HasLab Deathsaurus
- Thread starter Rhinox
- Start date
Oh, Hasbro likely makes sure anything that pops up the their media now is theirs. The late 70's, early 80's were a different era for the kind of thing.
Japan doesn't have work for hire contracts, you have to make an explicit assignment of copyright contractually (as you do in the UK/Guernsey where James Roberts lives).
But Takara probably just didn't bother for the manga - authors don't like such assignments, and if they don't have to sign them they won't. Nowadays it would be a condition of the assignment that you did such a transfer, but back in the day I can easily see Takara feeling it wasn't worth the hassle to demand it for a throwaway character who made one appearance when legacy characters were just not very important to the brand.
So I just remembered, Flame Toys announced a model of Gilthor in 2022, which still hasn't come out.
Now I wonder if they actually found out too late that they don't actually have the rights to use the character.
I'm also wondering if the BW manga has similar issues; no character original to those manga has ever gotten a toy, but Star Upper was in a video game released by Takara.
Now I wonder if they actually found out too late that they don't actually have the rights to use the character.
I'm also wondering if the BW manga has similar issues; no character original to those manga has ever gotten a toy, but Star Upper was in a video game released by Takara.
I've been pondering this idea of Hasbro/TakaraTomy not owning the manga-only characters, and I have to wonder, are the owners of these characters currently making anything off of them?
Like, granted, most of them are characters so obscure, they were not super-likely to get a figure made any time soon, but how much would it really cost to buy the characters outright so they are at least part of the stable of available characters when Hasbro or Takara wants to do a deep cut (Such as Solon or King Solon with Haslab Deathsaurus)?
Like, granted, most of them are characters so obscure, they were not super-likely to get a figure made any time soon, but how much would it really cost to buy the characters outright so they are at least part of the stable of available characters when Hasbro or Takara wants to do a deep cut (Such as Solon or King Solon with Haslab Deathsaurus)?
True, not in the normal scheme of things, but even human characters could still be on the table for a Haslab or some such similar special edition release.
I get that it's not something that would be a high priority on Hasbro's or Takara's Things To Do list, but they do seem to like to lean into the obscure from time to time, so it just seems weird that there are Transformers characters like that that they can't use.
The thing is, it's far more about Hasbro's risk aversion (and time efficiency) than about cost-aversion. Hasbro doesn't want to take the time to look into finding out who owns, and ultimately buy, these characters. If they don't know that they already own them, they're going to just move on. It could be that the rightsholders would gladly give the rights away, but Hasbro's never going to have investigated to learn such to be the case. They'll simply move on rather than take the time or the risk.
Not to mention the fact that Hasbro never even bothered to get back the rights to the 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon from Disney. If they aren't gonna bother with something like a mainstream series that was the face of the Transformers brand for its time, chances are even less likely that they would pursue the rights for mostly human characters from a relatively obscure Japanese manga series that barely anyone in Hasbro's English-speaking market has ever read or even likes all that much (as those old TV Magazine JG1 manga series are pretty juvenile in their writing style, aimed primarily at Kindergarten-aged readers).
There are a number of JG1 characters from the Victory manga I'd love to have but Hasbro's never going to bother with that headache, even if the actual rights holders are unaware they're actually rights holders.
Corporate legal departments are all about reducing legal headaches, even ones that have a high likelihood of not happening.
Hasbro could call Disney up tomorrow to ask what Disney's asking price would be about RiD and Disney would go "we own that?"
Which makes the whole thing extra frustrating. Between Hasbro being super cautious and Disney not even knowing what they have and likely not caring, RiD is forever going to stick in a weird limbo. The show, anyway.
Corporate legal departments are all about reducing legal headaches, even ones that have a high likelihood of not happening.
Related to that, Disney may not even care or know they own RiD. They bought out Saban Entertainment- the original rights holders- for Power Rangers and Saban bought his IP back specifically for Power Rangers, which is why RiD wasn't included in that deal.
Hasbro could call Disney up tomorrow to ask what Disney's asking price would be about RiD and Disney would go "we own that?"
