The original Chinese packaging for the F-01 "Goraion"
Dream EX (童梦EX机甲周边系列 Tóng Mèng EX jī jiǎ zhōubiān xìliè) is a Chinese toy company that has produced IP infringing toys of a few Japanese anime. Among them was its first entry in its First Gokin line, the F-01 "Goraion" which is identical to Golion. Unlike most IP infringing items, "Goraion's" mold would later be converted into an officially licensed toy by Toynami.
"Third Party" phenomenon
After the release of the Transformers movies, a phenomenon occurred where IP infringing toy companies aimed at high end collectors by releasing addons to existing Transformers toys. Shortly after, these companies would be making Masterpiece styled toys that aims to have better quality and engineering that would appeal to collectors. However, due to the fact that they don't have official licenses, they often face quality control issues. This would lead to collectors incorrectly labeling these unofficial high end collectibles as "third party".
This phenomenon would also extend to other super robot franchises including Voltron.
F-01 Goraion
The officially licensed version of the toy
Dream EX launched its "First Gokin" line which would emulate Art Storm and Action Toys' ES Gokin line in which they make officially licensed die-cast "super deformed" collectibles.
In order to avoid issues without licensing and copyright troubles, Dream EX would have to make certain tweaks to surpass certain loopholes. "Goraion" would be the phonetic pronunciation of Golion with its direct romanization used as its title. Additionally the title 百獣の王 is a very simple change to the official title 百獣王 in Beast King GoLion's name.
Tweaks to actual toy is mainly on the horns where it is slightly hollowed out opposed to how all official Lion Force Voltron toys have the horns stay solid. The paint also had metallic gold instead of yellow as an attempt to deviate it from the official likeness of Golion.
The original IP infringing toy was released in 2013, but was later turned into an officially licensed toy by Toynami in 2014. The main changes were changing the metallic gold paint to plain yellow and changing its stand to have the official Voltron logo on it.
Other entries in toy lines
Like how "Goraion" uses the phonetic pronunciation of Golion, other copyrighted characters in the IP infringing lines use different spellings or direct translations of their names to exploit copyright loopholes.
- First Gokin F-02 雷霆の王 Six Gods - SD figure of Godmars
- First Gokin F-03 未来の合体 Deltanious - SD figure of Daltanious
Both of the above are of characters who were designed by the same toy engineer and had their original toys produced by Popy.
See Also
External Links
- Dream EX's Weibo (Chinese)
- Dream EX's info page at 78dm.net (Chinese)
| V • E Voltron toys and collectibles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Current License-Holders | Bandai • Playmates Toys | |
| Past License-Holders | Funko • LJN • Matchbox • Mattel • Miracle Production • Panosh Place • Toynami • Trendmasters | |
| Related articles | Chogokin • Dream EX • IP infringing items • Katsushi Murakami • Merchandise | |