Knockoff

Although Christians and atheists largely differ in their theological stances, both seem to find common ground on at least one thesis: if there really is a hell then this is probably what a copyright lawyer will see at its gates.

A knockoff is a product similar or identical to a product of one company, but made by another without the authorization of the original maker. In the Transformers fandom, the term is commonly abbreviated KO. The terms bootleg or clone are also sometimes used as synonyms.

{{#if:Bumblebee, Transformers: Age of Extinction|

Introduction to knockoffs

What's a knockoff?

Not all transforming robots from makers other than Hasbro, TakaraTomy, Bandai, or other major toy makers are knockoffs, but those toys which wholly or partly duplicate pre-existing designs are well-qualified for the term. The term is also applied by fans, however, to some robots whose design was entirely original with the manufacturer, if said manufacturer is commonly associated with knockoffs, or if this maker's products are often sold in company with knockoffs. Original designs based on Hasbro characters, commonly referred to as "third party toys", have their own page under "IP theft".

Whether an original design, modified, or slavishly copied, knockoffs are often cheaper than the products of major toymakers. However, the quality of knockoffs is often poorer than that of the originals, including bad plastic quality, bad sticker application, and bad paint applications. Odd colors, excess chrome, resizings, and modifications are common. The world of knockoffs is a strange land of gigantic chromed swords, Gundam/Brave card art, and wacky packaging translations.

A typology of knockoffs

Although there are way, way too many instances of Transformers bootlegs in existence to ever be comprehensively listed, we can broadly identify most of them as belonging to three distinct categories.

Dollar store variety

Join the rainbow club!

By far and away the most common type of bootlegs, the "dollar store variety" — or the Poundland variety if you're British, or the camelô variety if you're Brazilian, or the bazar Chino variety if you're Spanish, or whatever other regional name applies to where you live — comprises the knockoffs you will usually find in the toy aisles of stores primarily oriented towards the sale of cheap, usually Chinese-made goods. For the most part, these are first and foremost targeted at kids and parents alike who are either on a budget or simply don't know or care about a transforming toy robot having an official Hasbro / Takara logo on the box.

Since pedantic adult collectors with high standards aren't the target demographic of these releases, fidelity to the original figures is not as much of a priority as simply producing something vaguely identical on as little of a budget as it can possibly be churned out, often resulting in limited or non-existent paint applications, garish plastic colors, and, of course, mediocre to terrible quality control. This is not necessarily always the case and some instances of regular retail bootlegs with surprisingly decent quality exist (for instance, the Combiner Wars-derived combiners of Taikongzhan are popular amongst collectors as respectable budget alternatives to their pricey originals), but these are exceptions rather than the standard: most modern dollar store-type knockoffs are usually instead inspired by simpler toys like the Legends Class / Legion Class figures of the 2000s and 2010s — often upscaled so that they look more substantive than they actually are — given that these are usually the cheapest and least elaborate figures that a manufacturer could imitate. Older retail knockoffs from the 2000s and before usually tended to have a little more variety in regards to their source figures, with everything from Generation 1 to the "Unicron Trilogy" getting its fair share of dollar store bootlegs with varying degrees of quality and accuracy, but alas, these times are now long gone.

Although there's usually very little collector appeal towards these toys given their poor quality, we can still identify a small niche of fans with an interest towards dollar store bootlegs, especially somewhat older and scarcer ones. It is surprisingly not uncommon to see old cardbacked multicolored knockoffs made in the 90s and 2000s being listed for over three digits on Ebay... Regardless of whether or not someone is actually paying that much for them. Indeed, an inevitable outcome from so many bootlegs having been churned out by unknown companies with their distribution practices and total volume of produced units being a mystery is that some collectors of these things usually believe that they're in possession of highly desirable relics that might go for just about any price, even though, of course, the secondary market for these toys is actually extremely small. Sorry to break the news to any prospective KO resellers reading this page, but no, despite your best wishes to flip a cheap toy you found on a bazar for a small fortune, you're probably not gonna sell a shoddy lime green G1 Thrust called "PLANE DEFORMATION ROBOT" with off-color Gundam art on the blister card for 200 bucks.

High-fidelity counterfeits

The same toy for a fraction of the MSRP? Illogical! (Knockoff on the left, official on the right)

In contrast, there's another category of knockoffs that are less interested in cutting as many corners as possible to only vaguely resemble their original molds and more with, simply, providing direct 1-to-1 copies of the figures they're bootlegging, with the prices often being less on the "extremely cheap" side and more on the "relatively cheap compared to the official thing". There might be some Sorites-type vagueness between these two categories — how much fidelity does a knockoff need to have to count as a high-fidelity counterfeit, after all? — but for the purposes of this wiki, we are counting specifically the ones that can easily pass for official products at most glances, with even the packaging of these bootlegs often being identical to their original versions.

Bootlegs of this caliber were often unseen in the early history of Transformers (some early Diaclone and The Transformers figures did get high-quality bootlegs but these were often sold in pretty unmistakably bootleg boxes), but starting around 2005, a series of Generation 1 knockoffs with packaging, molding, and deco work that's pretty much virtually identical to the originals cropped up in high volumes on Ebay. These are still being manufactured and sold up until today, and unlike most knockoffs, they're distributed under some relatively high prices (the Car Robots-derived characters, for instance, usually go for 40-50 bucks) that are often on par with or even higher than what concurrently available Generation 1 reissue toylines price these molds at — although, of course, these values are still nonetheless well below what you'd normally expect an original sealed 1980s Transformers toy to cost, hence why it seems that they've been consistently selling well for the past two decades. The fact that these are near-perfect replicas of expensive vintage toys was inevitably the product of high controversy during their release, since it quickly raised concerns about unscrupulous dealers selling bootlegs as genuine articles and scrupulous ones unknowingly doing the same. These are also often confused with the legitimate Hasbro-made re-releases for the Chinese market produced from 1989 through 1995.

Starting in 2012, the Masterpiece line has also generated large numbers of high-quality, nearly indiscernible knockoffs (the MP-12 Lambor sculpt being the first and therefore one of the more notorious examples). Many such knockoffs look identical to their original counterparts at first sight and can only be distinguished by the quality of the box graphics -especially the gradient in the background and the lighter black color — as well as some slight sculpting differences, rare differently colored paint operations, as well as, of course, the inconsistent but occasionally high amount of quality control issues (it's completely stochastic: some of these will be as solid as an original copy, and others will have a laundry list of issues). Many theories have been proposed as to where they came from, from being cleverly reverse-engineered to factory rejects being found and resold through unofficial means — this latter theory being popular when these knockoffs first started popping up, but eventually now being recognized as a pretty implausible myth as new copies of these bootlegs are still being churned out of Chinese factories all the way into the 2020s, long after Takara has stopped manufacturing their equivalent original molds. Fortunately, for those concerned with getting duped by fake figures, there are numerous reviewers and websites dedicated to pointing out all the known differences between these knockoffs and the originals.

Other toys that were the victims of high-quality bootlegs include some Henkei figures from Chinese company CHMS, a handful of Human Alliance figures, Revenge of the Fallen Legends Class Constructicon Devastator (coming in a replica of the Hasbro packaging but sporting the additional red paint operations for the head of TakaraTomy's release, and later reissued in a replica of TakaraTomy's Movie Advanced Series packaging) and a multitude of Prime Wars Trilogy Legends class figures. And who knows, there might be even more of such good quality that we just never found them out!

Variant-based / collector-oriented / "Fourth Party" counterfeits

We know Bumblebee hates cheap knockoffs, but what about expensive knockoffs?

Finally, there's a more recent genre of knockoffs that has an interesting shift in focus. Often, these are also of high-quality, but they distinguish themselves from the previous category by being less concerned with providing high-fidelity copies of a given toy and more by providing a deliberately different variant of said toy, usually with either improvements in engineering or new deco work or new accessories or upscaling or downscaling to be more compatible with other toylines or sometimes even featuring extensive retooling with the aim of increasing accuracy — thus, these are primarily aimed at the collector market and have less of an interest in deceiving customers by trying to pass off as original products and more in explicitly providing them with alternatives to said official products. Although these are also sometimes (but not always!) cheaper than their original counterparts, they're nonetheless on the more expensive side of what we would understand as bootlegs, and almost always, they cannot be found on retail, instead being relegated to online stores.

