Thursday, January 12, 2017

Grave Considerations: Third Party Figures





A few months back, I mentioned that one of the things on the list of goals for the Child Sized Coffin was to try out a third party figure or two. Subsequently to be referred to by their common fandom moniker of 3P, the 3P market was one that I had always glanced at from afar, but never dove in to. That changed with our trek to TFCon 2016, and while I have been behind in my writing on the figures obtained, allow me an amount of time to talk about the 3P market in general before I get more focused.


I don’t know if it really needs to be said at this point in the human experience, but the Internet can be a really negative place. It seems that no matter the subject, there are people that just flat out hate it. I have probably always known this, but it has really been over the life of my blog that I’ve paid it any serious attention, I guess. I frequent the Transformer fansites, and some other places online that give voice to toy collectors and fans, so I, probably just like you, get exposure to a lot of information and opinions on figures. The 3P Transformer scene is by my observation a cool one, filled with some really neat and interesting pieces. What used to be the seemingly exclusive domain of Constructicons and figure add-on sets, the 3P world has bloomed into a fully formed industry, producing some simply outstanding figures and ideas. Much controversy has been batted around concerning the scene, ideas of whether or not a green 3P dump truck is a vicious IP infringing crime that is heartlessly stealing food from the mouths of Mr. Hasbro’s children. I’m not interested in taking up that argument, because it’s stupid for too many reasons for me to deal with this morning. Maybe some other time.

I personally have avoided the 3P market for a long time, for a number of reasons. One of them being the price of admission: 3P figures are, due to their low production runs and basically indie toy status, very expensive. Quick searches through online stores or eBay result in prices averaging $100 per figure; and, since in several cases the figures are part of a combiner team, that adds up to a mind-blowing $500-600 per set. 

This is compounded by a second issue: the Internet. If 2016’s 365 day garbage fire taught us anything, it’s that seeing something enough times on the Internet will often cause people to believe it, regardless of its actual truth content. Over the years, I’ve read a lot of opinions online about 3P figures and their quality. All aspects of their quality: plastic and materials quality, build quality, value, you name it. If you’re a member of the fandom, doubtless you’ve seen it too. I’ve read countless pieces about the plastic of 3P toys being substandard; all the while, official Hasbro plastics have grown thinner and thinner. I’ve read countless pieces about QC issues and breakage issues with 3P toys; all the while seeing things about Hasbro QC issues and the like. I’ve read countless pieces on the value of the 3P figure relative to its price; all the while, seeing things about how prices of official Hasbro figures keep increasing, and the hollow plastic keeps increasing, while the plastic keeps getting thinner, because the price of oil keeps going up. The oil argument is a long debunked moron argument that claims that the decline in Hasbro quality that occurred around 2010 is directly linked to the increase in oil prices which occurred around 2010 and the Great Recession. The argument claims that, in order to maintain its ever so slim profit margins of over a billion dollars annually, poor, poor Hasbro had to produce toys of seemingly lower quality in order to maintain their status as a global corporation. 

Prior to getting involved in the 3P market myself, these Internet reports were all I had as a window into the realm. I’d read some things that gave glowing reviews of figures, and I’d see images of fantastic toys that checked all of the boxes for me and what I like. Then I’d read people who decried the same figures as fragile hunks of plastic that were barely a step above homemade customs, tales of figures simply tearing themselves in half under the slightest manipulation; essentially robots held together with tape just long enough to survive shipment, only to turn to dust in the hands of some poor fool who was cheated of their money. People decried them as sub-KO quality figures, $100 versions of the tragically flimsy “Transformers” that often come in those big, all-included Easter baskets. 

My first 3P hands on experience came at TFCon 2016 when, passing by the display that FansProject had set up, which featured samples of a number of their wares that you could not only look at but pick up, I picked up one of their Masterpiece scale Dinobots; I forget which one. But that doesn’t matter. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, getting a good look at it. I moved one of the limbs, and heard a good, solid ratchet joint click. The sculpting was really nice, and all of the figures on display were excellently detailed. TFSource had a huge table set up and had some details on 3P toys for real cheap, so I took the plunge and bought a few.

My second hands on experience, and the first of any adequate length of time, came the next morning, when I opened FansProject Dinosan. I think I handled the figure for three minutes before I knew that all of the negative things I’d read online about 3P toys was wrong. 

I was in love. And I was hooked. 

