If he can support himself just fine why doesn't he get a job?
I guess it just boils down to the old notion of fictional giant piloted robots being more popular in Japan than fictional giant living robots.I will say, Takara getting out a $1,000 or so Grand Dion as they are makes me rather suspicious that the market couldn’t support Unicron as Grand Dion has significantly less cultural cache.
Rock lords when we can’t even get Gobots that aren’t quick and easy repaints. What a world.
It might be a little easier to do since a lot of the Gobots designs are owned by other companies if I am right, even if Hasbro owns the characters. Maybe these won't be Rock Lord's though I am hoping ...need at least a version of Nugget.
Getting into the weeds a bit re: copyright and trademark. Copyright would apply to the specific toys of the Rock Lords back in the day. Get too close to those, and arguably Bandai could have a claim to win a lawsuit. Copyright lasts a long time. Decades.I mean Rock Lords designs would also be owned by Bandai since they were in Machine Robo too.
I'm not surprised. Beast Machines designs are either difficult or unpopular or both. Tankor should be a relatively easy one, yet the T30 toy was horrible.
He really just needed to be a Voyager or Leader. Then again, Tankor has always been two size classes smaller than he should be, so I guess it sorta fits.
The set was a bit of a flop. But it featured a MW Hoist that barely resemble the original, two random BM Vehicons, and an inaccurately colored MW Skyarp. Not to mention getting ANOTHER Mirage instead of a MW Prowl. Plus the missed opportunity to use Cybertron Defense Red Alert as MW Soundwave. And nothing is too niche after the PowerdashersMachine Wars was a wave or two of the relatively less popular late G1 molds with random colors and legacy names slapped onto them. Add on to this, it was only sold exclusive to one retailer and with no official release in other regions. I doubt they'd go out of their way to make the Machine Wars specifically but they'd probably not miss out on making Selects redecos for the recent Skyquake for example or a hypothetical Thunderclash.
Also, IIRC, didn't the Machine Wars Botcon set do particularly badly? Probably not the best metric but if even the nichest collection of superfans didn't like it very much, I'd expect Hasbro to take notes.