>>5236707A small group of people, including ex-Hasbro employees, started a Kickstarter under the company name Play With This Too earlier this year for a line of toys vaguely based on Transformers Pretender shells. There was a bit of drama here and there over it, based on how it was just being run in general, the overbearing spamposting by a guy named Scaleface who wasn't an official spokesperson or PR guy, just a big fan (I mean, it's not like they had the money to pay him), the hiring of someone who was loathed in the community to paint the demo figure, and so on. They didn't show anything but CGI renders until nearing the end of the Kickstarter's run. Some people bristled at the fact that at least one of the people from PWWT publicly decried third-party companies but were now making figures based on the Pretender shells, and occasionally painted as other references from other properties. The Kickstarter didn't reach its goal, but it came close.
They went for another go recently, and failed even harder. They tried to clamp down on Scaleface, half-succeeding, and actually showed prototypes for the figures. Nevertheless, there were the same issues as before, combined with the fact that the figures shown were less interesting, they got rid of the 'inner figures' (unlike actual Pretenders, these updated ones were not able to open up and hide a robot inside, but the first run included robots that could disassemble and become accessories and were modeled on the original inner 'bots) altogether, and then nearing the end, showed off a figure that was literally just a copy of a (minor) Transformers character. A backer asked them about it on Twitter, fearing that such blatant infringement rather than the slightly less on the nose 'references' would get the KS shut down, and PWTT blocked them rather than address it. They laughed it off in the forums, and Scaleface, unofficial cheerleader, crowed about how when they did it it was different..
