User:Halfshell25

That's me!

Challenge of the GoBots Ownership Info

Often it is asked who owns what parts of the Gobots franchise. The answer is appropriately tricky, but there seems to be logic to it. Here I will try to clear up some of the questions raised over who owns what:

Firstly, as is common knowledge, Bandai owns all of the molds for the original GoBots toys. Popy, a once famed japanese toy company, had originally released the toys under the name Machine Robo. Popy was eventually bought by Bandai. Meanwhile, Tonka got word that their rival company Hasbro was adopting a line of Japanese transforming robots to be sold in America. Hoping to beat out Hasbro, Tonka grabbed up the american license for the Machine Robo toys and hastily renamed them GoBots. Though GoBots arrived first, Hasbro's superior marketing and design made Transformers the clear winner of the shape-shifting robot war. Eventually in 1991, Hasbro bought out Tonka for about $516 million. However, because Bandai has a rivalry with Hasbro partner Takara Tomy, any idea of further GoBots re-releases were dashed.

Now on to the cartoon and the names. When Hasbro bought Tonka, they acquired all of the names of the GoBots characters, factions, and fiction. This is why you have the likes of Leader-1 appearing in Armada. Though Hasbro does not own the molds the characters were originally attached to, they own everything else about them. As for the cartoon, ownership lines become a bit more blurred. Challenge of the GoBots was originally produced by Hanna-Barbera for Tonka. In 1991, Hanna-Barbera was purchased by Turner Broadcasting System, who later merged with Time Warner in 1996. The studio became subsidiary of Warner Bros. Animation during this time, where it remains to this day. Starting in 2011, Warner Archive began to release the Challenge of the GoBots series, with all of the episodes having been released by 2015. During this release, it is made very clear that Hasbro pretty much owns everything involving the GoBots. Here is the back cover of the first DVD:

They make a point of mentioning the series was based on Hasbro's GoBots toy line, which seems to imply that Hasbro retains some ownership of the actual the series. The copyright info at the bottom of the back cover clears things up much better:

Both Hasbro and Hanna-Barbera are said to own the trademark and copyright for GOBOTS and all related characters and elements. This means that though Hanna-Barbera owns the rights to the episodes, Hasbro also owns all of the content inside them. For example, Warner Archive could release all of the GoBots episodes legally. However, they would not be able to create brand new episodes (without Hasbro's permission), because Hasbro also owns the characters and elements of the series. Hasbro on the other hand could create new episodes, as long as they only used elements that have no ties to Bandai molds. In another example, Hasbro could make new episodes of GoBots with Leader-1 and Cy-Kill as long as their designs were completely different from the Bandai molds they were based on. They could easily use the design of Gobotron and the other backgrounds in anything they wanted, as Bandai had nothing to do with those elements of the GoBots franchise. You may be asking how Hasbro could use Gobotron's design, as Hanna-Barbera came up with that. They can do this because of their partial ownership of the GoBots elements. Finally, you may be asking how much GoBots cartoon material Hasbro can get away with releasing. In essence, they can very easily release as much as they want, except for maybe clips from the actual episodes. As demonstrated in Renegade Rhetoric, Hasbro can reference the events from the cartoon, as part of their ownership of the show's elements. However, even they are unclear as to weather or not they can use snapshots from the actual series. Technically they do own the actual episode screen-shots, as part of their part-ownership. It is even said in the end-credits of the series that the show was made for Tonka, which would imply the latter has a great deal of rights to the episodes. Considering Warner Bros. lack of interest in GoBots, noted in the series' slow production and manufactured-on-demand basis, it seems incredibly unlikely that they would ever challenge Hasbro regardless of what they do. It would make no sense for them to create a lawsuit over a brand that they know they have little rights to and which brings them only a tiny profit. This is further re-enforced by a 2014 WonderCon Anaheim panel, where Warner Archive Collection Podcast Host Matthew Patterson mentioned that "the A-team" was probably not working on the restoration of the series.

Simply put, I believe that based on all of this info, Hasbro retains MUCH more rights to the series than Warner Bros. Besides, at the end of the day, the two companies get along pretty good anyway, considering Warner Bros. is a division Time Warner, who also owns the Transformers' main network in current times, Cartoon Network.

• Note: I fully admit that I am not a lawyer and am only making these points based on my understanding of the law.
• Sources: Counter-x.net

My Position on the "What Should be on the Wiki?" Debate

Basically, anything that is specifically part of Transformers should be on TFWiki. There have been many debates as to weather or not GoBots should be on the Wiki. Originally, I would have said no. However, now that GoBots was established by multiple official sources as a version of Transformers from another dimension, I think they should be included here in full. Gobotron is said to be an alternate version of Primus, while "the Evil One" is a version of The Fallen. Because of this, GoBots should now be treated just as you would any other alternate TF series and included here on the Wiki. Also, since Robotix was also established as an alternate Transformers universe, they should be included as well. Don't get me wrong though; it should stop with those two. Any other brand like GI. Joe or Inhumanoids are totally different as they are not Transformers. GoBots and Robotix are a different case, as they are ACTUAL Transformers, not some random characters who had a few crossovers. This is why I believe that those two franchises should be covered fully on the Wiki.