>>683
Designs being legit stolen is actually a rarity, for every instance of a bootlegger stealing CAD files there's like 9 instances of the original designers themselves selling off their files/molds to make some more bux out of the KO because after some time they realized they were too ambitious in pricing the original run. That's before we even go into certain brands who, in order to move leftover stock or having realized that they initially priced them too high, simply decide to rebrand their own shit as something else and sell them for way cheaper, sometimes even including fixes for previous QC issues. A good example of this would be the Warbotron Bruticus, which was sold as 5 packs of individuals for like $550, then got sold as an OSKO set under a different brand for $250, and is now being "reissued" as a boxed gift set for $180.
>>690
>Hasbro does tend to attract the most autistic people out there
These are the same people who think they are morally superior to weebs because "at least Transformers is not an anime" and "if I could have it the way I wanted, the Japanese would never have made any piece of Transformers media".
Still, there's also the weight queen diecast autist on the other side of the argument who exclusively collects MP scale 3P because they want toys that they will never transform ever but look great doing an A pose on a shelf due to its size and paint, and can brag about its weight to others. I don't get this mentality - I personally have a mix of 3P and HasTak stuff and I'm not autistic about scale, plus if all you want is displaying something imposing for (fake) nerd cred, you could get statues that are way bigger, heavier and more high quality than any Fans Toys figure. You don't even have to exert the energy to pose them because they're already in a pretty dynamic pose!