Hasbro Profits Up: DOTM Main Reason

Good for them........and us! More profits from Hasbro would naturally mean more Transformers products for us. Just wished they won't over extend/expose the line as with those Marvel/Star Wars cross overs and the PCC.

fenrir72 wrote:Good for them........and us! More profits from Hasbro would naturally mean more Transformers products for us. Just wished they won't over extend/expose the line as with those Marvel/Star Wars cross overs and the PCC.

Agreed. Let's keep it to only one non-show-supported line for the good of all; fans, children and Hasbro.

Up eh?

Coulda fooled me.

Take a look at most, if not all of the retailers around here... They're not selling much.

PCC figures could easily be integrated into the generations line/packaging. Here's hoping for repaints of those final 3 pcc figures. So I'm guessing DOTM, Prime, and Generations going forward? Or will the Prime figs be a part of the Generations line?

That's a lot of money for Plasbro. Meee Grimlock hope, they put it in first place to lunch a perfect toyline of Transformers Prime figures soon. Grimlock still want to see pictures for the TFP deluxe class toys of Wheeljack, Knock Out and Cliffjumper (please not again a simple remold/repaint of Bumblebee, we have "WAY" to much Bumblebee's outside there...) and the voyager toys of the Arachnida Triplechanger, bulky Bulkhead and Breakdown.

Grimlock needs all of them so much! Can't wait until December! The rest of the money Plasbro shall spend to create more good Dark of the Moon toys or they can give it to us. YAY!

2nd quarter is basically April, May and June, right? And the DotM line launched in June? I'm thinking they just got a massive boost from people going crazy over the movie line's initial launch. I'm sure lots of people wanted the new characters, at least. Given what I've seen at most retailers, they are CLOGGED with DotM stuff, so those numbers are kind of suprising.

I'll wait til their next quarter report before I start saying the DotM line is a failure (still can't tell if the stuff really isn't moving off shelves or if retailers just ordered so much it's constantly restocked, unlike the Generations/RtS lines), but those are still pretty strong numbers for a toyline that collectors seem to hate so much. Wish the Generations line was as successful as DotM seems to be so far.

Hurray. The brand is healthy and prosperous.

Spock'd.

Hasn't the whole point of the TV shows and movies, since their inception, been to promote the toys to provide Hasbro with immense profit?

Blast Cannon wrote:Hasn't the whole point of the TV shows and movies, since their inception, been to promote the toys to provide Hasbro with immense profit?

This appears to be a winning concept.

Autobot032 wrote:Up eh?

Coulda fooled me.

Take a look at most, if not all of the retailers around here... They're not selling much.

keep in mind once they sell their products to retailers thats their profit. its up to retailers to move the merchandise.

Hasbro made the money, which justifies more Transformer products. Good. I like that. But I can see into the future a little. The multitude of DOTM figures I have decided to pass on, are going to be moving to the discount aisle in my 5 area Wal-Marts. I mean this stuff is NOT selling here in SC. Granted, this is a tourist area, and kids on vacation may not get toys like "at home" kids, there is a healthy population of locals. I go into a Wal-Mart almost everyday (I live like 1/4 mile from one, looking for generations late comers) and nothing seems to EVER move. If the entire ends up on the cheap-o shelf, I might be getting more than I planned.

@ Mkhall

I hope I got it right. Hasbro has myriad consumer lines to support. Their current cash cow/golden goose is the TF brand (back then in the 80's it was at equal footing with the almighty RAH line). Let them continue supporting the other lines. Open up to new concepts that will surely catch the consumers' eyes just like TF did in the 80's. But they shouldn't over expose/extend it too much. In economics, basically you can't have too much of anything. If you make an analogy on food, you can't keep on eating let's say Papa John's Pizza ver. 1,2,3,4,5...............recipes

But if what I understand is correct....again, the collapse of the line in the early 90's was:

1. fans growing up who eventually lost interest
2. lack of multimedia support (unlike in Japan)

Once it suddenly becomes ridiculous (over extending the toy line) and start releasing clunkers for the heck of it (like Atari did with ET)plus a very tight economy to boot, we might experience another "toy line collapse"

fenrir72 wrote:But if what I understand is correct....again, the collapse of the line in the early 90's was:

1. fans growing up who eventually lost interest
2. lack of multimedia support (unlike in Japan)

Once it suddenly becomes ridiculous (over extending the toy line) and start releasing clunkers for the heck of it (like Atari did with ET)plus a very tight economy to boot, we might experience another "toy line collapse"

The collapse began at the 1986 movie. Hasbro made a colossal marketing mistake in thinking that toys sold as long as they were in a cartoon, and to sell more toys, you just had to replace last year's line with something new. They forgot that you need strong characters driven by top-notch storytelling (writing and directing) and voice acting. They knew it as soon as they got bags of letters from broken-hearted kids and their mothers who didn't want the characters to die off and be replaced. They have admitted this quite explicitly over the years in their DVD releases of the 1986 movie and so on. It's no accident that this time around, they didn't let Optimus stay dead for even one full movie, and only a couple other Autobots died while dozens of Decepticons were reduced to CG splinters. They learned from 1986 that their characters are more than just toys, they're brands, and to kill the character is to kill the brand. The decline was steady from that point on, until they finally went on hiatus for a couple years until Beast Wars.

Unfortunately, the new movies have failed to develop strong, fleshed-out characters beyond Optimus and Bumblebee. No other bots in the movies have received anywhere near as much character development as those two, and none are so attractive as those two (the strong, fearless leader; the brave, funny, loyal best friend) so there's little for people to grab onto or relate to besides them, and that's why there are 25 of each for every other toy. Back in G1, Soundwave was captivatingly enigmatic, Starscream was lovably conniving, Megatron was admirably cunning--every bot even on the bad guy side had a clearly defined, consistent, and interesting character. Nowadays, a couple got developed, a few got two or three lines of dialogue, but most were nothing more than mindless machines that blew things up or got blown up.

So, if you ask me, the DOTM toy line could flop, sure. There's too little that's attractive to older folks (who are the ones with money) in it so far, and too much weight being placed on the only two characters that were well-developed. But next up is Transformers Prime, which is an ongoing series that could last for quite a while and is every bit as good as the G1 cartoon, except that I find the focus on human characters with a death wish (constantly jumping into the middle of giant robot mayhem instead of trying to avoid it like any sane person would do) a bit annoying though it's an expected result of the live action films.

I'd wager that the next Transformers movie will not be a live action movie at all, but a Transformers Prime movie, as it'd be much cheaper and easier to execute and would hold the brand over until another live action deal can get worked out. But while the brand might take a back seat to some other stuff for a while, I don't think it's going anywhere. Look at Barbie--she's still with us, and it's been 60 years. (Not to mention umpteen recessions, stock market crashes, double-digit inflation, etc.) Transformers is younger, but I think at this point it's firmly entrenched in global culture. It'd take some really dumb moves by executives to kill it at this point.

Speaking of those executives, the $112 million in share repurchases remind me of what Warren Buffett always says about management buying back stock. They averaged around $46 a share. Well, right now it's trading at under $40. So next time, why not just take that $112 million and give me a nice, fat dividend boost instead?

How exactly could DOTM be the driving force behind their second quarter profits when it wasn't released until the last month of the second quarter?

Unless you northern hemispherians do your quarters differently, I think Hasbro's just putting a bit of spin on things.