>>6556497The short version is this. Some Japanese dude did 2 volumes of fan-art a few years back for transformers characters turning into robotic animals called T-Beast. Some were from Beast Wars and some were G1 characters but all were reimaginings of the characters.
GT eventually decided to pick up his designs and turn them into figures without contacting him. He ultimately didn't care about the idea of them using his designs and technically didn't have any way to stop them if he wanted to but his designs being produced as toys to be sold for profit did cause a few problems for him.
For starters, he had to contact one of his friends at Takara as well as several other colleagues immediately to clear the air and make it known that he had absolutely no involvement with these IP infringing figures just so he could legally protect himself and protect his reputation as an artist. The other problem is that he was attacked by autistic HasTak white knights over twitter who just assumed he was working directly with GT and lashed out at him for infringing on poor helpless HasTak's IP for profit when, in reality, he has no involvement and isn't seeing an ounce of credit or compensation. Ultimately, the white knight fanboys wouldn't listen to reason and he decided he would never do TF fanart again because this incident ruined it for him. He still ultimately doesn't care about the theft of his designs but he suffered some fallout over the whole debacle. He's not crying over it but there are still some other folks who get mad for him over the whole thing and are now bitching about GT and calling for boycotts despite the dude saying he doesn't care that much.
>>6556496Because the original design had them.