The first instances of collector-oriented bootlegs started showing up in the late 2000s and early 2010s, pioneered by online companies like iGear with their downscaled Masterpiece MP-1 Optimus Prime and a set of MP-3-based Coneheads (before official Coneheads were introduced to the Masterpiece series) and the aforementioned CHMS with a multitude of Henkei Seeker repaints based on minor characters like the Rainmakers, but this practice only became increasingly common in the late 2010s, with Chinese manufacturer Weijiang having pioneered the concept of "upgraded" bootlegs predominantly based on movieverse toylines — particularly Studio Series — and later companies like BaiWei and MHZ Toys following in its footsteps (more about all of these can be read on the section about bootleg companies below). A lot of the newer high-quality Masterpiece knockoffs — especially those of the Beast Wars variety — have also tried to expand beyond the reach of toy-replication, to adding additional changes to the molding and/or finding ways to streamline the original toy's look by adding hinges, panels and other bits and pieces that couldn't be added to the official version due to budget constraints or safety standards, to further appeal to collectors searching for the "perfect" representation of a character on their shelf. In another collector grab attempt, some companies have even gone so far as to take iconic audio clips from the Generation 1 and Beast Wars cartoons to replace the Japanese voice actor recordings given to the toys with sound boxes, in order to appeal more to the Western fans who have more of a connection to actors like David Kaye over Shigeru Chiba.

When it comes to fandom classification of these retooled knockoffs, a common term thrown around aside from "KO" is "fourth party", which is usually to differentiate it from the standard bootleg and counterfeit knockoffs, as well as keeping it separate from the original-mold "third party" toys made by companies outside of Hasbro and TakaraTomy.

History of knockoffs

Early era (1980s–1990s)

On your knees, Jumpstarters! Kneel before your living GOD!

While less prevalent than today, knockoffs were already a real problem for Hasbro in the mid-1980s. As the majority of the line came from Diaclone and Micro Change toys that had been released in Japan a year or two earlier, Taiwan and Hong Kong bootleggers had plenty of time to copy the molds. Because of this, there were bootlegs on the shelf at the same time as their legitimate Hasbro counterparts... And some even preceding said counterparts, like a release of the Micro Change Camera Robo — the pre-Transformers version of Reflector — popping up in the U.S. and the Diaclone Construction Team — the pre-Transformers version of Devastator — in both individual member boxes and a later Build Combination 6 Figure Set popping up across Italy via several companies, both of these in in 1983: a whole year before the actual launch of the Transformers franchise.

Another ubiquitously popular series of pre-Transformers bootleg were those based on the small wrist electronics from Micro Change, better known for their North American releases as Kronoform: chief amongst these was a copy of Watch Robo (later becoming the very generically-named "Autobot" in the 1993 Generation 2 toyline) which would be commonly cloned with the name "Quartz" replacing the Takara logo found on top of the original's display and sold by an astonishing amount of different companies all over the world: in fact; at one point this bootleg was even advertised on an official Transformers comic!

Eventually, as the Transformers franchise rolled around and proved itself to be a major force in the toy market, so did bootlegs become increasingly common: The Jumpstarters in particular became some of the most common targets for bootleggers, with various wild and extravagant variants being made by multiple companies. To combat this, the rubsign was developed, made with a patented technology that was difficult (at that time) to forge. There was also an accompanying TV ad campaign in which Optimus Prime and Megatron stress brand loyalty by stating, "We are the only ones that have the right to wear [ Autobot & Decepticon symbols]". Other Transformers competitors, like the GoBots, also experienced their fair share of bootlegs.

Through most of the 1990s, knockoffs were actually relatively difficult to find in the West. Many fans had luck finding them at flea markets, hole-in-the-wall non-chain toy stores, or discount stores like [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Big! Lots|{{#if:Big Lots|Big Lots|Big! Lots}}]]. Some knockoff transforming robot toys did show up in chain toy stores, such as the Convert-A-Bots Sky Garry and the Transformers-related Tek Toys Voltron I—both widely available at Toys"R"Us—but they were few and far between.

Rise in popularity (2000s–Early 2010s)

Hey, I'm not the knockoff, he is!

The reemerging popularity of the Transformers franchise during the 2000s, together with the increased prevalence of Chinese products in global supply chains, led to a massive hike in the amount and variety of Transformers knockoffs. This was the peak era for dollar-store bootlegs: Gestalt knockoffs from Chinese company Polyfect were widely available at Family Dollar and Kay Bee Toy Liquidator stores and saturated eBay. Happy Well knockoffs took up shelf space next to Armada toys at Walmart. And of course, the realistic counterfeit G1 toys were also widely available on eBay from any number of different sellers. Add to this the fact that older targets of bootlegging like the Jumpstarters and Sky Garry were still being pumped out by multiple different companies, and this made for a market practically flooded by fake toys: if there was a store near you during this time that sold budget goods and had a toy aisle then it was almost a given that you'd find some sort of Transformers KO within it, whether that'd be an undersized G1 gestalt, Cyberjets in all possible colors, a Titanium Series Soundwave with holographic stickers, or a flimsy Binaltech Grimlock / Wheeljack that disintegrates in your hands the minute you try to transform it. Truly, Transformers bootlegs were now everywhere.

This was only exacerbated by the release of the 2007 Transformers movie where an even greater amount of bootlegged figures entered the market, with some movie line figure knockoffs appearing within a month of the official product's debut. The figures ranged from high-quality clones to very low-quality copies and strange variations, such as random Generation 1 figures being redone in movie paint decos (usually Optimus Prime's flame scheme or Bumblebee's yellow with black stripes).

One notable release was a knockoff of Animated Voyager Class Optimus Prime (pictured on the left), which came out in China several weeks before the release of the original in the United States! The reason this occurred is that Hasbro shelved their already-manufactured Animated toys for several months in order to extend selling their popular movie line. Thus, finished Animated toys were able to leak out of factories and into the hands of bootleggers long before they were to finally be released.

With the release of the 2009 Revenge of the Fallen toyline various knockoff toys also emerged. These included oversized versions of the new Scout Class sculpts, redecoes of new Deluxe sculpts and sculpts from other lines redecoed to more closely resemble new characters (for instance the Animated Deluxe Class Bumblebee sculpt recolored to look like Skids, complete with door detailing).

Another popular set of toys to be targeted by knockoffs were the Device Label computer accessories, in particular the Ravage flash drive and its redecos, which started cropping up online during the early 2010s, often featuring significantly more storage capacity than the measely 2 GBs of its original version. These fake drives are still sold and vastly outnumber the real ones on the secondary market, and in a frightening example of how bad knockoffs can be, many have been reported as containing malware in addition to an equally bootlegged copy of the "desktop pet" software from the real versions. Who actually manufactures them can be difficult to discern, since they tend to come loose-packed without any manufacturing marks.

Now this would be hard to tell without scale references wouldn't it?

It was also during the late 2000s when knockoff companies with high-quality knockoffs aimed specifically at collectors — the previously mentioned "fourth party" types — started popping up online. These include the "KOLD" ("Knock Off Lucky Draw") bootlegs from company CHMS sold through kotoys.com, which attempt to imitate Lucky Draw and other rare Transformers toys. There have also been high-quality knockoffs of Classics Starscream and the Seekers in their Henkei decos (plus other redecos such as Sunstorm and the generic "Air Warriors", who didn't get an official release from this sculpt until much later), as well as Classics/Henkei Mirage in several of his rarer color schemes. However, the "high-quality" part often turned out to be in concept only, with the execution failing to live up to the promise.

Following the launch of the Dark of the Moon line in 2011, reports of knockoff Mirage seen in alleged Dark of the Moon packaging with MechTech weapons appeared many, many months before any actual Mirage ever hit the shelves. It was, however, a cleverly retooled and enlarged knockoff of Legends Class Barricade released alongside equally upsized versions of Movie Legends Class Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and a mostly unaltered version of Barricade himself. The packaging design was styled after the Dark of the Moon look down to use of the "MechTech" logo, but changing the name of the "line" from Transformers: Dark of the Moon to "Distortion Android: The New Deformation Robot Movie 3", with the figures themselves sporting "creative" names such as "Super Racing", "Justice Leader", "Justice Warrior" and "Evil Demons". Nearly two years later, knockoffs of Voyager Class Optimus Prime and Deluxe Class Bumblebee began to show up in China as well.

Knockoffs of 2014's Age of Extinction figures included "First Edition" Optimus Prime downscaled to Voyager size, with an additional "variant" that swapped out the red and blue colors... And they were copied and remade by many, many other companies. Yet another Bumblebee knockoff, as well as several other unidentifiable "Transformers", showed up as well. As is often the case, the packaging imitated the font used for the real thing, only having the words altered.

A changing market (Late 2010s–present)

"Also, Dude, "chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please."

The middle to late 2010s brought about a number of different distribution and manufacturing practices for knockoffs, with the primarily retail-based arm of the knockoff scene becoming significantly less prevalent. Meanwhile, a parallel market of online direct-to-consumer bootlegs started cropping up thanks to the emergence of Chinese e-commerce websites like AliExpress, Taobao, and Temu.

