>>9304125The repaint mini-bot pack was done without consulting any of the top brass in Takara Japan. When they found out, they removed the names of the Go-Bots characters from the package and told them not to fucking do that ever again.
After that, Hasbro US (who used the name Leader One for a mini-con slave packaged with Armada Megatron) basically confirmed publicly they own the rights to the US Gobots names and the TV show human characters/storylines and lore, but not the actual character designs.
Adding to the complications, they tried to make a Crasher figure out of a repaint of TF Classics Mirage done up in her color scheme, but the name "crasher" was too generic to trademake, hence them having to rename the toy Fracture (and dumped her into the first movie line in an end wave assortment that had a super small production run and only available at IIRC, Target).
They had better luck with Bugbite by simply recoloring deluxe Bumblebee toys ala the mini-bot pack; but they have given him different origins to make him a proper Transformer that happens to have a different name.
Hasbro later reacquired a license for Go-Bots a couple of years back as part of a deal to help Warner Brothers put out the Go-Bots cartoon on DVD; they later used that license to put out the arthouse Gobots mini-series IDW did.
>>9304132 meanwhile was made under a different license, as they got the rights to an anime based on Machine Robo which featured a lot of the original core characters from the Go-Bots line. They are sold under their Machine Robo names and was one of the reasons Hasbro agreed to help Warner get the rights issues sorted out to put out the Gobots cartoon. But in general, Hasbro has no real interest in reviving Go-Bots in general outside random repaints.
