why hasn't Hasbro sued whoever owns/did Transmorphers? Or did they do it too?

 

There's nothing to sue over because there is no reason to do so. Even if they wanted to, what for?

 

Uh, isn't Transmorphers Transformers with different names?

 

Would someone then break down Transmorphers for me then?! I thought it was super rip off of TF! Who made it? When did it come about? ETC please!

 

I'm assuming she's talking about this movie: Transmorphers - Wikipedia.

This movie was produced by some company called the Asylum, and it's what is referred to as a mockbuster. It's a movie that, while not necessarily a rip-off of another movie, tries to piggy-back off of the fame of another, much better movie. It looks awful, but the plot seems to be very different from Transformers.

 

it's an intentional parody done by a company that only does straight-to-home-media parodies for their little cult target of people who like 'bad ripoffs'.

it's not hurting anybody.

 

They can't sue. It would be classed as a parody or a spoof which is legally allowed according to Fair Use law in the United States of America.

Furthermore, to my knowledge, it uses no copyrighted nor trademarked material from Transformers. That means even if it's very same-y and trying to piggyback off the success of the bigger, more recognised IP, it isn't breaking any laws.

TL;DR Hasbro/Paramount/whoever would have zero grounds on which to sue the makers of Transmorphers. The only possibility I can think of is if Transmorphers became more popular than Transformers, which was never going to happen and never will, but if it did, Hasbro or Paramount might be able to sue for some reason along the lines of hurting their business with a parody/spoof product, though even that would be unlikely to result in a successful lawsuit for them.

 

I'm more surprised about robo poli getting away with being a blatant merge between Paw Patrol and Rescue Bots.

 

Mockbuster - Wikipedia

 

There is a whole mini-industry of low budget shitty direct market sci-fi action movies that directly use similar fonts, art style, coloring etc on their posters so as to be easily confused with current movies.

There are one for AVP , Snakes on a Train (yes, train) and all sorts., Crocosaurus vs Megashark etc.

Asylum movies are generally lesser quality than Troma movies, which have some actual entertainment value. I used to love going to the old rental stores and just seeing the cool covers of their shit Asylum movies.

 

Sharknado needs to be sued just because

 

It's older than both of them and probably better known. Besides, the basic idea of a rescue team with a kid supporter is too common for protection.

 

From what I remember, there was that one time where the creators of the Day the Earth Stood Still sued the studio (Asylum, the same studio that made Transmorphers) that made a ripoff of it but the court decided there wasn't enough similiarities (or something like that). I believe it woud be the same with the Transmorphers, if Hasbro ever decides to sue them.

 

This would likely be the way it would go down. We've seen more than enough 'competitors' for Transformers over the years (go-bots, changeables, robotech, converters, etc. etc.) that have shown the idea of a robot that changes form is not a unique enough idea for Hasbro to keep to itself. The Transmorphers movies are also different enough from Transformers (they also draw from the Terminator franchise, Star Wars, and other army/alien invasion/sci-fi films) that it would be difficult to claim that someone couldn't reasonably tell them apart (even though realistically, some people probably do make the mistake).

So in the end, it probably just isn't worth Hasbro's effort to sue them, given they likely know it would get dragged out with little chance for success. Who knows, maybe they even see the existence of imitators as a benefit, helping to keep the idea of transforming robots in the public consciousness, and showing that the Transformers brand is successful enough for others to try capitalizing on.

 

There would literally be no reason to sue them.
Transmorphers is a mockbuster, which tries to piggy back off the fame of other movies, so technically its a paroday which is OK under Fair Use Laws. It's not hurting Hasbro or the TF franchise.

Not to mention, one can argue that Transformers in a ripoff of Go-Bots or Voltron...

 

Meanwhile, in China....

 

You can say the same about Go-bots and Voltron not suing Transformers. They came before.

 

The legal team for the Go-bots has eliminated more bots than CyKill ever will. Tonka sued the Mighty Orbots off TV, which in turn killed the toys which would have been sold. If you've never seen the Mighty Orbots, that's thanks to Leader-1.

 

Well, it's not as if people were going to see the movie anyways...

 

Wait what? Do you have more details on that? The orbots didn't even transform, just combine, and if anything I'd think GodMars would have taken them down (unless they licensed it or something).