So, Happywell is the awesome manufacturer of the Roadbots, licensed transforming vehicles very similar to Transformers Alternators. They've come a long way since their humble beginnings.
You may also know Happywell from their toys seen at Wal-Mart. The Large Red Galaxy Defender boxes were all over the cheap toy aisle years ago. Wal-Mart wanted to get them even cheaper from Happywell but they just couldn't go any lower, so out they go. And that's the situation now with Happywell. They were at Toy Fair in order to try and find a distributor in the US.
How they got away with selling the Galaxy Defenders I will never understand. Those things were Blatant copies of popular toys. The booth had some I had never seen before, such as a boot of the White Tigerzord and Astro Megazord.
Still, the folks at Happywell were really nice to us once they understood who we were and we worked through the language barrier. Lets hope the show netted them a good distributor in the states.
Comments
11 comments postedEven these people are selling a Valkyrie!
How can they show that stuff at Toyfare when half of it is outright knock-offs?
Bandai and Hasbro are sitting right there, they don't see their own stuff there?
A bit brazen for bootleggers, meh...? :D
However, I have seen several of those in-store, including the TT Valkyrie and Granbird! But the Galaxy Mega (Astro Megazord), Won Tiger (White Tigerzord), and TFMicron Legend Megatron were new to me.
To their credit, however, some of those designs look cool while some of their redecos are better than the originals!
------------------------------
CollectionDX Staff
Otherwise all your brand-name production will suddenly suffer from a near-100% defect rate. "Sorry, seems like our factory is having problems!" Then you withdraw the lawsuit and the problems go away...
They've been noticing Happy Well selling knockoffs for the past few years. They're not that stupid.
They have in their rights to sue HWT for copyright infringement, but they're not going to do anything about this b/c they pose no major threat to their toylines.
Hasbro and Bandai will only enforce legal action if the bootlegs are exactly identical to theirs from packaging, design work, corporate logos to the core.
This kind of incident happened in 2005 with 2 recent toy companies Zhong Jin that did counterfeit G1 TFs, Kidi Toys whose responsible for manufacturing counterfeit Alternators and their products looked like the real thing and made major releases on internet stores like Ebay.
Hasbro had took notice of this and enforced their copyright action against the 2 corps. telling them to cease production of their counterfeiting in which they did for a while.
But as far as I know they're still in business and they're still making counterfeit TFs, and Hasbro has taken no further copyright enforcements.
So long as HWT's Galaxy Defender toys have weird alterations or quirks or retoolings....They're not gonna say or do anything about it.
So it seems that HWT knows what they're doing, and they know their competitors aren't gonna touch em. They're no fools.
-R78
I cant believe nobody has noticed the knock-off popy Dancouga
-Dan
CollectionDX LLC
Vice President/Co-Owner
"the other fat bearded guy at CDX"
Screw Dancouga, I'm more impressed with the shameless repop of the White Tigerzord and Astro Megazord! I wonder if the White Tigerzord will still combine with whichever megazord was out at the time!
Most of those galaxy defenders are Brave yuusha bots. The whte plane is Fire Dagwon, the next one with the giant chrome breast plate is Granbird (edit sorry, according to their site site happywell do sell Fighbird to combine it with in the same line and colour scheme)), and the one with the chrome dragon head on his chest is Shadow Dagwon. I love brave yuusha and i never managed to get their figures so if the plastic isn't too bad im stripping them and repainting them their right colours from their respective shows.
The XBots look really cool, and i think i'll give the ROADBOTS a chance.
http://happywell.smeitrade.com/showroom/model/F0020/templateIndex.do?webId=1151570409147&editCurrentLanguage=1151570409149
I juts purchase Macross copy from their Galaxy Defender series. At the price I bought, I must say it's quite good. Metal parts and good plastic.
I've got the Ford GT Roadbot and the Hummer H2 Roadbot. I have to say that they are not worth the money. The main issue I have is that none of the accessories stay on the figures in vehicle mode and all of them are VITAL to the over all look of the figure. If you loose just one piece (or parts are eaten/stolen by very misbehaving kitties) the vehicle mode is made worthless.
Also, the QC on the Hummer is terrible. Nothing lines up, the figure was a mess in the box and, to top it off, the legs are completely busted so it cannot stand up. Waste of money.
On a side note, I thought that the Xbots line was canceled.
...beyond those 3, meh.
The Dancougar looks just plain WEIRD.
Sadly, my Walmart here never got the Valkyrie run they did a few years ago.
Despite their thievery, I would like to see them get picked up by at least someone so their production numbers go up to find them easier on the secondary markets.