It will come as no surprise to people following the news on Transformers - from the
Tencent game, to
CybertronCon, to the recent
Sun Wu Kong rumour, and all the way back to the Age of Extinction collaboration - but China is one of the biggest developing markets and audiences for the robot brand, and the general manager of Hasbro China also believes it to be the case. Speaking to China Daily, Zhang Yuchen had this to say:
The Transformers may have been around for more than three decades, but Zhang Yuchen, general manager of Hasbro China, the parent company of the brand, believes that the popularity of the iconic toy figures are just about to hit its peak, especially with four Transformers films set to hit the silver screens by 2025.
Zhang is optimistic that with the surge in nostalgia for the toys and the growing profitability of selling peripheral products from a movie in China, 2017 could very well be “the year of Transformers”.
“It’s been very exciting because over the last decade, the movie universe has given old fans something new and brought in a whole new generation of Transformers fans. That is probably one of the biggest forces driving Transformers in China,” said Zhang.
“We now expect to see explosive growth in the sale of Transformers products in China with the upcoming series of movies,” he added.
Similar trends have been noticed with the 2007 Paramount live-action movie in Western markets, too, so this is not entirely new. What is new is that the brand is looking to make a big mark in the country through media, movies, games, toys and a themed hotel in Shanghai in 2018. Remember:
The second installment of the movie franchise, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen broke the 12-year box office record set by Titanic to become the most-watched foreign movie in China.
In 2014, the fourth movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, generated 300 million yuan ($45 million) in China, contributing to almost one-third of the global revenue. The upcoming one in the franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight, is scheduled to be released in 2017.
Find out more
here, and let us know what you think about this global development for the Transformers!
