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. In fact, in the past Hasbro has laid out guidelines to fan-artists and similar creators wishing to make and sell art and crafts based on Transformers, which basically boiled down to being careful how one "branded" it (or, in practice, didn't brand it by just avoiding the use of brand names and some minor semantics).

When things get dicey —and the license-holders get tetchy— 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 off-color, oversized/undersized thing that one might come across in a "dollar store" cranked out by the bajillions from China, and higher-quality toys that actually 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 for manufacturers to create their own cheap toys in the image of Transformers characters, and these still constitute IP theft – Optimus Prime the Character is as much Hasbro's property as Optimus Prime the Specific Toy.

Conversely, a toy that copies the engineering (i.e. transformation) of an existing Hasbro/Takara product but is changed enough as to not resemble an existing character protected by copyright might not necessarily constitute IP theft: Functionality is protected by patents, and patent protection legally expires after 20 years. This is why you occasionally see off-brand toys that work just like the Jumpstarters but look nothing like Topspin or Twin Twist!

"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 (although sometimes including molded spaces for the buyer to apply their own), 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, fans would often avoid confusion by referring to these figures as "not" versions of the characters they were based on (for example, "Not-Starscream"), though as the market has grown that terminology has been mostly abandoned since there's liable to be multiple different Not-Starscreams. After many years of these products, name overlaps are bound to happen; for example, different companies have figures alternatively based on Huffer and Grimlock that are both named "Rager". Let's see them duke out name conflicts in court.

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!

Although stylized, the Transformers: Earth Wars models for the Predacons are recognizably based upon the "Feralcons" (remember what we were saying?), one of the three notable sets of "third party" Predacons. It even leaked into their combined mode.

Hasbro does it too

First party problems.

Despite Hasbro's own (completely understandable) aversion against people making a profit off their IP without permission, it's not like Hasbro is entirely innocent in this regard: In fact, the Transformers toys' alternate modes being unlicensed reproductions of real-world vehicles and aircraft goes back all the way to the very first Generation 1 toys.

While the whole market situation was still very different back in the 1980s, and car manufacturers apparently didn't start properly enforcing their intellectual properties in the field of toys and merchandise until the early 2000s, Transformers toys with licensed vehicle alternate modes are still the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of popular Earth vehicle alternate modes are still unlicensed approximations of their real-life inspirations, basically "not-Lamborghinis" or "not-A-10s", with a few details altered to avoid a lawsuit. Some examples are a little more creative, meshing together two or more real-life inspirations to create a genuine "hybrid" design, but most are just barely altered and instantly recognizable for what they are supposed to represent.

While the target audience is obviously a different one (most people who buy a Hasbro Sunstreaker do so because he represents Sunstreaker the Transformers character, not because they want a Lamborghini for their toy car collection; however, most, if not all, people who buy a "third party" version of Sunstreaker do so because he represents Sunstreaker the Transformers character), any argument against unlicensed "third party" toys for "ethical" reasons should at least acknowledge what Hasbro has been doing for decades.