3rd Party Transformers

3rd Party Transformers are "unofficial Transformers" in the sense that nearly all of them are designed after the likenesses of specific Transformers- typically ones that haven't gotten new toys in years. To be protected from potential copyright infringement from Hasbro/Takara, many 3rd Party companies are based in China, a country known for being incredibly laid-back regarding intellectual property laws. To top this off, no 3rd Party Transformers share the name of the character they are meant to invoke. An example of this is Maketoys' Devastator figure, dubbed as "Giant".

3rd Party companies originally mainly delved into the "upgrade kit" realm by making new weapons and various parts to improve official toys. A good example of this is Fansproject's "City Commander" set, which included a trailer for Classics Ultra Magnus (aka Albino Optimus Prime) to tow. Many fans were let down initially with the aforementioned "Albino Prime" repaint in hopes of getting a Magnus that resembled his armored toy/cartoon/comic design, but this trailer made the "Albino Prime" toy incredibly popular. Fansproject's City Commander was transformable, and split up into various pieces to form a suit of toon-accurate armor for the Classics "Albino Prime" Ultra Magnus figure, changing it from a basic repaint to a fully functional and Generation One accurate Magnus toy.

While 3rd Party companies still make upgrade kits here and there, such as Perfect Effect's hand and foot kit for Combiner Wars/Unite Warriors combiners, far more are fully designing their own toys.

Keep in mind when buying Third Party figures, though, is that they tend to be fairly expensive for what they are. A deluxe-sized 3P toy often costs $75- usually more, and a simple upgrade kit to give a figure a new head and gun will often cost about $20+. This is because of the niche market for such items, as these aren't regularly available in brick-and-mortar stores, and are only bought by collectors- there's not really a market of kids buying these, too. Be wary of quality control on certain toys and their respective companies to an extent. There's tons of these 3P companies around right now, and while one company may sell a $100 figure that is great quality, another company could be selling a $100 figure that is complete garbage.

Comprehensive List Of Major 3rd Party Companies (Work In Progress)
Fansproject: One of the most well known 3rd Parties, also one of the first. Produced the City Commander upgrade kit (mentioned earlier) which helped kickstart the 3rd Party Market. Generally good quality, have since gone downhill a little both in terms of design and QC. Notable releases from them include the Colossus Upgrade Kit for Energon Bruticus (which makes him resemble his G1 self a lot more), Intimidator (a complete set of combining Stunticons) Steel Core (a completely original Transformer intended to homage the Powermaster line) and many, many others. MakeToys: A split-off of Fansproject, MakeToys are one of the more adventurous 3rd Parties out there, willing to make very large and very ambitious products. They are well known for having extremely good QC and incredibly intelligent engineering, although their somewhat anime-esque aesthetic may put some people off. Notable releases include Giant (Devastator), Quantron (Computron) and Utopia (Metroplex). TFC: Another older 3P company, TFC produced the first ever complete 3P combiner, Hercules- a combining set of Constructicons. Whilst their QC is occasionally shaky, they have come a long way since the early days and they have a consistent style to them. They focus mainly on combiners, although they have done a few upgrade kits now and then. KFC: A company that has been around for a while, but hasn't produced much particularly good. Used to focus exclusively on cassettes, now are focussed on Masterpiece scale stuff.
 * Pros: Generally good quality, nice designs which strike the right balance between updated aesthetics and source material accuracy, very good engineering, generally very good paint.
 * Cons: Expensive, recent releases have been somewhat below par in terms of QC, some of their releases (especially Intimidator) are highly complex and downright scary to transform, lots of bootlegs of their products.
 * Recommended Purchases: Intimidator, Steel Core, Assaulter, Colossus Upgrade Kit (1st edition; the reissue has somewhat shoddy QC), Revolver Core and his retools.
 * Pros: Outstanding quality, great paint, incredible engineering, extremely stylish products, does things not a lot of other 3P companies are willing to do.
 * Cons: Expensive, high complexity, style may be offputting to more conservative collectors.
 * Recommended Purchases: Giant, Quantron, Utopia, the Mobine upgrade series (if you're into Power Core Combiners), Battle Tanker.
 * Pros: Products are a lot of fun to play with, often heavily using 5mm peg and port systems, durable, affordable (by 3P standards), makes use of a common combiner port system between all of their combiners, has a very distinctive style that fits in well with official Transformers, especially toys from 2005-2006 such as the Cybertron and early Classics figures.
 * Cons: QC can be hit-and-miss (most notable on Ares- their Predaking), figures are usually quite large and so may not scale well with all collections, style is an acquired taste, usually diverge heavily from source material, especially with colours.
 * Recommended Purchases: Hercules, Prometheus, Iron Army (if you like Power Core Combiners or just like small robots), Hades.
 * Pros: Somewhat affordable, easy to find, pretty much your only option for cassettes.
 * Cons: Often shoddy QC.
 * Recommended Purchases: MP hand replacements. That's about it.