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Given the use of their accessory-pack in today’s TF entry on Cliffjumper, it seems a good time to talk a little bit about my very mixed feelings on FansProject.

As the Transformers community grows and matures, it is not surprising that it is able to bring all kinds of new skills to play. From conventions to cosplay, from repaints to scratch-builds, from videos to wikis and websites, I am continually amazed by the devotion and the level of detail available for a twenty-five year old toy line. But nowhere is this more evident in the proliferation and quality of fan-based efforts.

Not intending to slight anyone here, I think the first and best illustration of these efforts are those of unicron.com, an unsung group of fans who remain insufficiently recognized for their contributions to the community. Focussed primarily on accessory packs starting with Beast Machines’ Cheetor’s blade and the Key to Vector sigma, they’ve progressed to minted Golden Disks, an actual Vector Sigma and an impressive set of Transformers: Animated accessories. Since then, more complicated designs have emerged including the World’s Smallest Dinorobots, Impossible Toys’ the Quints, and the Gears of War acecssory pack, all serving to filled gaps in our collections.

Which brings us to FansProject. Certainly there is no doubt that their skill and quality is amazing. That said, it seems that almost from the start they have been pushing the limits of fans and Hasbro’s tolerance.

From the Hasbro side, their initial work seemed to be around the edges of the fandom. However, their announcements at TFCon 2009 (and notably NOT at Botcon 2009) of moving into actual Transformers, as opposed to accessories and the like, has got to be pushing the limits of what Hasbro’s legal department will tolerate. A trailer for Hot Rod? Fine. A brand new Broadside or Springer figure? No matter how cool they may be or how unlikely it is that Takara-Tomy or Hasbro will do something similar, there are already rumours that they are tripping up against issues of copyright and licensing. It will be interesting to see how things continue there.

From the collector side, it’s a mixed bag. Certainly the pinnacle of their work thus far has been the Universe Ultra Magnus armour. But a lot of fan, myself included, were swindled by the third-parties delivers with which FansProject partnered for the Cliffjumper accessory pack. And certainly there remain hard feelings for those fans (to say nothing of TFCon organizers) who spent great effort to get Powered Commander at TFCon this year, only to learn in less than a month that a wider release was forthcoming. Despite their comments to the contrary, it’s a decision that is baffling considering the absence of any indication of their intentions up to and at TFCon itself, and in the face of continued interest in the oh-so-limited Cliffjumper set and the popular Ultra Magnus armour which did not have such a self-imposed limitation.

Here’s hoping that in the next 12 to 18 months, these guys can get their acts sorted out.