From 2017's The Last Knight and beyond, bootlegs based on current movie toylines became less present on retail as modern bootleg manufacturers shifted to focusing more on re-releasing copies of old Legends Class / Legion Class type figures rather than going for imitations of more modern and elaborate toys. Part of this might be attributed to the waning popularity and thus decreasing commercial appeal of the Transformers franchise — it was still a successful mass-media property during the second half of the 2010s, but as evidenced by the mediocre box office performance of the franchise's fifth live-action film, the novelty and hype just wasn't as strong as it had been in the previous decade — but, for the most part, this change seems more easily explained by the inherent appeal of cheaper production costs associated with simpler figures: quite simply, the less moving parts a bootleg manufacturer has to mold and assemble, the better.

An instance of a toy to be aggressively targeted by bootleggers during the second half of the 2010s and beyond would be — perhaps oddly enough — the 2014 Optimus Prime transforming pen. Several versions of this mold have been made by bootleggers since, ranging from high-quality reproductions to middling-to-terrible quality ones and even some that outright remove most Optimus Prime elements from the figure and just make them into more generic robots instead. The latter types tend to be extremely cheap — in terms of both value and build quality — and it's not too uncommon to find them on kiosks being sold in a wide variety of colors. Another oddball toy to suddenly experience a wave of knockoff popularity from the second half of the 2010s and beyond would be enlarged and extensively remolded versions of 2007 movieverse Real Gear Meantime, often featuring an actual fully functional digital watch on his chest.

An image terrifying enough to disintegrate a Hasbro executive.

The high-quality G1 counterfeits that were born out of the 2000s have continued being made and are still around all the way into the 2020s, with many more figures joining the catalogue of available "reissues" (a term that started being used by online retailers to distinguish them from the originals, so as to subtly declare their non-original nature without actually admitting they're bootlegs). Meanwhile, a novelty in the high-fidelity counterfeit market were the Masterpiece knockoffs, also again pioneered by the emergence of AliExpress and other e-commerce Chinese importers allowing manufacturers to easily distribute these counterfeits to all over the world.

While not official Transformers toys, the story of Transformers knockoffs after the second half of the 2010s would not be complete without mentioning how the emergence of collector-oriented "third party" toys during this time also generated numerous knockoffs, with some of the most commonly bootlegged figures being the not-Devastators produced by various companies like TFC Toys' Hercules, Generation Toys' Gravity Builder, and DX9's Hulkie — indeed, bootlegs for all of these have become far more prevalent than copies of their original versions, so much so that even a handful have shown up in general retail.

Paralleling the emergence of "third party" companies and their respective bootlegs, it was also during the late 2010s when "fourth party" bootleggers like WeiJiang with an interest in providing modified and improved figures to collectors started showing up. These now make up a large portion of the current bootleg landscape in the 2020s, with most offerings on Chinese e-commerce websites being either of this sort, or high-quality counterfeits, or the aforementioned basic dollar-store variety Legends / Legion / etc. inspired toys.

Manufacturing and distribution

Countries and regions that produce or once produced knockoffs

SEND THE BOOKS!

Most knockoffs originate outside of North America and Europe. Although most knockoff-producing countries have joined the Berne Convention and have thus obligated themselves to protect the copyrights of other countries, lax enforcement has allowed manufacturers in many foreign countries, such as China, to continue to produce knockoffs. However, manufacturers in other countries like South Korea, which was once a huge source of knockoff Transformers, have in the last decade made efforts to legitimize themselves by buying the rights to produce official Korean versions of the toys they had long been copying.

• China — Perhaps unsurprisingly, the manufacturing capital of the world is also the capital of Transformers knockoffs. But despite popular perception, this was not always the case: throughout the 80s and much of the 90s, South Korea and Taiwan might have actually been even more prominent knockoff exporters. It was only by the 2000s that China had emerged as the de facto vanguard of bootleg manufacturing, and eventually, as the market currently stands, you will now be hard-pressed to find a modern Transformers knockoff that isn't made in China. Although Chinese knockoffs have historically been known as low-quality cardbacked dollar store products, virtually all of the more recent high-quality and "fourth party" knockoffs are also Chinese made. China has signed the Berne Convention obligating them to protect foreign copyrights, and has enacted legislation to do so, but their enforcement remains at a pitifully weak level.

• South Korea — Was once a hotbed of Transformers knockoff activity. It was not uncommon in South Korea for there to even be animated series, like Phoenix King, that incorporated multiple knocked-off properties, such as Reflector fighting a Gundam or any other number of famous characters. Hilariously, "Gundam" was so embedded in the South Korean public psyche as a synonym for "giant robot" via these different bootleg outlets that the Gundam property owner Sunrise's attempts to trademark the word were entirely rejected by the courts.<ref>"Gundam and Giant Robots in South Korea"</ref> Some Korean knockoff manufacturers took great liberties with Transformers molds, such as significantly increasing their size,<ref>South Korean Combatron / Combaticon bootlegs at Skorbia</ref> and/or retooling their alternate modes to resemble completely different vehicles.<ref>[1] (dead link)</ref> South Korea is known for such knockoffs as oversized Combaticons, Overlord with Star Saber's face, multiple Power Master Optimus cab knockoffs, and the white Oversized Generation 2 Optimus Prime (the legitimacy of which has been debated). Since the mid-/late-1990s, South Korea has begun enforcing foreign copyrights and is no longer a major source of knockoff Transformers toys.

• Taiwan — Known for knockoffs with a lot of English text on them, usually produced with somewhat higher quality standards. Curiously, a staggering number of Taiwanese knockoffs found their way into Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, with major national toy companies like Globo, Ceppi Ratti, Fantastiko, and ADG (all of which are discussed down below in greater detail) all importing bootlegs from Taiwanese companies. As we will see, even GiG, a Takara affiliate and later official Transformers licensee, also distributed a handful of knockoffs! Like South Korea, Taiwan is no longer a major source of knockoff manufacturing.

• South America — As an inevitable outcome of both the protectionist tariff regime that became standard for South America up until the 1980s when the Transformers started emerging in the global toy market (these, of course, being the same conditions that led to the many localized permutations of the original toyline across Latin America) and generally lower incomes gating a lot of families from more expensive imported products, bootlegging also became a common presence across the region. As a result, several toy companies across countries like Argentina, Peru, and Brazil have manufactured and/or distributed Transformers knockoffs at some point - and again, much like GiG in Italy, with some of these companies even being official Hasbro affiliates!

Knockoff companies

While it is borderline impossible to make a comprehensive list of every Transformers bootlegger, at least more than a handful of knockoff companies — both as manufacturers and distributors — have become notable over the years for one reason or another:

1980s–1990s

One sold for $350 on eBay. Feel free to throw up in your mouth a little.

• Four Star

One of the earliest progenitors of the Transformers knockoff scene, Four Star were known during the 1980s for taking any number of Diaclone-descendant Generation 1 molds and making massive retools of them, usually changing 75% of the mold or more. They are especially known for "Mr. Hardhat", a Devastator imitation that is made up of six entirely changed Constructicons that combine in an entirely different way.<ref>Mr Hard Hat gallery on TFW2005</ref> The fully combined form uses Jetfire's head, and weapons for the smaller robots included unchromed grey versions of Starscream's launchers (non-firing), Mirage missiles, retooled Soundwave missiles, and the three Omnibot guns. Despite only being known to exist during the '80s, previously unknown Four Star bootlegs seem to appear every few years, bringing into question exactly how many figures they retooled and how these figures were distributed to stay hidden for so long.

• Hsiang Shan Electron

Otherwise best known for their car models with battery-operated functions, this Taiwanese company dipped into the knockoff market in the mid 80s with the utterly bizarre toy that is "Super Combination Robot B/O 17-in-1.", pictured on the right: a mishmash of Voltron components, Yonezawa's Eagle & Robo (originally sold in the UK as the Convertors Deltatron from Grandstand), and the head, back, and rear portion of the legs of Omega Supreme — even retaining his famous walking feature! Despite its relative obscurity to most regular Transformers collectors, this toy is surprisingly sought-after on the knockoff aftermarket, with asking prices on websites like eBay frequently being in the hundreds.

• Gisima

A Spanish company that released multiple cheap bootlegs of Generation 1 Beachcomber, Windcharger, and Seaspray throughout the 80s and up until the early 90s, decoed in a variety of odd color schemes. These were mostly available in small stores and kiosks and, surprisingly, sometime in the 2000s, they would also show up on gumball machines.<ref>The Lost Tribe on TFSource.com</ref> While these figures were sold individually inside a small bubble-like plastic container without any attached blister cards, they were distributed to stores in styrofoams bearing a label shamelessly calling them "Transformers" (albeit with a unique made-up logo), something unusual for knockoffs at the time.<ref>Listing for a styrofoam featuring sealed Gisima figures on Facebook Marketplace</ref> Interestingly, Milton Bradley would only have the license to release Transformers toys in Spain starting in 1986 whereas some of these bootlegs are dated to 1985, thus; it is likely that they actually predate the introduction of Transformers toys to mass retail in their home country! Eventually, Gisima's Mini-Vehicles have since become quite pricey on the secondary market over time, owing to their status as a neat historical curiosity.

