wgonerd asked:
I understand your disdain for 3rd Party products, you owning your own IP and all, but was curious if you own any 3rd party stuff at all? I know you're kinda sorta with Hasbro with the Recordicons so I didn't know if that affects your ability to buy them if you even wanted to. Also, apologies for ever pestering you about a 3rd party figure, which I think I have done. Also, apologies for all the rambling.
I have a handful of the add-ons (new heads, mostly) and I buy plenty of Reprolabels, which are things that bug me way less, since you have to buy Hasbro product to use them. The toys which are just flat-out stealing other folks’ shit as a complete, self-contained entity are just terrible, though.
What’s extra annoying about them are the fans who point to these things and ask, hey, why can’t Hasbro/FunPublications/whoever do this instead of what they’re doing? And no amount of “well, people who work through official channels actually HAVE to follow millions of divergent child safety laws that vary across 50 different states and beyond, or play-test their toys rigorously, or pay money to Hasbro if they’re a licensee for the privilege of making the product to begin with” … that never sinks in. It’s just “well, they can make a new Constructicon for $80. I don’t care about the reality of the situation.” And so that’s an added annoyance to my life, another brick wall to beat my head against.
Drawing Recordicons has nothing to do with my feelings on the matter. The toys largely don’t appeal to me, and the added grief doesn’t make them any better.
I like Transformers. I like and know many of the guys on the Hasbro Transformers team. Buying product that flips them the bird seems kind of a jerky thing to do to a franchise and people you like. And so that seems like reason enough to me to avoid it.
Besides, if I can’t wiki it, I don’t care about it.