In the world of Masterpiece Transformers, there are plenty of third party companies that would like to get a piece of Hasbro/Takara’s pie.  Many third party companies make their own designs that look like established Transformers characters, but they are original sculpts, original transformation schemes, and ultimately provide fans with more characters and more choices for their collection than HasTak alone offers.

Of course, there are typical chinese knock-off’s (“KO’s”) of real HasTak designs, usually done very cheaply with low-grade plastics, sloppy paint, less articulation, and overall poor quality control.  These are the types of toys you’d find at Big Lots, dollar stores, or flea markets.

Then there is a relatively new category of third party products, the high quality knock-off.  These really became common as Masterpiece Transformers carbots started coming out from Takara.  Some are high quality exact copies, but others are high quality copies that actually improve some of the perceived design flaws in the official product.  Then to push the fun to a new level, some are oversized, scaled-up versions of MP Transformers official toys.  Along with my interwebs buddy, Eddie, we have termed the toys that have been improved or oversized to be knock-off upgraded/upscaled, i.e. “Knock-Ups”.

I have several oversized masterpiece Transformers, and they’re really fantastic.  They serve no practical purpose, as they don’t really scale with much else, they take up a lot of space, and they’re truly oddballs of my collection.  There is no justifiable reason to buy them except for the fact that they’re huge and incredibly awesome.

The knocked-up Sideswipe is 1:18th scale, which is really cool if you want to pose, play, or display them with 4″ action figures.  The oversized Grimlock fits nicely with the FansToys third party Dinobots in a standard-sized MP collection, as the official figure is widely considered too small.  The rest… well, they’re just intrinsically great, but ultimately pointless except for the fact that they are so very very pretty, and the “bang for the buck” is off the charts.  I need to collect another scale of Transformers like I need a hole in the head.  That being said, I hope they keep making knocked-up Transformers, because I can’t resist buying them.

I just received RobotHero oversized MP Starscream in the mail, and I had to take a few shots.  Hopefully the pictures do him justice.

‘Til all are one, collecting is half the battle!