• Galgo

One of many Argentinian companies that turned to bootleg manufacturing during the 1980s, Galgo's best known for their Galgo Robots Transformables series, which primarily consisted of Machine Robo / GoBots bootlegs but also had a Generation 1 Scrapper and Bombshell thrown into the mix. What makes these bootlegs remarkable is the surprisingly high production value of the toyline, with the cardbacks featuring high-quality graphic design, well-made key art of their Bombshell bootleg (in contrast to the usual stolen off-color art of most bootlegs) and professional-looking product shots of their line-up. Notably, their Bombshell is a copy of another Bombshell bootleg from the aforementioned Four Star — so, a bootleg of a bootleg! They would also release other transforming robot toys outside of the Galgo Robots Transformables brand, like a bootleg of Eletrix Jipe (under the Jeep Transformable name) and — albeit not originally an official Transformers toy to begin with — a funky little transforming pen that had also been distributed by a few other companies at the time. And on an odd note, there would be yet another Argentinian transforming robots toyline also called Robots Transformables (this time manufactured by Rondi, a company with no known relation to Galgo) which would feature a number of Zetar bootlegs. Yes, the protectionist tariff regime of Argentina and its consequent lack of foreign intervention within their economy means that they could get away with a lot.

Yes, that is an actual promotional Micromasters tagline rather than an unintentionally phallic mistranslation.

• ABC Timely Ent Inc.

A Taiwanese company which produced a handful of relatively high-quality Generation 1 knockoffs throughout the 80s and 90s, usually retaining their original color schemes and often releasing in packaging identical to their Hasbro originals (featuring the same character art and graphic design layouts) but with the Transformers name switched up to Metamorphs in an identical font instead. Most notably, they released a staggering volume of Micromasters bootlegs under the Micro Metamorphs name (and, at a later point, under Combinable Microbot instead) which would be distributed across Europe by many, many different companies, a handful of which will occupy the next entries in this list. The Metamorphs would also sometimes get their manufacturing stamp attributed to other companies like Wise Trading Company and Leajena Industrial Corp, but with all of these being Taiwanese and all of them featuring identical packaging and no known differences in terms of the manufactured figures, it is very likely that they were simply either rebrandings of and/or different entities owned by ABC Timely Ent Inc.

• Globo

An Italian company which distributed — and might or might not have also manufactured — a large amount of Transformers knockoffs throughout the span of the Generation 1 toyline, most of them being Taiwanese imports bearing the aforementioned Metamorphs name. Among these were the Constructicons <ref>A Facebook listing for various Transformers knockoffs which includes all six Globo Constructicons</ref>, Sandstorm, the Breastforce, Transform Jr Grand Maximus (bearing a hilarious tagline on the packaging that exclaims "ATTACK THE DEVIL WITH A POSITIVE RIFLE!" <ref>An Ebay listing for Globo's Grand Maximus</ref>), and of course, the ABC Timely Ent Inc. Micromasters. One of their most notable releases was an odd Taiwanese-made version of Generation 1 Optimus Prime — bearing a packaging loosely inspired by his Diaclone version and shamelessly featuring the "Diaclone" name written on the top right <ref>A listing for the Globo-branded Generation 1 Optimus Prime knockoff, with the (Italy-based) seller explicitly referring to it as an "import"</ref> — which, unlike most other Globo bootlegs; actually featured quite a few alterations from its original Takara tooling, and would somehow be released about a decade later under what might or might not have been the official Transformers license as "Battle Supplier" in South Korea. More about this case will be discussed on a further section of this article, but in short; insofar as Globo is concerned, they had a quite extensive bootleg catalogue: again, it is difficult to tell whether their whole stock was either entirely imported from foreign manufacturers or instead perhaps produced through a hybrid of foreign imports and local manufacturing, but just given the sheer volume of Transformers clones they put out, the latter option does not seem entirely unlikely.

• Ceppi Ratti, Fantastiko, and ADG

These were other Italian companies which also distributed the aforementioned the ABC Timely Ent Inc. Micro Metamorphs-named Micromasters bootlegs. Ceppi Ratti is famous for manufacturing and distributing regional versions of imported Japanese robot toylines, some bearing legitimate licensing — notably, they released various variants of the infamous Clover Mobile Suit Gundam RX-78-2 with the packaging featuring Nippon Sunrise branding — but with others just being straight-up knockoffs, as with the Micromasters and a handful of other releases like a Generation 1 Frenzy under the "Hi Fi Robot" name and a Galaxy Shuttle under the "Changing Robot" name. Noticeably, Fantastiko's Micromasters didn't use the Micro Metamorphs name in their packaging, with the title simply being replaced by "Micro" + "(The name of the specific Micromaster team/base set)" instead. ADG also released a Korean Galaxy Shuttle KO at one point <ref>A TFW2005 post featuring a handful of KOs, including the ADG-branded Korean Galaxy Shuttle</ref>, and it is, of course, not out of the questions that others also released different KOs beyond the ABC Timely Ent ones that are simply undocumented to this day.

Arguably had more effort put into it compared to the actual Transformers x Godzilla crossover.

• Leader Shine (AKA Champion Crown)

Known during the 1990s for bootlegging the living hell out of the Jumpstarter molds, producing clones, minor retools, major retools, and almost unrecognizable retools. They also produce "original" toys whose transformation schemes are derived from either Transformers, the Brave series, or Power Rangers. Leader Shine is also responsible for Dalung Master, the very Godzilla-themed knockoff of Grimlock that reappears every few years, and has since been homaged with a canonization of sorts in official Transformers media! They also have an amusing habit of putting "Pat. P." (Patent Pending) on almost all of their packages in spite of whether their product is a direct copy or completely changed. However, under the trade names "Leader Shine" and "Champion Crown", there are no patents held.

• ES Toys

A less overtly "bootleg-y" but still very famous example, ES Toys was a Hong Kong-based company with facilities in mainland China that often produced some more legitimate toys for general retail, including a handful of licensed vehicles. Sometime during the early 1990s, they started a toyline of transforming robots called The Formulator Force, a series of otherwise mostly original toys — with a good portion of their overall engineering being swiped from the Brave Exkaisers Max Team <ref>A post comparing the three main Formulator Force with their Brave Exkaiser equivalents</ref> — that also feature a few design traits taken from Generation 1 Transformers, like the "F-Force Transforming Tank" and the "F-Force Transforming Ground Vehicle" both featuring heads noticeably inspired by Sunstreaker and the latter also having a transformation scheme partly inspired by Punch / Counterpunch. Most notably on the explicitly bootleg side, ES Toys produced a Formulator Force sub-series called the Mighty Mini Force, featuring multiple small Micro Machines-style transforming toy vehicles with very similar engineering to the Micromasters and a handful of chest designs that were very much just blatantly copied off the aforementioned toyline <ref>https://www.builtstlouis.net/tf/mmkos/formulator.html</ref>. All of these were re-released under various different names like Super Galaxy Space Former and Super Transformable Expanders, and their availability in mass retail means that they're also some of the most commonly misidentified figures that people might find amongst flea markets and old junk lots of otherwise legitimate Transformers toys (now you know what that one odd light blue and gold tank with a Sunstreaker head is! <ref>https://toysfromthepast.blogspot.com/2014/05/412-formulator-force-f-force.html</ref>).

• B & J Toys — [2]

Based in Ireland, B & J Toys are a still-active company that prides themselves on providing pocket money toys. Their products are traditionally manufactured in China & imported for resale as stand displays. Most recognizable product sold for 99p are the carded, oversize G1 Cassettes of the 5 in 1 line named "Robotic Transform Cassette", represented by knockoff's of Micross (Rumble/Frenzy), Jaguar (Ravage), Ramhorn, Steeljaw & Squawktalk in multiple colors.

• Citi Toys

Based in Thailand, the same company that was producing toys for McDonald's Happy Meals was also producing knockoffs of transforming robots in the late 1990s, albeit mostly Brave and Power Rangers. After news leaked out that they used child labor, new knockoffs with their "CT" logo stopped appearing, which suggests that the child labor scandal caused them to shut down.

2000s

"Hey, what was your favorite Transformers show growing up? Mine was Armada!"
"Ah, you see, I was more of a Space Warriors Transformable Beast Tech Fighter type of kid."

