Oh, no it's all officially licensed merchandise by companies like Tomy and Asunarosya. (And it only when stuff is coming out of Hong Kong or China you have to worry about fakes and bootlegs- for both superhero and anime goods). You have to separate the Japanese manga publishers from the toy companies- toy companies like Tomy have to buy the licenses to make the merchandise whether it's Iron Man, One Piece or Harry Potter. The problem is sometimes the toy companies will only have rights (due to the deal they signed with the publisher) to sell their products in only certain countries.
So for example, Tomy makes several products for Hetalia. The only way to buy them in the States is through an anime shop that imports it or on ebay. That's because Gentosha sold all the North American merchandising rights to Great Eastern, so we get completely different merchandise for sale here than they do in Japan. But you can also get a situation like with the Marvel Bishojo statues by Kotobukiya...Kotobukiya gets to sell those in both the US and in Japan.
It is interesting that there's no equivalent to companies like Great Eastern in Europe...I mean, from the Japanese publishers POV it makes sense to sell the rights to a North American company because the combined market for both the US and Canada would be much greater than just France or just Britain. But you'd think there would be something similar for the EU market... I'm not that familiar with copyright and licensing laws in Europe. I wonder if there's some quirk the law where the Japanese publishers would have to deal with different companies in each country as opposed to just one company for my entire continent? That may explain why they don't let the Europeans make their own merchandise.
no subject
(And it only when stuff is coming out of Hong Kong or China you have to worry about fakes and bootlegs- for both superhero and anime goods). You have to separate the Japanese manga publishers from the toy companies- toy companies like Tomy have to buy the licenses to make the merchandise whether it's Iron Man, One Piece or Harry Potter. The problem is sometimes the toy companies will only have rights (due to the deal they signed with the publisher) to sell their products in only certain countries.So for example, Tomy makes several products for Hetalia. The only way to buy them in the States is through an anime shop that imports it or on ebay. That's because Gentosha sold all the North American merchandising rights to Great Eastern, so we get completely different merchandise for sale here than they do in Japan. But you can also get a situation like with the Marvel Bishojo statues by Kotobukiya...Kotobukiya gets to sell those in both the US and in Japan.
It is interesting that there's no equivalent to companies like Great Eastern in Europe...I mean, from the Japanese publishers POV it makes sense to sell the rights to a North American company because the combined market for both the US and Canada would be much greater than just France or just Britain. But you'd think there would be something similar for the EU market... I'm not that familiar with copyright and licensing laws in Europe. I wonder if there's some quirk the law where the Japanese publishers would have to deal with different companies in each country as opposed to just one company for my entire continent? That may explain why they don't let the Europeans make their own merchandise.
Oh god- this got really long.^///^