... Hasbro reverse-engineered FansProject items (with some tweaking to comply with safety standards, of course), mass-produced them and sold them as 'proper' Transformers, at regular prices?
Speaking of which, I cut myself on the finger while trying to transform my Protector trailer the other day. >.>
I'm not going to pretend that I'm somehow an expert on copyright law or anything of the like, but I'm not sure if FP would really have much of a case, especially with the obvious influence from Hasbro/Takara's IP. H/T could easily point out the infringement and FP wouldn't have much ground to stand on, which would also apply to the likes of iGear, PE, etc. That's how it would likely play out, but again, I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. I'm just going by common sense. And this is coming from an advocate of 3rd party/unlicensed stuff. Then again, I'm sure the legality of the situation would get muddy considering these companies come from different countries and all... Ideally, I wish we could find this stuff at retail at a fraction of the cost, but it's only fulfilling a niche of the overall fanbase.
THIS. Yeah, there'd be a dent in the 3rd Party business, but HasTak products would get much more impressive as a result.
What if they re-reverse engineer iGear so iGear rerereverse engineers it back and so forth until a time paradox destroys reality? SNAKE! YOU'VE CREATED A TIME PARADOX!
One thing I have thought of while reading this thread is what if all the 3rd Party people were just people form Hasbro who were fired because of their radical ideas and such.
Would it? If the people working for the third party companies were hired by Hasbro and/or TakaraTomy they would be working under the limitations of a mass produced toy line and probably wouldn't be able to do the crazy stuff they sometimes do.
What good would that do? It would be like taking an indie musician and putting them to work for Glee; you'd end up with the same manufactured-by-committee stuff we already get. HasTak's designers and engineers are already excellent (there have been several highly enlightening interviews with said designers posted on this very site). The issues you have with figure choice, distribution, and features are all decided at the executive level, after consideration of safety, marketing requirements, and costs. Hasbro is a multimillion dollar international business with thousands of corporate customers; their designers, no matter how excellent they are, are merely a tiny cog in a vast corporate machine.
Like some have said, we'd see no difference in the type of products released by Hasbro. Hasbro designers are limited to what they can. Release them out in the wild and I could only imagine what they could pull off.
That seems more like something Takara would do than Hasbro. And FP would either have to keep quiet or face paying Hastak licensing fees. That's assuming Takara would tweek the mold to look more like their IP like with a proper face. I don't think that just copying the exact mold would work.