• Agglo

Beginning their bootleg streak sometime in the early 2000s, Agglo was a Hong Kong-based company that has produced numerous Transformers knockoffs over the years. Their products have ranged from knockoffs of Generation 1 figures, to Beast Wars and Japanese Beast Wars characters and even Robot Masters and Generation 2 Cyberjets. They are notable for giving their lines rather long names, one of their Beast Wars KO lines being Space Warriors Transformable Beast Tech Fighter. They were one of the primary suppliers to the American Big Lots! stores and generally use their toy molds until they are virtually destroyed, as evidenced by their bootlegs of a number of Leader Shine products which have been retooled to have fewer and fewer parts as time goes by. At one point, they even made Smallest Transforming Transformers bootlegs in a variety of odd decos and released them on cardbacks under the Space Warriors Transformable Auto-Bots label! <ref>https://news.tfw2005.com/2007/08/04/new-generation-1-knock-offs-found-at-big-lots-145806</ref>

• Happy Well

One of the most prominent knockoff companies from the mid-2000s, Happy Well was bold enough to strike a contract with Walmart, CVS Pharmacies, and Walgreens, making them possibly the first company to have a knockoff "name brand", namely the Galaxy Defender series. Though most of their knockoffs were based on Brave, this did not stop Happy Well from occasionally bootlegging Transformers figures, with their line-up including a monochrome Generation 1 Quake, a combiner made out of extensively retooled versions of Armada Payload, Runway, Waterlog and Ransack, and an upscaled version of Armada Megatron in tan and grey camouflage. Happy Well uses relatively high-quality materials, and most of their products are boxed rather than being sold on blister cards: some even come with sticker sheets and die-cast parts! They have since created their own properties, most notably the Roadbot line — a series of licensed scale transforming cars that was once the only direct competitor to the Alternators line — and now mostly shy away from bootlegs... Mostly. In the turn of the 2020s, they started repackaging some of their older toys under the X-Bot label, including the aforementioned Brave and Armada Megatron bootlegs. Included in this toyline is also a "Transform Jetbot" — which is, very clearly, a blatant copy of a Macross VF-1S Super Valkyrie like the one that later became Jetfire.<ref>https://www.happywell.com.hk/x-bot</ref>

• Zhong Jin, aka Playcenter

Zhong Jin/Playcenter was the original company behind the massive wave of Generation 1 knockoffs that cropped up online in the mid 2000s. Since then, many counterfeit Generation 1 products have surfaced from Zhong Jin, including Optimus Prime, Minibots, Cassettes, Autobot cars, Devastator, Dinobots, and Gnaw. Zhong Jin also has produced many color and plastic variants of their knockoffs, such as translucent versions, which were never previously released (and some of which that were, like Jafcon Black Optimus Prime). Counterfeit Generation 1 parts, stickers, and boxes have appeared from Zhong Jin as well, including many that have not had a corresponding whole knockoff released, like repro Fortress Maximus sticker sheets. The company was first identified as the manufacturer of the knockoffs in September 2007, when fans noticed pictures of most of the current counterfeit G1 knockoffs on their <ref>Alibaba supplier website, including then-upcoming counterfeits like Warpath. Apparently aware of this, Zhong Jin took down images of all their counterfeit Transformers from the website in October or November.</ref> — The first and primary manufacturer of the high-quality counterfeit Generation 1 knockoffs. Zhong Jin has been making their counterfeit Transformers figures since 2005, starting with Beachcomber, but in 2007 began greatly increasing their range of counterfeit Generation 1 knockoffs, which now includes at least 47 different G1 Transformers, filling in many of the gaps left by the official reissues. They have also done many plastic/paint variants of their knockoffs, including many clear plastic versions. It's also sometimes claimed (though never sufficiently proven) that at least some of these counterfeits are actually being manufactured by the same Chinese factories that had produced those originals for Hasbro, using the original toolings, which would explain why some of these toolings are "lost" as far as Hasbro is concerned.

• Hayakawa Toys

The seminal "We have Transformers at home" of many households in the 2000s.

Hayakawa Toys (早川玩具) is, perhaps surprisingly, a Japanese company, best known for its catalogue of budget toys. Similar to ES Toys, they're another one of those manufacturers that straddles the line between knockoffs and original products, with most of their releases looking generally original but, upon closer inspection, it's not hard to see how a few of their toys are clearly built on the basis of Transformers molds — most famously amongst these; they produced a lot of transforming dinosaurs under the Change Dino Robo name that share the overall engineering of the original Beast Wars Dinobot toy, albeit aggressively simplified to the point of featuring little to no articulation beyond the arms. These same molds would be re-released by many, many different companies throughout the 2000s and 2010s all across the world, one of which we'll look at right down below. Other transforming robot toys from Hayakawa include extensively remolded bootlegs of the 2007 Legends Class Blackout and Starscream toys under the Change Senki Robo Toushin Jr. series. <ref>A review of Hayakawa Toys' movieverse Legends Blackout and Starscream bootlegs at tagoal.blog.fc2.com</ref>

• Flying Dragon Toys

A Hong Kong manufacturer that had been making bootlegs since the 90s but only really took off as a leading name in the "off-brand transforming robot toy" market segment during the 2000s, Flying Dragon is most famous for having released multiple versions of the aforementioned Hayakawa Toys Change Dino Robo figures — as well as many other toys from the Hayakawa Toys catalogue — to worldwide retail. It is unknown whether they obtained the licensing to do so from Hayakawa Toys or if they're themselves bootleggers... Or, maybe; if it wasn't Flying Dragon Toys itself that made these molds first, while Hayakawa was only a Japanese distributor, so there's that (the fact that mentions of Hayakawa's versions seem to show up on the Japanese internet earlier than their Flying Dragon equivalents, as well as the overall fancier packaging of Hayakawa's versions, suggests otherwise, but alas, it's near impossible to have certainties when it comes to bootlegs). Beyond Hayakawa releases, other Flying Dragon releases that are Transformers bootlegs include a similarly-simplified Beast Wars Cheetor, a Generation 2 Megatron and, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite a few Jumpstarters... And beyond this, they also made a Titanic transforming robot toy. It's not actually based on any Transformers figure and is thus not a bootleg, but it's too funny not to mention here. <ref>A Flying Dragon Toys catalogue in actionfigurechecklist.com</ref>

• Kidi Toys<ref>Kidi Toys' web site</ref>

Another Chinese company which, following Zhong Jin's lead, briefly produced a couple realistic counterfeit Generation 1 knockoffs (Metroplex, Metrotitan, and Devastator). Among their other notable knockoffs are Alternator figures with new or copied paint schemes of reasonable quality. They are the knockoff company responsible for the infamous fake Metroplex Encore Reissues, which deceived major online Transformers stores.<ref>http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-toy-discussion/199973-what-heck-encore-12-metroplex-i-got-tfsource-fake.html</ref>

Zillennials}}]] and this is your first contact with G1 Transformers toys.

• Polyfect Toys

A company based in Quangdong, China, which has produced a staggering amount of Transformers knockoffs during the 2000s that were commonly found in Family Dollar, Tuesday Morning, and Big Lots among other stores — the most notorious of these easily being their extensive series of downscaled G1 combiner teams (as well as Fortress Maximus and a few other Brave figures), although they'd also make full-scaled combiners and bootlegs of newer toylines like Beast Wars, Robotmasters, and Armada under the "Quick Change Transforming System" brand. They had two different sizes of downscaled combiners: a medium-sized scale close to 7 inches (which'd technically be full-scale for the Micromaster Combiners included in this assortment) and most famously, at a "Smallest Transforming Transformers"-type scale at only around 5 inches. Although these toys often had good quality sculpting and deco work, their plastic was very, very brittle, and the engineering was often simplified to keep manufacturing costs down, something not as noticeable in the downscaled sets but very much visible in the full-scaled ones which seemed to have kept most of the engineering simplifications of their smaller counterparts. The packaging for these figures was adorned with plagiarized artwork and random nonsensical English phrases, such as "FREIGHTERPAN" to refer to their KO Menasor (which, by the way, includes Nosecone and Afterburner instead of Dead End and Wildrider) and featuring the brand's own custom insignia: a red vaguely Decepticon-shaped symbol that is applied to all toys in the place of usual Autobot / Deception markings. Oh, and sometimes they'd also get packed with Machine Robo / GoBots bootlegs, so... There's that. <ref>Walk - Gobots on the-liberator.net</ref> The medium-scale combiners are still being made and it's not uncommon to find them on Chinese e-commerce sites, however; they have been aggressively remolded over the years: sometime in the 2010s, Polyfect decided to cut down on the moving parts each mold had, which resulted in the the medium-scale teams being left with only the engineering necessary for the combined and vehicle modes, therefore leaving them without the ability to actually transform into individual robots! Sometime in 2025, a new batch of medium-scale Polyfect figures would drop that once again brought back the individual robots for each character, albeit still with some heavy simplifications compared to their first run in the 2000s. Meanwhile, the generally more esteemed 5 inch figures do not seem to have been remade at all since the 2000s, leaving these to sometimes fetch surprising prices on the aftermarket.