Sure, everyone has their own opinion, and that’s fine. And maybe I’m just a fool, because it seems like every day I realize again (AGAIN) that the Internet is filled with people who exaggerate their probably legitimate complaints into some kind of world-on-fire tragedy, just because. No one has to like anything or everything, so for people who would reject 3Ps in favor of the official product are certainly within their rights to do so. But my 3P collection thus far consists of eight figures, and based on them, I make the following assessments.

The cost of these figures is pretty steep, and not for unreasonable reasons. 3P figures are (I imagine) designed and developed the same way that Hasbro and other major companies do it, without the benefits of being produced by billion dollar annual companies. I’ve gotten all eight of my figures through some pretty good deals, but the standard retail cost of the ones I own range from $69 to $99. I don’t know production numbers, as in how many of each are made, or the production specifics, like whether there’s one or two production runs of the figures and then they’re not run again, or anything of that nature, but I have to think it safe to say that TFC Toys is not making the same number of individual pieces that Hasbro is. That will contribute to a higher cost per toy as well, as now there is a comparable investment cost to make each one, but fewer will be made, presenting a steeper climb to recouping that investment cost. I am no businessman, so I don’t really have any interest in this part of the discussion other than what the figures actually wind up costing me. I will say that, based on my still limited experience with figures from two companies, the cost is pretty justified by the finished product. 

Because there are so many companies operating in the 3P scene, I’m sure quality varies wildly. While I’ve yet to have any problems, for years I had heard stories of people buying these toys and having them break easily or containing some kind of fatal issue in their construction. This I completely understand as an issue and a very severe one. But while I’m not business expert, I do know that a company charging $100 for an easily broken toy is not likely to stay in business very long, and some of the 3P companies have been around for nearly ten years by now, so some of them are obviously doing things right. 

So far, in my experiences, the 3P figures I own do some very interesting things in terms of their transformation schemes, and they are most refreshing figures to handle. They are interesting to transform, they are on par with mainline Hasbro releases in terms of quality and articulation, and perhaps best, they are toys of characters Hasbro is not making: the old “Hasbro won’t release X” gamut. Hasbro won’t release say, I don’t know, a new Misfire, and I want one. There’s a 3P company releasing an updated, 2017-quality Misfire. Now I can get the new Misfire I want; and, probably, if I wait just a bit, I’ll have a choice among a few Misfires, as 3P companies seem to make characters in groups, as is terribly evident by virtually every company releasing Dinobots. And, if you’re a Masterpiece collector, and Hasbro/Takara isn’t producing fast enough or volume enough or variety enough to satisfy your collecting, well, there are enough Masterpiece style 3P figures out there, with more being announced every day. Combiner Wars addressed another of the big 3P draws, that being G1 combiner teams that looked good as individual bots and combined forms. But, as good a line as it was, and as much a fan as I was, Combiner Wars didn’t get all the teams in the lineup, and it was a couple years behind the 3Ps, who had produced a pair of Devastators and a Menasor and Superion at least before Combiner Wars was announced. The 3Ps just seem to be years ahead of the game, as one of them has been releasing new Headmasters for like three years, while Titans Return came out last summer. 

As heated as the exchanges in the fandom get over 3Ps versus official brand loyalty, there really is no reason the two figure worlds can’t coexist on the same shelf. But I’m at this point the 500,003rd person to type that, so screw it. I’m personally glad that I got in to the 3P scene, later but far, far better than never. I’m also glad that 2017 is a Transformers movie year, as I can substitute movie toy buying with 3P figure buying, never minding the cost differences. As the movie lurches closer, I’m sure I’ll author some musings on it and related subjects, so for now, let’s leave that one alone. But in my limited 3P experience so far, I have been nothing but happy, and my 3P shopping list has gone from “I’ll pick up one at a convention if there’s something I like for cheap” to “I want this one and that one and that one and this one, and oh, these over here too, and . . .”. A year ago at C2E2 my wife was trying to prompt me to buy a 3P figure, but there wasn’t anything that I really liked among the meager selection. We went to TFCon and one of my goals was to get a 3P figure. Now, I think all the figures on my radar are 3P ones, so, I guess experience made a believer out of me.  I’m trying to keep this vague, as I’ll gush about specifics when I get to specific reviews. 

In closing, third party figures are really excellent figures. I’m past the point of caring whether I have to mention that they may not be for everyone, because they are for me. Now, I can get to the business of writing on the 3P figures I’ve obtained, and believe me, I am excited to do so.

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