Unofficial Transformers Toys Under Attack
Transformers UK and Seibertron both have the details, but the summary is: In Japan, Takara is cracking down on unofficial Transformers toys and accessories.
This is both a good and a bad thing. You see, some of these toy designs are just ripping-off Takara’s/Hasbro’s copyrights and designs. Yes, these guys are bringing us toys that we’re not likely to ever see officially released — see the Impossible Toys tag here at battlegrip.com — but it’s still copyright violation and I’ve been constantly surprised that Hasbro hasn’t stepped up and done something about it.
But then there are also the toys that hide within the blurry line between unofficial add-on and that hard-to-define area of copyright violation. Perfect Effect’s Kingbat (review here) and Shadow Warrior (review here) both fall in that vague area. Yes, both are similar to existing designs, but they’re both new toys that work with official Transformers toys and don’t exactly replace toys.
No word yet on if the crackdown will work its way to the US, but I would be shocked if Hasbro didn’t follow Takara’s lead. It will be very interesting to see how sites like TFSource and Big Bad Toy Store react to this news. Will they just keep selling, or will they anticipate a move by Hasbro and slowly backoff on selling unofficial Transformers toys?
And will all of this simply lead to a shift to sales at eBay?
It should be noted that there was a very specific list of items that was requested to be taken down from the sites approached by Takara. More often than not, they were blatant rip offs of Takara designs (see reflector set) or blantantly marketed as Transformers related merchandise. Two big no-no’s.
This is something that comes up every year at Botcon and Hasbro has continued its stance that these are unlicensed products that infringe on their trademarks. They’ve also mentioned that not one of these groups has ever approached them about a license.