3rd Party Discussion (thread formerly "Fans Project?")

[Chaotic Descent]

Actually... technically... aren't all BotCon exclusives before OTFCC "unlicensed"? I thought some early exclusives were almost canceled because they didn't ask permission... but wait... they're official molds in new colors. They would have had to go through Hasbro... so maybe I'm totally wrong. It would still be really funny if all of those are unlicensed and "don't count". :>

[brr-icy]

i vote for them to be included, as the powered commander is a TFcon exclusive and the unicron.com vector sigma was available at botcon, those two companies at the very least should be included on the site, a lot of hard work goes into their sets, and if you include botcon, they should be there, in a category maybe called collectors upgrades or something

[shmax]

We'll get to 'em, eventually. There are a few major issues for toys in general I want to solve (variant handling, blind-packing, etc), and then the site will be expanding to cover other toy brands (Star Wars, G.I.Joe, Gobots). Once we get to where we can expand easily, the first non-Transformers brand will probably be a sort of generic transforming robots category. Just hang in there, and all will be groovy. But for now, all I'm interested in is photos! Will you be participating in the contest?

i vote for them to be included, as the powered commander is a TFcon exclusive and the unicron.com vector sigma was available at botcon, those two companies at the very least should be included on the site, a lot of hard work goes into their sets, and if you include botcon, they should be there

[brr-icy]

We'll get to 'em, eventually. There are a few major issues for toys in general I want to solve (variant handling, blind-packing, etc), and then the site will be expanding to cover other toy brands (Star Wars, G.I.Joe, Gobots). Once we get to where we can expand easily, the first non-Transformers brand will probably be a sort of generic transforming robots category. Just hang in there, and all will be groovy. But for now, all I'm interested in is photos! Will you be participating in the contest?

i vote for them to be included, as the powered commander is a TFcon exclusive and the unicron.com vector sigma was available at botcon, those two companies at the very least should be included on the site, a lot of hard work goes into their sets, and if you include botcon, they should be there

i only have a few figs that you don't have photos for, but if i get a camera, i can get pics of henkei thundercracker and city/powered commander and a few others

[Encore_Prime]

I wouldn't want stuff included unless it was purely Hasbro/Takara Transformers. I mean I don't hate KO's, I have a few myself and lately have been contemplating the Dinobot KO's, but I don't think I'd want them here.

I like that it's a pure TF site.

[tusko]

To totally derail the thread:
What about comics? First TF stuff was Marvel TF #1.

Otherwise, I think remake/copies should not be included in this site.

Fansproject stuff should be under an unlicensed/limited release section.  There is a lot of TF paraphernalia which is good to keep a record of and Protector and the like are clearly TF fiction inspired.

[Forgotten]

I think FansProject, MasterMind Creations, Perfect Effect, Junkion Blacksmith & Crazy Devy stuff should definitely be added to the site.  They are considered highly collectible & are the only way we get some of the stuff we're wanting.  I don't think stuff like iGear's PP(Masterpiece KOs/Retools) should be on here, but the original companies should definitely get a spot.  Think about it, since FansProject debuted filling in voids that HasTakTom has left, the big 3 have really stepped up their game.  Do you honestly think we would be getting all the beautiful fandriven stuff like the Generations/Reveal The Shield line if they didn't prove there was a definite demand for that type of design?  Look at how small the original Classics line was, then enter 3rd party companies improving/modifying and look at how vast the new Classics line(starting with Universe/Classics 2.0) is.  I know i'm a nobody on here but that's my opinion.

[shmax]

No argument, but we have some work to do before we can properly handle the non-official stuff. We'll get there, hopefully soonish...

[Tripredacus]

Does this mean that one day, I can add my Space Wars oversized Gigatron to my collection on Shmax?  :mrgreen:

[tlm_pr]

I'm new here so perhaps I haven't looked thoroughly enough, but is there a way to list 3rd party Transformers and add-ons? If there isn't, could it be added?

I think those things are part of a collection, from individual 'bots to enhancements. It also adds to the overall value of one's collection.

[tlm_pr]

Argh! I made a topic for this yesterday and now I find this today.

I see that at the beginning a good amount of people were opposed, being 2008 and not many stuff being developed by 3rd party companies. But to this day there's a fair amount of products out there, both add-on and individual robots. Hopefully, I wish these items can be added here, specially add-on parts.

However, when it comes to individual figures (Fansproject and Igear robots among others) they should be on a separate section with their own classifications. Maybe within the Transformers tab or on a separate area that isn't a "knockoff" area since most of this figures aren't unlicensed reproductions of an existing figure but a new figure by themselves.

[shmax]

Well, we've been sort of reluctant to start in on the non-Transformers stuff mainly for technical reasons. It's something we want to do in a very deliberate way, such as a category that is a sibling of the main "Transformers" category. Unfortunately, there's a lot of code right now in the system that makes assumptions about what the root of the tree is (right now it's "Transformers", but after expanding the tree as discussed, the new root would be something else, such as "Toys"). So it's doable, I just need to get to it, and there's a lot of other work I have half-finished I need to do first.

In the meantime, we could sort of cheat and just add a  "Other Transforming Robots" (or whatever) category as a child of "Transformers", and move it later once the other work is complete. I'm leaving that sort of decision to Engledogg, as he's the one that will wind up doing most of the work. Maybe if you ask reaaaaalllllly nicely...

[Tripredacus]

I'd figure that Pre-TFs would be a higher priority to KOs. Having the ability to add Diaclone would probably lay the framework for adding any other types of toys, including KOs.

[shmax]

Engledogg isn't really against the idea of getting a head start on off-brand transforming robots, per se, but it's just not his specialty, and he doesn't want to be responsible for fact-checking part lists, molds, and so on. Do we have any volunteers interested in a moderator position to take charge of such an effort? Think carefully before you shoot those hands up--it can be time-consuming work...

[SoS]

Shmax,
I'm personally all for adding 3rd party products, lord knows I buy plenty of them: but I think we need to tackle the Challenge of the Gobots and Diaclone stuff first. I'm sure Engledogg agrees with me in that regard.

--SoS