• iGear

Despite being mostly known as one of the earliest progenitors of the IP infringing item scene, iGear had its roots as a producer of high-quality downsized and retooled knockoffs of Masterpiece Transformers toys, particularly the Optimus Prime and Starscream molds, usually costing as much as the original full sized toys themselves. Eventually, they slowly transitioned into creating original molds, resulting in fully-original designs such as Weapons Specialist and Rager. Unlike the others listed here, iGear products can't be found on western store shelves and were instead known for their online presence, thus marking the first instance of what would become a trend of more "premium" bootleggers oriented towards the collector market.

• CHMS

Already mentioned in this article multiple times, CHMS is a company mostly specializing in knocking off Classics and Universe (2008) molds, making them, alongside iGear, some of the first progenitors of the variant-based / collector-oriented / "Fourth Party" scene, with ther most famous output being the numerous variants of the Classics Seeker mold in just about any color of the rainbow. CHMS appeared roughly around 2008 and tended to copy not only the toy but the entire style of packaging as well, usually of the Henkei exclusive variety. Like iGear, they are known to western consumers mainly through the internet and, like iGear, their output seemed primarily aimed towards collectors: their bootlegs were relatively high-quality and usually attempted to copy either rare figures like Timelines Breakdown and Lucky Draw Henkei Optimus Prime or, alternatively, tried to provide variants of said molds that didn't yet exist in their respective toylines like the aforementioned Seekers. It appears that they've ceased activity sometime during the early 2010s, with no newer bootlegs based on the succeeding Generations figures being known to exist.

2010s–Present day

Imagine stepping out of a time machine in 2007 and telling someone that the bigger, more detailed, and more expensive toy in this image is actually the bootleg.

• Weijiang

Cropping up during the second half of the 2010s, Shanghai-based company Weijiang has become one of the most notorious names in the Transformers bootleg scene, producing an extensive roster of figures mostly taken from the live-action film series toylines that were often cheaper than their official Hasbro / Takara counterparts while also featuring extensive improvements, such as extra paint applications, new molded details, and even occasional full engineering overhauls that'd fix the rougher aspects of the original molds. Their products were heavily proliferated on websites like AliExpress and became highly regarded amongst collectors — something previously unseen coming from a bootleg manufacturer — and the company even ventured into making their own original "IP infringing items" with toys like Ultima Guard, an Omega Supreme lookalike aimed towards compatibility with the Masterpiece line. Ultimately, Weijiang's career came to an abrupt end in 2020 when the Shanghai police arrested its owners for copyright infringement <ref>https://natlawreview.com/article/shanghai-police-announce-arrests-hasbro-transformers-criminal-copyright-case</ref>, though ultimately, it seems that the Pandora's box was now open: as seen below, it was only a matter of time until more companies started cropping up with the same model.

• BaiWei, MHZ Toys, and APC Toys

Other manufacturers that are now entering the "fourth party" market, all of which produce high-quality copies with the occasional deco upgrades and new screen-accurate accessories. BaiWei generally covers Studio Series releases (they originally just produced plain bootlegs with little to no modifications but eventually moved to the collector-oriented upgrade model) while MHZ focuses more on Rise of the Beasts figures and APC goes for a more specific fan niche by building its catalogue around high-quality Transformers Prime knockoffs.

• KuBianBao / KBB

A company that tends to focus more on simple plain copies of Transformers figures, with their catalogue spanning everything from standard bootlegs of Deluxes and Voyagers from the live-action film series (with the occasional odd variant thrown in, like a police car version of Studio Series 16 Bumblebee) to different versions of Masterpiece toys, usually either arbitrarily upscaled or downscaled. Despite not having the same fancy engineering overhauls of Weijiang, KBB's figures are usually nonetheless considered to be of a passable quality given their very cheap value, with their Transformers Expo-exclusive Age of Extinction Nemesis Prime in particular having attained some popularity amongst collectors given the rarity of its original version. KBB figures are still consistently found in stock on the likes of AliExpress, suggesting that they're still being manufactured — however, no newer models appear to have been made by the company after the 2010s.

• Taikongzhans

A more recent company that started making bootlegs of 2010s-era Transformers and continued manufacturing them into the 2020s, Taikongzhans first came into the market with several knockoffs based on the live-action films, including massively oversized versions of Revenge of the Fallen Leader Class Optimus Prime and Dark of the Moon Voyager Class Megatron. Their main claim to fame, however, comes from their later "CoolBecomeBrave" series of knockoffs based on Combiner Wars figures, including full-sized versions of the regular Scramble City-style combiners and an undersized version of Titan Class Devastator to be on the same scale as the other Combiner Wars gestalts. The Scramble-City type teams were released both as individual figures and 5-packs, with these 5-packs in particular being notoriously cheap compared to their original figures. The 5-pack version of Superion even includes copies of Combiner Wars Computron's feet instead of the gun/fist/foot accessories included with the original release. Interestingly, they use the same custom insignia featured in the aforementioned Polyfect combiners, and at one point, the 7-inch batch of Polyfect combiners without individually-transforming limbs was even released under the "Taikongzhans" name (bearing Power Core Combiners-inspired packaging of all things) — which begs the question; is Taikongzhans a rebranding of Polyfect or is it a separate company paying homage to their combiner bootlegging ancestors? You decide!

• JuJiang

On the opposite end of Taikongzhans with their downscaled Devastator, JuJiang was a short-lived (but, within "third" / "fourth party" collector circles, still well-known) company that instead upscaled CHUG toys and extensively upgraded them to be compatible with the Masterpiece toyline. These include a Classics Voyager Optimus Prime and a Combiner Wars Superion, the latter in particular being extensively remolded compared to its original version with the addition of highly-accurate robots and vehicle modes.

• MINISO

A major Chinese retail franchise with multiple stores worldwide that really, really wanted customers to believe it was somehow connected to Japanese culture for a while (more about this kerfuffle can be read on their Wikipedia page). They've released a large volume of Transformers bootlegs over the years, including the usual slightly upscaled Legends Class knockoffs and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly amongst these, also a copy of Cybertron Scout Class Hardtop. Their catalogue also featured a knockoff of Kre-O Optimus Prime at one point, and — albeit not necessarily bootlegs — a number of very obviously Transformers-inspired construction block sets, as well as a plethora of other generic transforming robot toys to boot.

• Tengyang

Tired of all these fancy fourth party companies with their high-quality toys and all the other not-so-fancy companies with their low-effort Legends Class upscales alike? Why, take a trip down the memory lane of how bootlegging used to be with the catalogue of Tengyang! Although their most well-known product is an undersized version of the "third party" toy 'MMC Feral Rex' (a famous not-Predaking), Tengyang has also produced several standard Transformers knockoffs, the most common amongst these being extremely cheap versions of Generation 1 Predaking and Piranacon in weird extravagant colors. Also amongst their releases (albeit probably not originally designed by them, as similar bootlegs have been floating around for a while now <ref>https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/asura-dinosaur-scramble-city-combiner-review.970686/</ref>) is a Scramble City-style combiner formed from lookalikes of the five Generation 1 Dinobots, with the individual members being extensively retooled versions of the Seacons. Now that's the kind of bootlegging weirdness you'd see in the old days!

Transitional companies

From bootlegger to reputable company

AND I'LL FORM THE HE—oh, wait.

Although rare, some knockoff companies eventually venture into legitimate toy design territory. One such example is Trendmasters, which started out as a budget manufacturer and at one point produced an extensively retooled version of Takatoku's 'Beet-Vadam' figure from the Beetras toyline (which would later become Ransack in the Transformers Generation 1 toyline), before eventually legally securing the [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Voltron|{{#if:||Voltron}}]] and Godzilla licenses and becoming an established company in the 90s toy market. Another such company was Korean knockoff manufacturer Academy, best known for releasing the Overlord knockoff with Star Saber's head as well as the huge, up-sized Gundam Cloth MK-II. In the world of plastic scale models, they were also known for producing low-quality knockoffs of Japanese manufacturer Tamiya's kits with copied box art. Academy has since gone legit, legally acquiring such licenses as Gundam, Naruto, Tom and Jerry, and Zoids.<ref>Character products page at academy.co.kr</ref> And as previously mentioned, Happy Well has also shifted its focus from producing knockoffs to becoming a more reputable company, with their original Roadbots and V-Create Transforming robot toys seeing worldwide retail distribution.

So, we have seen that companies which formerly produced and/or distributed fake Transformers toys can end up becoming legitimate enough to get licensing deals with other more well-established franchises, but what about producers and/or distributors of Transformers knockoffs later getting licensing deals to make toys... For the Transformers brand itself? Could such a thing ever happen? Well, guess what, it did!

