Wickedly cute Chinese "handmade" plush FiM ponies-

[Galactica]

So there is that site- Alibaba.com- where you can buy most if not all of those cute plushies coming out of China.  And they are REALLY cheap- like .50 - $3.99 each.  Only problem is- a minimum order is 2000.  That is a lot of pony.

Well- there is this smaller site- Aliexpress.com (which is related to the Alibaba one).  They offer the plushies for a decent price-  price$15.30 - $17 a piece- + $3.54 a piece for shipping-  So the cost per plush would be at most $21 each.  HOWEVER- the minimum order is 100!  That is still quite a lot of ponies.

EDIT- thanks Bronypony!  I guess these aren't even real !!!



AppleJack
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/611522491-Custom-Embroidered-My-Little-Pony-Plush-Applejack-Minky-Fabric-wholesalers.html
Young Granny Smith -
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/611522979-Custom-Handmade-Young-Granny-Smith-MLP-Plush-wholesalers.html
Luna
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/614617757-Custom-Handmade-Young-Granny-Smith-MLP-Plush-wholesalers.html
Black Luna
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/611482079-My-little-pony-Friendship-is-magic-Filly-Luna-custom-plush-Open-Commission-wholesalers.html
Lyra
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/611533245-My-little-pony-Friendship-is-magic-Lyra-Heartstrings-handmade-minky-plush-wholesalers.html
Rarity
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/611489993-My-Little-Pony-Friendship-is-Magic-Rarity-Plush-wholesalers.html

AppleBloom
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/614617861-Applebloom-pony-plush-custom-hand-made-fan-art-wholesalers.html

[Sarahlacewing]

Filly Luna is so cute!

[Dragonflitter]

While I agree they are very cute, I wouldn't want to buy 100 of them and then trade with Arena members and put the rest on ebay. These are copyrighted characters that belong to Hasbro. Doing business with unlicensed goods is stealing, and copyright theft.

It's one thing to order a single plushie from someone to keep for yourself because you like the character. You're paying the plushie maker for the materials and their time and effort. But to buy 100 of them (which pretty much means these are mass produced), that's making a profit and there is no way that is legal. Hasbro owns these characters and is seeing no profit from these bootleg plushies.

[ponylady]

I am scooting this over to Wanted for you.  Thanks PonyLady

[khyron]

I'm with dragonflitter 100%.  Hasbro has the right to profit fom their property, and they do that when we buy products from them or their resalers.  In turn these profits fuel further products and programming. 

Buying from companies outside of this cycle cheats us all.

[Bronley]

Like the taobao 'custom plushies' I've seen linked here before, these seem to be advertisements for what they think they COULD make, not what they actually HAVE made.

For example, the Applejack one links to this image:
http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/611522491_3/Custom-Embroidered-My-Little-Pony-Plush-Applejack-Minky-Fabric.jpg
And running that through Google Image Search - Search by Image finds it in EQD's Plushie Compilation 75 with this image:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S_GEyjYQfEA/UB2ctdEe_7I/AAAAAAAAKEE/iHXmzsLAVDE/s640/applejack_pony_plush_by_siriasly-d59izck.jpeg
And also finds it on siriasly.deviantart.com (but the link is not valid now)

Note the filename 'by siriasly' and watermark of siriasly.deviantart.com. EQD's Plushie Compilation 75 links the source as
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&_trksid=p4340.l2557&rt=nc&nma=true&item=300753881721&si=IYvI33HUEc7M7Qne3cZSTfQ1Nuk%253D&viewitem=&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc (which doesn't have the DA watermark and is probably where the aliexpress user stole the images from).

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to repeat these search steps for the other aliexpress images.

Note that not all aliexpress users are (probable) liars like this: I've ordered microswitches from there to replace the worns ones in my mice.

EDIT: Also note that the aliexpress description doesn't match the picture: "Her eyes/cutie mark is iron on and secure/permanent." vs. the picture is of machine embroidered eyes/cutie mark.

EDIT2: Source of Young Granny Smith images: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D11%26meid%3D1182245789230601925%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D1005%26rk%3D5%26&_trksid=p4340.l2557&item=271030184782&nma=true&rt=nc&si=IYvI33HUEc7M7Qne3cZSTfQ1Nuk%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

[Galactica]

Oh wow! Thanks Bronley- very observant!  I didn't realize that they weren't even real products- yikes!   Also- I did some research on Aliexpress and apparently anyone can register as a vendor there-the vendors require Western Union- and there is not much to be done if the seller decides not to send you what you ordered.  So it would be WAY to risky to buy a lot of 100.

