Vakanai wrote:The One and Only wrote:SonOfGorgo wrote:This may or may not be necroposting, but I'll take the risk anyway.
I would love to see a Primordia series produced by Polygon Animation. Say what you may about Transformers Prime, Robots in Disguise 2015, and even the Godzilla Monster Planet trilogy. At least the transformers and monsters did look cool in those, and I'd love to see the Inhumanoids reimagined in their style.
A spin-off series to
TF:PRIME was in the works entitled
UNIT:E (
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Unit:E) involving the human cast of the show. Agent Fowler. Jake. Miko. Raf. And Ratchet who stayed behind on Earth at show's end. It was intended as a backdoor pilot to other Hasbro properties like Stretch Armstrong, M.A.S.K., Candyland, and the renamed Inhumanoids, Primordia. Probably would've been animated in the style of the follow up to
PRIME,
Robots In Disguise. Although I thought the CGI used in
Prime would've done an excellent job with Tonrar and the other residents of Primordia.
According to
GODZILLA:Rulers of Earth artist Matt Frank. The premise for
Primordia, was that the monsters featured, and probably some not featured in the
UNIT:E made their presence known due to the threat Tonrar and the others thought humanity presented to the Earth over their abuse of the environment. And rise up to wipe us out.
Frank also stated that one of the main impediments to a long awaited revival of the Inhumanoids stemmed from legal issues. Partially because the parent company of the Inhumanoids, Hasbro, also at the moment the rights to create figures to Marvel Comics' characters. Most notably, the
Inhumans.
Which probably Hasbro thought would cause too much confusion among the consumers. Also, apparently Hasbro no longer has the rights to names or characters to the Inhumanoid line. It came up during the controversial run of writer Aubrey Sitterson on
G.I. JOE, where he planned to have Metlar and company make their long awaited return. Outlines were approved, but right in the middle of everything, Hasbro told the writer the Inhumanoids couldn't be used do the company no longer having rights to names. So that's why kaiju sized versions of the creatures from third
G.I. Joe:ARAH mini series, "
Pyramid of Darkness" , the Fatal Fluffies.
Was it revealed then who does have the rights if not Hasbro?
Matt Frank didn't say who maybe had the rights. But it read like that Hasbro had just let the rights to the toy line lapse, and haven't even bothered to renew the copyright. Back in 1999, 2000, something similar had happened with the
G.I. JOE line when Hasbro been re-releasing a lot of the classic figures after a couple years of the Real American Hero's absence. Some classic character names like General Hawk, the Baroness, and Roadblock couldn't be used with the new batch of figures. So General Hawk was released as General
Tomahawk. Saying on his filecard it another nickname code-name. Roadblock and Baroness' figs were released as total new characters. Double-Blast and Chameleon respectively. When Devil's Due came out with a new Joe mag picking up where the original left off. Hawk was still called Hawk, occasionally with someone using the Tomahawk name. But Roadblock and Baroness still went by their monikers. Hasbro just couldn't make, market any figures with those names until they got the rights issues sorted. Which eventually happened. I also think that's what went on with other evil faction, the Red Shadows. When introduced in the Devil's Due mag, the rights for the characters that were known by some long time Joe, Action Force (British name for the Joe brand). Weren't used, so a new group of villains were created, including new uniforms. It wasn't until a few years later that the classic characters, Black Major, Muton, and classic uniform designs, were brought back as part of a convention exclusive set. Then started showing up in the IDW ,Larry Hama continuation of the Marvel series.
If I did have to speculate if anyone owns the rights to the characters, it would probably be Marvel Entertainment. On some of the prototype card backs for the never released second series of the
INHUMANOIDS. Like Tank here, sorry, couldn't find a better image.
The copyright states Inhumanoids were copyrighted under Marvel Comics Entertainment Group. Wouldn't mind seeing if some of the those who worked on the original line knew about this. But looking at the cards for the original set, they were all listed as Hasbro Inc. properties.
Although since Marvel, along with Sunbow, produced the series, commercials, and the short lived comic series. I had always thought they had worked closely with Hasbro on the comics, and series' to their various toy lines, advertising. It wasn't that far out there see the House of Ideas get some mention. Likewise, IDW, has had a similar close relationship in promoting the
TRANSFORMERS ,and designs of some the characters.