Former U.S. electronic retail giant RadioShack is often accused of being a bootlegger for their release of the pre-Transformers Shockwave mold under the name of "Galactic Man" (nicknamed "Shackwave" by Transformers fans), but this release was actually fully licensed by the original toy's manufacturer ToyCo. Except, the accusations of bootlegging aren't completely wrong either: at one point, they sold a toy under their in-house Tandy brand called "AM Robot Radio" — which, as its named indicates, was an AM radio shaped like a robot — with its design being very obviously a crude retooling of the official Transformers Nasta Optimus Prime-shaped radio that was sold under the name of "Robot AM Radio" during the 1980s. About two decades later, RadioShack would partner up with Hasbro and Paramount to produce a multitude of official merchandise for the 2007 Transformers movie, including radio-controlled cars, radio-controlled aircraft, and — ironically — a set of clip-on radios with designs based on Autobot and Decepticon insignia.

From reputable company to bootlegger

The opposite direction is also possible: GiG acquired a license from Takara for distributing Diaclone toys in Italy before Hasbro even launched their Transformers line. Subsequently, they obtained a second license from Hasbro to distribute Transformers toys proper, which they did all the way up until 1997. By 1998, Hasbro abandoned GiG as their Italian license in favor of their own, newly formed Italian Hasbro branch. Subsequently, GiG imported several knockoffs, such as off-color versions of the Constructicons. Interestingly, before securing the official Transformers license, GiG also distributed a generic Taiwanese copy of the Generation 1 Shockwave mold under the name of "Robot Fighting Gun" in 1983, but alas, this was two years before the Transformers toyline existed proper: technically, thus; it is not quite a Transformers bootleg.

Something similar, abeit at a smaller scale, happened with Estrela in Brazil when they released the aforementioned Beast Wars Dinobot bootlegs from Hayakawa Toys under their Mutantes Dinossauros toyline in 2014, a whole eight years after losing the license to distribute official Hasbro figures. It is questionable whether Estrela even knew these were bootlegs since, as with many Transformers-like budget toys in the 2000s, they were originally produced by a different unknown company and then sold to various toy manufacturers around the world (it is very likely that you might have seen these same dinosaur molds on retail elsewhere at the time), but alas, it is nonetheless an interesting peculiarity that the "official distributor to bootlegger" pipeline happened twice.

Existing as both reputable company and bootlegger

"No one who speaks German could be an evil bootlegger!"

But can a company be simultaneously connected to 'proper' international big-name brands and yet somehow have one of its hands deep in the knockoff jar? Why, yes, this has been known to happen!

Peru's Lynsa was one of the many official Transformers licensees across South America during the Generation 1 toyline, having earned the right to both make and market their own regional variants of Transformers toys — but at the same time, they would also release a set of basic cardbacked combining robots under the name of "Ensembler", which were, very clearly, low-quality bootlegs of LJN Voltron toys. Also in Peru, national company HUDE would act as both an official Transformers distributor and yet, at around the same time, make their own bizarre Jumpstarter bootlegs under the names of "Robot X 4" and "Drago" (they even ran TV commercials advertising their knockoffs!)<ref> Advert for HUDE's Robot X 4 and Drago.</ref>

A much more baffling example is the Simba Dickie Group, a popular German toy company (perhaps best known for being the parent company of notorious railway model manufacturer Märklin) that once released multiple generic transformable robots under their Space Transformer and Planet Fighter series of assorted sci-fi budget toys — amongst these being numerous variants of the Flying Dragon Jumpstarter knockoffs, oversized Mini-Cons, the Hayakawa Toys Dinobot clones, a plethora of Brave bootlegs, and even regional European releases for the aforementioned Happy Well G1 Quake, Mini-Con combiner, and Armada Megatron clones <ref>An attempt at documenting every Transformers knockoff made by Simba on transformersnotejo.blogspot.com</ref>. Bizarrely enough, not even a decade later, they would go on to actually produce an extensive suite of official Transformers merchandise for Hasbro, starting with die-cast figures, vehicles, and all sorts of gimmicky toys made for Robots in Disguise and later continuing their collaboration with a similar range of toys for The Last Knight and Bumblebee. Jada Toys, which would go on to produce more Transformers merchandise, is also part of the Simba Dickie Group, meaning that their relationship with the Transformers brand continues to last to this day — and yet, despite this, their Jumpstarter knockoffs are still being sold on the company's official web store! <ref>https://www.simbatoys.com/simba_en/brands/planet-fighter/pf-space-bot-pro-6-ass-103572535-en.html</ref> It appears that Simba has redesigned their version of the Jumpstarter mold multiple times over the years to the point where their resemblance with the original toys has diminished slightly, but alas, the core design of the old G1 / Diaclone figures is still very much unmistakably there.

Transitional toys

Not a proponent of dialetheism? Well then, explain how I'm both a bootleg and also not a bootleg!

But what's even crazier than a knockoff company also producing official toys? Why, an unofficial toy becoming an official toy!

While Hasbro themselves have never been careless enough to just outright release a bootlegged figure as part of their domestically-made toyline, the same can't be said for the various other companies that they lent the Transformers brand to for the production of toys and merchandise across different countries. The first known example of a licensee releasing a bootleg under official Transformers branding comes from French company AVI France, a small electronics manufacturer that once put out Horloge Robot, a simple transforming digital watch that's assembled by the combination of 14 small vehicles. Horloge Robot is, in reality, a bootleg of none other than Takara's Diaclone Gats Blocker that had been previously released by multiple other manufacturers and distributors, including AVI France themselves: most likely, neither AVI France nor Hasbro were aware of the bootleg nature of this mold, given that Hasbro would only import most of their Diaclone toys (and, of course, subsequently integrate them into the Transformers brand) from 1982 and beyond while Gats Blocker was part of the older 1981 permutation of Diaclone.

An even wilder curiosity might be Best Join's 1985 toy "Radio Robot", a figure that transformed into a fully-functional AM radio with a design blending various elements of the Generation 1 Megatron, Blaster, Omega Supreme, and Soundwave toys (the original source for most or all of these most likely being their Micro Change and Toybox versions, given the relative recency of these toys' Transformers releases as well as the inclusion of Megatron's original Micro Change sword). Surprisingly, Robotic Radio was later released by Argentinian toy company Comando Toys in 1987 under the name of Radio AM Robot, now featuring official Transformers branding with Hasbro copyright on the packaging! He would be later mentioned in the Transformers Timelines story A Team Effort as an in-universe musician, thus leading to the first and only confirmed case of a toy that ascended from bootleg to official branded release and finally to the status of canonized Transformers character in official media.

Another Transformers-branded Comando Toys offering that also borders on bootlegging was Walkie Talkie Robot, a pair of — as the name suggests — robot walkie talkies originally made by Hong Kong company Arlight, featuring a design that's clearly ripped off the titular mecha from Rokushin Gattai Godmars. Still, this only copies the overall design of the character, not a specific Godmars toy, thus; unlike Radio AM Robot, it technically avoids the knockoff classification. Technically. As with AVI France, it is debatable if Commando Toys were also aware of the legally dubious origins of their products: most likely, they might have only seen the chance to flip some presumably generic robot toys under a new popular branding for a quick buck. Maybe they had never imagined that they'd end up being cited years later on this article as knockoff propagators!

A fake toy sold as an official toy or just a fake toy sold as a fake toy? We might never know.

Finally, it's impossible to not mention the odd Korean releases presumably done under the official Transformers brand, with their packaging attributing licensing permissions to both Hasbro and Korean company ToonTown (as well as another broadly unknown company called "3D Licensing International"). Their most overtly bootleg product was the aforementioned formerly Globo-distributed version of Generation 1 Optimus Prime, distinguishable by quite a few alterations from its original tooling like the truck windshield not being split in half, the left smokestack being replaced by a ladder, and his rifle being based on that of Dorvack Jeeps (AKA the later Generation 1 Roadbuster): being that this toy began life as a bootleg and that it's based on a well-known character rather a new made-up one like Radio AM Robot, this is a particularly unusual release to have popped up as part of an official Transformers line-up. Beyond this Prime retool, there's also an oversized, off-color Generation 2 Optimus Prime <ref>https://x.com/tfwiki/status/1036114311142363136/</ref>, a model kit based on G1 Prime, multiple re-releases of Kabaya Transformers Gum kits, and a wide variety of Generation 2-branded merchandise, all of these arriving to Korean stores at around 1997–1998 with the same "1997 Hasbro International, Inc | With Permission of 3D Licensing International Represented by ToonTown" identifiers on their packaging.

There still isn't a consensus as to whether these are legitimate Hasbro-branded products or not — the regular-sized Optimus Prime clearly has bootleg origins, but a bootleg match to their other products hasn't been found as of yet, even though oversizing toys seems like a very distinctively bootleg thing to do — but as a matter of public interest, we have nonetheless chosen to cover them on this wiki as official Transformers products until there is evidence to the contrary.

