Canadian Transformers News and Discussion Forum

[GotBot]

[QUOTE=joshimus;796393]One can say the same about Zeta. First off, not their IP to sell, it belongs to HasTak, PERIOD.
Secondly, they should have waited for Hasbro's launch to fail, or until October a few days before the Hasbro ended. Instead, they gave Hasbro plenty of time to take action.

If Hasbro is seeing a dip in preorder sales, which have been somewhat stagnant since Zeta showed theirs off as well as the extension time, then yeah, I dont feel bad for Zeta getting stopped.

That said, I would have bought both, but Zeta was 100% stupid in being so loud about their version. I guarantee you had Hasbro's failed to meet the 8K backers and THEN Zeta announced Unicron, Zeta would be producing and selling their version without issue like so many others. (also still IF Hasbros gets funded)

Zeta let to much get to their heads and there is blowback, something the ACTUAL owner of the license has every right.
[QUOTE]

Indeed, I see your point and agree. Keep that in mind as you read on and I apologize for being long winded.

But,

Hasbro is so much more huge that they seem VERY petty to screw the little guy just to show investors that hey Haslab isn't a steaming pile of scanner crap but an actual viable business model. People want to crowdfund multibillion dollar multinational companies..... They have had 1 success (from the absolute most rabid fan base ever), and 1 failure. This second failing project looks bad on the books, so their rampant desperation is making them pull out all the stops..

To be fair, and to give some context, in life, I shop everywhere else I can besides Wal-Mart because they are too big and shady. I watch as much wrestling outside of WWE as I can and vary between NFL and CFL, UFC and, say, Bellator. My point is, I RARELY support the big guy. I usually do all I can for the little guy to create as much competition as possible so, hopefully, companies are inspired to do better and offer more for less to win my purchasing dollars and desires. There is zero brand loyalty, zero. I'm the customer. Your job is to win me over as a manufacturer and retailer. Fail in that and I take my business elsewhere.

As for you thinking there is IP theft, allow me if you will, to play devil's advocate though. A lawyer could EASILY say to you that they have no idea what you are talking about. There is absolutely no IP theft here. Zeta is making a character named Core Star that is an originally designed and engineered product in the transforming robot genre. It's passing resemblance to this Unicron character you're talking about is purely coincidental. A judge will likely see it the same way, especially as Hasbro has never pulled this before in 35 years with all the 3p and ko that has happened. I don't see them having a very strong case, to be honest.

I agree with you totally about Zeta's timing though. That said, Hasbro should have stuck to their word and when this disaster failed at the end of August, it should have just died then They said many times it HAD to be the end of August. We have a small window. Then magically that changed? In other words, they lied. So timing was bad for all around for this situation.

Honestly, I don't think Zeta even slightly impacted the preorder sales. I don't even think they even really serve the same collectors. I see the Haslab as the only largest option for, say, hardcore MP collectors, at best. The Zeta, however, works better for CHUG mainline or legends collectors. I was on the fence for Zeta, never for a second considered Unicron, even after my wife told me to get it. I'm morally against the Unicron pricing and the message it sends Hasbro about acceptable mainline pricing, that's just my moral code, and of course it looks like shit. After all this though, I am staunchly against the Haslab hunchback more than ever and pretty sure I'm all in for Zeta.

I think the stall has happened because the initial excitement wore off and people are like, shit, what am I doing? Hunchback-cron is unreasonably expensive, I'm out. Maybe you are right, maybe I am wrong. I just don't see the 2 offerings serving the same segments of the fan base at all.

All this said, I kinda don't care. I just want a titan Skorponok, man lol.