Right or wrong or otherwise grey (or gray, I always screw that up), I can say this:
It's up to Hasbro to police whatever infringements they may feel are being made against their intellectual property (a phrase that is beginning to sound more and more ridiculous), so the consumer here benefits...that is unless some of the toys are built without having passed certain safety measures for sale in NA, I guess. They get choice, and they don't even have to feel like they're doing anything 'wrong' because if there was something 'wrong' going on, then Hasbro can worry about it. Which is what is happening right now anyway, basically.
The only 3rd party bot I would ever consider would have to be in the current post-MP10 scale. If ten years from now Hasbro haven't reissued a proper Megatron, then I'll have to fill in the void somehow. But then there's ten years I don't get to enjoy having that character on my shelf (first world problems, I know
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To be honest, a big reason I don't care much for 3rd party bots are the various discussions on QC (but it's not like Hasbro is without their own fair share of QC problems in the MP line) and the fact that they don't look 'quite' the way I'd like them too.
Apollyon, as great as he looks, just has something...missing, and I can't quite put a finger on it. Much of it has to do with how he looks next to MP10. I can put MP10 next to SW and SS and they all look like they 'belong' together...the angles, their size, so on. Apollyon (and even to some degree Quakewave), from the photos I've seen, just don't have the same effect when posed next to official MP bots...in my opinion.
The entire post-MP10 line scales very well within itself, almost like you have still-lifes of scenes from the Sunbow cartoon.
So what I'm trying to say I guess is that when the right 3rd party Megatron comes along, I'll grab it. Much in the same way that I haven't (and won't) buy the current offering from Hasbro MP05: it's just not what I want.
The whole copyright infringement and the other things ultimately pale in comparison to the above fact. But since I'm buying my MPs automatically anyway, it's not like I'd return one if I didn't like it. No matter what Tracks looks like in hand, I've already pre-ordered and will keep him no matter what. Is that too much trust in Takara?...I don't know, but ever since MP10, I haven't been disappointed in the overall design of the characters, so that's saying something.
Just more food for thought.