Law and copyright infringement

Legal analysis of knockoffs

Were you fooled by this in 2011? Don't be shy, we were fooled too.

Despite myths to the contrary, most Transformers knockoffs are illegal. In HASBRO BRADLEY, INC. v. SPARKLE TOYS, INC., 780 F.2d 189 (2nd Cir. 1985), the Second Circuit granted an injunction on Sparkle Toys' Jumpstarter knockoffs, where Hasbro showed a likelihood of success for infringement of their copyright in the Jumpstarters toys.<ref name="sparkle">HASBRO BRADLEY, INC. v. SPARKLE TOYS, INC. at the Legal Information Institute</ref> For those not law literate, this basically means that (A) Hasbro held a valid copyright in the Jumpstarters, and (B) Hasbro had a strong enough case that this would have gone to a jury, which would ultimately decide whether there was infringement.

Although Hasbro and Takara's design patents on Transformers toys expire after 14 years from issuance, their copyright in Transformers toys lasts for 95 years from publication, i.e., sale to the public. Thus, while the design patents on some Transformers toys have expired, the copyright protection on all Transformers toys is still in effect. For useful articles, such as a reconfigurable toy, copyright protects only those expressive elements that are separable from the function. While a transformation is probably not protectable because it is functional, the overall look of the robot or alternate mode is protectable. Thus, while a heavily retooled knockoff that only retains the transformation of the original toy may avoid infringement, a toy that is only resized or is only painted in different colors would infringe on Hasbro and Takara's copyright regardless of the slight modification.

In a second case, WALES INDUS. INC. v. HASBRO BRADLEY, INC., 612 F.Supp. 510 (1985), Wales Industrial attempted legal steps against Hasbro to stop them from taking legal steps against Wales for selling knockoffs of Hasbro's Transformers toys, arguing that Hasbro was not the copyright holder, but merely a licensee, and the original Takara versions of the toys were lacking copyright stamps, thus making the toys fall into public domain. The court shot down the case by declaring that through their contract with Takara, Hasbro was legally authorized to represent them as copyright holder; the lack of copyright stamps on Japanese releases of the toys was irrelevant due to different domestic laws, as what mattered was that the toys had copyright stamps when they were released to the United States market; and Wales Industrial had even acted in full knowledge of a potential copyright conflict by having their knockoff toys slightly modified as to not be exact carbon copies of Hasbro's versions.<ref name="wales1">WALES INDUS. INC. v. HASBRO BRADLEY, INC. and supplementary item at Case Text.com.</ref>

Hasbro's intervention (or lack thereof)

To date, Hasbro apparently has taken few actions against knockoff manufacturers. Only the above cases of Hasbro shutting down a Transformers knockoff operation in the 1980s exist, and no such cases exist from the 1990s onward. Hasbro's Transformers design director Aaron Archer was once quoted as making a comment at BotCon implying that Hasbro was unconcerned with knockoffs.{{#ifeq: ||}} Strangely, Hasbro recently contacted small online toy store AgesThreeAndUp and told them to take down their knockoff listings. At BotCon 2008, Greg Lombardo read an official Hasbro policy discouraging fans from purchasing knockoffs—even in the main dealer room just a few yards away—and vaguely threatening future legal action against their producers. In May 2008, eBay began taking down auctions for knockoff Transformers (the high end counterfeits in particular), but it's unclear whether this was Hasbro's doing or not.<ref>http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/other-news-20/knockoff-transformers-auctions-being-pulled-from-ebay-165004/</ref> Eventually, whatever action Ebay took would not last long since, as of the 2020s, Ebay is still packed with bootlegs, both new and old alike.

Myths about knockoffs

Over the years, there have been a lot of widespread myths about knockoffs. Perhaps the most preposterous myth is that knockoffs are legal. See the Legal Analysis section above for why this theory is incorrect. Although few proponents of this theory exist, those that do claim vigorously that the presence of knockoffs on Family Dollar or Wal-Mart's shelves means that those products must be legitimate. The flaw in the reasoning here is that it assumes big chain stores would never do anything ignorantly or illegally, which is certainly not the case.

As previously mentioned, one long-held myth among fans (due to a general lack of information), is that the Generation 1 Transformers with Chinese stickers in the corner are high-quality counterfeits. After all, they look just like the original Generation 1 releases, but with some very small differences and oftentimes slightly inferior plastic quality. But again, it's come out that these were, in fact, re-releases for the Chinese market produced from 1989 through 1995, not unlike their Chinese G.I. Joe counterparts from around the same period. The modern high-quality Chinese Generation 1 counterfeits wouldn't be until 2005, a decade later.

Numerous international releases based on licenses predating the success of the Transformers brand (some of them available concurrently with their Transformers counterparts) have also been mistaken for knockoffs. The fact that actual knockoffs of these figures (and even knockoffs of these very licensed versions) exist doesn't exactly help matters.

So, are knockoffs worth buying?

As a final consideration, you might be wondering if purchasing a knockoff figure is actually worth your money or not. Here are some factors you might want to consider:

Pros

Oh, hi. I cost more than a MISB G1 Overlord. Want to touch me?

• Unsurprisingly, knockoffs are generally far cheaper than their official counterparts. This is obviously balanced by the generally lower quality, but there are still some pretty intuitive advantages in getting a copy of a figure for a fraction of its original price, especially in cases where a buyer might not have the money to purchase an official version. This is further substantiated by the few knockoffs that actually do have surprisingly good quality and can easily pass for original collector-grade items, like the aforementioned Generation 1 and Masterpiece counterfeits. In the end, when a rare figure like the 2014 gold version of Masterpiece Megatron can often cost past the $600 mark on eBay, getting the mass manufactured reproduction that looks virtually indistinguishable from the original for $60 might not sound completely unreasonable. Most recently, there has even been an onslaught of fan-oriented KOs designed to not just copy the originals but also to surpass them with improved sculpts and paintjobs, like the repainted and slightly remolded movie figures of WeiJiang. There have also been fan-oriented KOs that aren't necessarily KOs, since they represent characters who have never received an official toy.

• Surprisingly enough, some older knockoffs do have collectible value, especially those produced in Taiwan and South Korea during the 1980s. As an example, the pre-transformer version of Shockwave (originally manufactured in grey by Toy Co as a figure called "Astro-Magnum") was the victim of multiple knockoff copies which are now actually more valuable than an original Generation 1 Shockwave. The bizarre Academy version of Overlord is another example in the same vein.

• Sometimes they're just funny and weird and interesting. Yes, even the cheap dodgy cheese-plastic ones. Sometimes especially the cheap dodgy cheese-plastic ones.

Cons

• As a rule, knockoffs are generally inferior to their original versions. Keep in mind that the previously mentioned WeiJiangs and Masterpieces are only rare exceptions amongst the usual pile of counterfeit junk, the vast majority of KOs you'll find in dollar stores are nowhere near the level of an official Hasbro or Takara product. These are often conceived with the most rudimentary plastic that can be shunted out at the most affordable rate, with little to no quality control behind their manufacturing, and in numerous occasions without even featuring any paint operations besides the actual color of the plastic they're molded in.

• As already previously explained, knockoffs are illegally produced copies of Transformers designs. This might not be too much of a detractor for collectors, especially considering how little Hasbro and Takara themselves seem to care about modern knockoffs, but it does imply that, by purchasing a fake figure over a genuine one, you are not monetarily contributing to the team that actually designed and engineered that original figure.

Fiction

Animated cartoon

Megatron referred to the Starscream clones as "an army of cheap knockoffs". A Bridge Too Close, Part II

2005 IDW continuity

"Knockoff" was considered an offensive epithet against Transformers who were "constructed cold." The Fecund Moon

Age of Extinction film

After defeating Stinger, Bumblebee smugly referred to his defeated doppelganger as a "cheap knockoff." Age of Extinction

External links

• HighEndTFs' ID Guide for high quality counterfeit Generation 1 Transformers
• Action Figure Checklist's Transformer Knock-Off Photo Album
• All Things Transformers — Other Transforming Toys
• Butto's Other Transforming Toys (Japanese)
• Fake Toy Gallery (Japanese)
• Hatch's Bootleg Transformers
• Kid K0rrupt's Bootleg Gallery
• Rob's Pile of Transformers: Micromaster Knockoffs
• TFArchive.com's Bootleg Gallery
• TFW2005 Ongoing Knock-Off Transformers Thread
• Toyarchive.com's Gallery of Generation 1 Knockoffs
• Zobovor's Knockoff Toys Archive (text)
• SKORBIA-Crazysteve's South Korean Bootleg Information Archive
• TF_KOllector Vintage Transformer Bootleg Instagram Gallery

References

<references />