Which makes the whole thing extra frustrating. Between Hasbro being super cautious and Disney not even knowing what they have and likely not caring, RiD is forever going to stick in a weird limbo. The show, anyway.
Little off topic, but there's a beloved videogame called No One Lives Forever. (It's a very funny first person spy game in the style of Bond or Austin Powers)
It was made by Monolith Productions (currently owned by Warner Bros), published by Fox Interactive (Owned by 20th fox, Sold to Vivendi Universal, then bought by Activision, now owned by Microsoft) and between Monolith/Warner Bros, Disney (now owns 20th Fox) and Activision, nobody is 100% sure who owns what portion, if any, of the franchise: and it's not worth their time to find out. Literally not worth it to hire someone to go through reams of decades old documents (paper documents, mind you) that have been passed between multiple companies, only to potentially find out that, no, they don't own the rights to the game.
So this gem of a game is never going to get rereleased or remastered, all because these huge companies don't know if they own it and don't want to bother to check.
It was made by Monolith Productions (currently owned by Warner Bros), published by Fox Interactive (Owned by 20th fox, Sold to Vivendi Universal, then bought by Activision, now owned by Microsoft) and between Monolith/Warner Bros, Disney (now owns 20th Fox) and Activision, nobody is 100% sure who owns what portion, if any, of the franchise: and it's not worth their time to find out. Literally not worth it to hire someone to go through reams of decades old documents (paper documents, mind you) that have been passed between multiple companies, only to potentially find out that, no, they don't own the rights to the game.
So this gem of a game is never going to get rereleased or remastered, all because these huge companies don't know if they own it and don't want to bother to check.
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Hoist the sails and see who cares enough to complain.
Night Dive Studios (who are the kinds of the classic FPS remaster) was looking at doing NOLF, and version of that game made to run on modern systems would be great. Sadly that ain't gonna happen. At least not until Disney buys Warner Bros and merges with Microsoft.
I'd think something for Victory would be more TakaraTomy's bugbear to deal with, anyway.
Check out this placeholder image for next year's Free Comic Book Day:
Saban might have gotten back more than just Power Rangers from Disney, after all.
Actually, there might be a new wrinkle to that which has recently emerged.
Check out this placeholder image for next year's Free Comic Book Day:
Saban might have gotten back more than just Power Rangers from Disney, after all.
Yeah, they got back (and Hasbro now owns) most of their live-action shows (including Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation) and a couple animated ones.
Technically Hasbro even had the license for Digimon for a while, but they let it lapse without ever having done anything with it.
But not RiD as far as anyone knows. If RiD lapsed the same way Digimon did (and I'm sure Disney hasn't actively renewed it), it could have just reverted to We've.
Technically Hasbro even had the license for Digimon for a while, but they let it lapse without ever having done anything with it.
But not RiD as far as anyone knows. If RiD lapsed the same way Digimon did (and I'm sure Disney hasn't actively renewed it), it could have just reverted to We've.
And then We've got swallowed by FuRyu in 2019.
It's nice to know Hasbro is as bad as us when it comes to buying things they don't need and aren't sure why they even wanted, and sometimes don't even know they bought.
Trademarks and copyrights are different. Trademarks have to be actively used and/or renewed, or someone else can use the mark (usually a name or logo). Copyrights last a long time without need for attention.
Long story short, Hasbro can use RiD concepts, since any relevant trademarks either expired, or are Hasbro's to start with. But they don't own the actual RiD series itself. THAT is protected by Copyright that Disney is believed to still own, whether Disney does anything with it or not. This means we're not going to be able to see an official release of the series on DVD, BluRay, streaming, whatever anytime soon.
And the most Hasbro has actually done with the RiD 2001 cartoon itself since its original broadcast is use audio-less clips from various episodes for Sky-Byte's Hall of Fame 2012 nominee music video (save for the final clip in the video which did use the dub audio of Sky-Byte singing from the episode "Koji Gets His Wish"), and use this screencap from "The Fish Test" of a two-handed Sky-Byte for his Hall of Fame 2023 winner entry in a Hasbro Pulse livestream:
