worthwhile with themselves.

 

If Zeta called this 'Ingestor' instead and had it looking like the original draft script ie planet mode having an atmosphere etc, maybe things would be ok........

But then again who would buy something called 'Ingestor'?

 

i mean, we bought lupus.

 

And Apollyon and Satan.

 

Yes but Zeta is still to blame...somehow

Should the crowdfunding fail, I fully expect the folks, who have vigorously defended a billion dollar corporation and gotten upset at the slightest negative thing said about the billion dollar corporations toy, to blame Zeta. While it’s no coincidence that 10 backers were lost overnight at some point last week after Zeta fully revealed their toy, that’s just it. There were roughly 10 backers lost.

Not to mention, the backer number hasn’t moved and has fluctuated between 5,650 and 5,668 for the last two or three weeks. I think Hasbro’s marketing, or lack thereof, should get a lot of the blame. It seems the folks at Hasbro expected magic to happen when they extended the deadline, but didn’t really spread the news around. The only nerd-centric website that reported on the extension was Kotaku. That’s about it.

 

Not joking, those 10 re-backed HasLab once they knew Zeta was canceled.

Source: I saw the counter go up by 10. And that's it.

 

That's a probiotic, right?

 

Yes but somehow Zeta is still to blame. It’s can’t possibly be because of the $575 price tag, coupled with the half assed marketing and barely-there-incentives. It’s definitely Zeta’s fault.

It’s funny to see folks vigorously defend a multi-billion dollar corporations crowdfunding campaign as if their lives depend on it. They act like this will be the end of Transformers as we know it should it fail to get funded.