IP infringement

This article is about unlicensed toys based on Transformers. For third parties that produce actual Transformers products under license, see Third party.

The many and varied facets of the Transformers brand are the intellectual property (IP) of Hasbro and TakaraTomy, and their ownership of these ideas and designs is protected by law. Alas, some rascally elements have, over the years, decided they'd like a slice of that pie, which has led to the creation of what have been described as IP infringing items by employees of Hasbro licensee Fun Publications.

“	Theft of IP like this is staggering, develop your own characters and designs!	”
—Aaron Archer, former Hasbro employee

Kinds of IP theft

Technically, any use of Hasbro and Takara's Transformers names, characters and concepts without obtaining a license could be considered IP theft. Things such as fan art and fan fiction, however, are rarely considered problematic, being as they are not intended to generate profit or are otherwise one-off works. When things get dicey is when IP theft occurs on a grander, and more organised scale.

Knockoffs

Automatons in Concealment

In the context of Transformers, knockoff is often used to describe both low-budget/quality toys, the kind of thing that one might come across in a 'dollar store', and higher-quality toys that attempt to pass themselves off as genuine Hasbro or Takara products. Knockoffs that are direct replicas of existing Hasbro toys are very obviously the result of theft – in that case, it is the precise design and engineering for the toy that has been stolen. However, it is not unheard of manufacturers to create their own cheap toys in the image of Transformers character, and these still constitute IP theft – Optimus Prime the Character is as much Hasbro's property as Optimus Prime the Specific Toy.

"Third party" toys

I Can't Believe It's Not Jetfire!

In the late Noughties, spurred on by the Transformers nostalgia boom invoked by the live-action film series, a new phenomenon arose – unlicensed products based on Transformers aimed at the adult collector market. The very earliest examples of this kind of product were accessories and then 'upgrades' for existing Hasbro toys, such as a trailer/armor set for Classics Ultra Magnus, but the market quickly grew to include standalone action figures based on Transformers characters. The number of groups producing these figures has ballooned rapidly, to the point that two or even three separate companies will be simultaneously releasing toys of the same characters. Popular market trends have included combiners and, more recently, faux-Masterpiece figures.

The fandom's generally recognised name for these kinds of figures is "third party Transformers", although this is ultimately a misnomer for the plain reason that they are not actual Transformers products. Obviously, these should not be confused with the actual third parties who produce Transformers merchandise under license from Hasbro or Takara. In (very half-hearted) attempts to dissuade the notion that they are pinching Transformers characters, "third party" toy manufacturers typically avoid using faction symbols, and give their figures alternative names that attempt to capture the sound and/or spirit of the trademarked originals, with varying degrees of bizarreness. A toy intended to look like Starscream might, for example, wind up named "Stellaryell". Initially, they were also sometimes unofficially referred to as "not" versions of the characters they were based on (for example, "Not-Starscream"), though that terminology has since been mostly abandoned.

For reasons that should, again, be obvious, TFWiki considers "third party" toys unrelated to its goal of documenting the Transformers brand.

Hasbro and IP theft

Remarks and actions

Official statements from Hasbro on "third party" toys are few and far between. In one response, provided as part of the company's now-defunct fansite Q&A program, they noted the illegal nature of the figures, and remarked that this kind of IP theft was unfair to legitimate licensees who pay to produce Transformers merchandise.

In 2015, Hasbro's UK branch distributed an online survey of the collecting habits of Transformers fans to coincide with the Auto Assembly unofficial convention, which included a surprising number of questions regarding "third party" products. In a bit of an embarrassing faux pas, a Hasbro representative present at the convention itself also addressed a Vos cosplayer as "Cynicus", the name of an unofficial figure of that character,.

To date there have been no known instances of Hasbro pursuing actual legal action against the manufacturers of "third party" toys. They did, however, institute a last-minute ban on the sale of such items at BotCon 2012 (this mandate initially encompassed fan art too, but this was quickly relaxed). This policy did not return for the next two BotCons, but was reinstated for BotCon 2015, and continued with BotCon 2016.

Third party designs in official products and marketing

IP untheft?

In recent years, there have been occasions where "third party" figure designs have slipped into official media. One cover for More than Meets the Eye #18 saw Huffer and Gears drawn based on unofficial figures "Rager" and "Cogz" (do you see what we meant about the names?). Hasbro and IDW did not comment on this, although it seems likely that somebody somewhere might've gotten a slap on the wrist.

Meanwhile, official third party licensee Imaginarium Art's statues of Rodimus Prime and Devastator seem to be based on the unofficial figures "Carry" and "Green Giant", with Rodimus Prime featuring detailing on his forearms otherwise unique to Carry and Devastator having kneepads only found on Giant. One has to assume Hasbro wasn't looking too closely, or were understandably unaware of those figures, when they signed off on these.

In what was presumably an innocent mistake that resulted from the use of a fan's personal collection, a slide shown the Hasbro investor and press event presentation during Toy Fair 2016 that represented Transformers "Spanning Generations" featured a photograph of a father and son surrounded by a variety of Masterpiece toys... and the "third party" Devastator "Green Giant". Oops!