Regarding whether or not buying knock offs hurts Hasbro- I disagree that it does.  Buying a knock off of something Hasbro doesn't even make doesn't hurt Hasbro any more than buying a custom pony does.  (Of course buying something that Hasbro will or has released is totally different.)
 
I know Hasbro has started to make the plushes now- but they are cheap and quite frankly, not cute.  Buying a knock off is no worse than buying a custom.  They are not losing any of my dollars since I wouldn't buy the current plushes anyway.

[Dragonflitter]

No one said buying knock-offs hurts Hasbro. That's not the issue at all. The issue is that the characters are their copyright and no one has permission to mass produce those characters unless Hasbro gives it to them. It's illegal and morally wrong to take a character that doesn't belong to you and make tons of money selling off merchandise of it without permission.

But it's a moot point since apparently the plushies don't even exist and the photos are stolen. Wow. That was a shocker to me. o_0

[Galactica]

Okay- so you are okay with someone who makes custom ponies for a living- but if someone makes 100 of the same character at once- that is morally wrong? 

That doesn't make sense.

[Maniah]

Okay- so you are okay with someone who makes custom ponies for a living- but if someone makes 100 of the same character at once- that is morally wrong? 

That doesn't make sense.

Custom ponies are customs.. Originals. Not copyrighted. And for one thing, You can't make a "living" off of custom ponies. The time invested Vs. the money received does NOT even balance out to minimum wage.

You don't have to like the law, but you need to at least know and respect the law. There are copyright laws. They exist. They are real things that are not make believe. There are also clauses to the law that allow for the reproduction of fanart of copywrited characters or media images so long as they are not mass produced and marketed.

This is such a clear example of copyright infringement. There is no room for argument over it being right or wrong. To do so is just an attempt to make yourself feel better about wanting to buy into something like this. If it helps you sleep better at night, then rationalize all you like. It still doesn't make you any less wrong.

Respect copyright laws.

[Galactica]

Don't lecture me about the law- I am a lawyer.  There is nothing wrong or illegal about buying those Chinese knock-offs.  I will leave it to Hasbro's legal team to decide whether or not the knock offs actually infringe on any copyrights- and encourage you to do the same.  We don't have all the facts and the law is not as clear and easy as you might think. 

While you are certainly entitled to your own opinions- your sanctimonious advice about the morality of buying knock offs is annoying.

There are also clauses to the law that allow for the reproduction of fanart of copywrited characters or media images so long as they are not mass produced and marketed.

Um- sorry to inform you, that is simply not true.

[ponylady]

This is an early warning to keep things civil. Thank You~PonyLady

[Maniah]

You might be a lawyer.. But there are MANY areas of law. If you have not heard of "Fair Use", then you might look it up. Fair use is what allows people to reproduce things in a fanart fashion, so long as it is not a mass produced item meant for profit.

When a court looks into a copy write violation, one of the things they have to determine is if it falls under the guidelines of Fair Use. One of the things that they look at is if the violation will impact the creators current, or potential market.

Hasbro has a current market on making plushies of their characters. They have a potential market for making plushies of characters that they have not released yet. Thus, the mass production of plushies by anyone other than hasbro does indeed violate copywrite laws. It does not fall under the fair use policy because they are looking to mass produce them. It would effect the market that Hasbro currently has.

People who make these plushes as a hobby are protected because they are not interfering with the market. The sale of 5 or 10 of their toys per year will not harm hasbro's market.

I hope that I have managed to explain this civilly, politely, and clearly. If at this point you still don't understand.. Well, I'm not coming back to this thread. I encourage you to read up on the laws a bit yourself so you can see what I am talking about. 

[Galactica]

It seems as though you have some misunderstandings about the law.  Your custom work that uses copyrighted images and names (ie MLP stuff) is derivative and does infringe on Hasbro's copyright.  However- the issue isn't that simple.  I added some info here you might want to look at, since it really doesn't seem that you know what you are talking about.

http://mlparena.com/mlp/index.php/topic,307582.msg384095.html#msg384095

[pop-girl]

Locking this as it is no longer a wanted thread and completely off topic.