Comic Book Resources: Licensing in Disguise and Transformers 2?

Seibertron wrote:I remember something vaguely from BotCon 2006 that Aaron Archer said about the merchandising regarding the movie. If I recall correctly, someone from the audience asked the Hasbro panel about why Hasbro was putting all of their other product lines on hold during the time of the movie. I think this was in regards to Hasbro stopping the Classics and Alternators lines before the movie and possibly starting them up again after the movie. I believe Archer responded saying something about it begin because of the licensing deal that they made with Paramount/Dreamworks regarding merchandising. He said something to the effect of the profits of the movie merchandise would be shared between Hasbro and the movie company (companies?). It was stated that extra Transformers products on the market would be viewed as competiting with the movie line so Hasbro put all of their efforts primarily into movie merchandise and all of their other TF lines on hold during that time.

If I remember any of that incorrectly, please correct whatever's wrong by all means.

If what I remember above is what was stated, humor me for a moment while I share my thoughts with all of you. The older and more experienced I am becoming through my ventures in the business world, the more my views of Hasbro's decisions changes. Obviously everything they do is simply to make money. If they can't make money on something, they're not going to do it. That's just the nature of business. Day in and day out, people go to work at Hasbro's offices around the world and make decisions that are thought to be good business decisions - regardless if we, the fans, agree with the final outcomes of these decisions.

None of us know the details of the deal Hasbro made with the movie company. If, in fact, they did make a deal to share profits of movie merchandise, what if Hasbro's lawyers suggested that the designs of the robots should be different from the past 23 years of Transformers products to protect Hasbro's rights to the look of famous characters such as Optimus Prime, Megatron and Starscream. By having the robots look drastically different from anything Hasbro has done in the past, this would protect Hasbro from any future debates regarding who has the rights to merchandising later down the road. There will always be a "unique" look to the movie robots from any other Transformers product simply to protect the rights to Hasbro receiving full profits on other lines. That way, no one from the movie company can ever say "Hasbro, you owe us X millions of dollars because you are now using the movie robot design in your main product lines." I imagine there would be a lot of gray area from a shared profit merchandising deal if the movie robots looked exactly or very similar to previous Hasbro products.

I've given this theory a lot of thought during the past few days. It seems like there could certainly be "more than meets the eye" with the merchandising deals. I don't think I've read about anyone discussing this train of thought before so I thought I'd throw it out there to see what some of you think. Maybe someone who has dealt with legal scenarios before regarding copyright and trademark issues can help shed some light on this theory I have. I'd love to read further explanations to the robot designs looking the way they do in regards to possible legal ramifications of a licensing deal.

Lord Crump wrote:So tfs is to split in two? One continuation of the ones we know and love, and one of this all-new outlook?

Seibertron wrote:I found my original post about this theory from Google's cache of Seibertron.com which was originally posted on Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 at 11:57 am:

Seibertron wrote:I remember something vaguely from BotCon 2006 that Aaron Archer said about the merchandising regarding the movie. If I recall correctly, someone from the audience asked the Hasbro panel about why Hasbro was putting all of their other product lines on hold during the time of the movie. I think this was in regards to Hasbro stopping the Classics and Alternators lines before the movie and possibly starting them up again after the movie. I believe Archer responded saying something about it begin because of the licensing deal that they made with Paramount/Dreamworks regarding merchandising. He said something to the effect of the profits of the movie merchandise would be shared between Hasbro and the movie company (companies?). It was stated that extra Transformers products on the market would be viewed as competiting with the movie line so Hasbro put all of their efforts primarily into movie merchandise and all of their other TF lines on hold during that time.

If I remember any of that incorrectly, please correct whatever's wrong by all means.

If what I remember above is what was stated, humor me for a moment while I share my thoughts with all of you. The older and more experienced I am becoming through my ventures in the business world, the more my views of Hasbro's decisions changes. Obviously everything they do is simply to make money. If they can't make money on something, they're not going to do it. That's just the nature of business. Day in and day out, people go to work at Hasbro's offices around the world and make decisions that are thought to be good business decisions - regardless if we, the fans, agree with the final outcomes of these decisions.

None of us know the details of the deal Hasbro made with the movie company. If, in fact, they did make a deal to share profits of movie merchandise, what if Hasbro's lawyers suggested that the designs of the robots should be different from the past 23 years of Transformers products to protect Hasbro's rights to the look of famous characters such as Optimus Prime, Megatron and Starscream. By having the robots look drastically different from anything Hasbro has done in the past, this would protect Hasbro from any future debates regarding who has the rights to merchandising later down the road. There will always be a "unique" look to the movie robots from any other Transformers product simply to protect the rights to Hasbro receiving full profits on other lines. That way, no one from the movie company can ever say "Hasbro, you owe us X millions of dollars because you are now using the movie robot design in your main product lines." I imagine there would be a lot of gray area from a shared profit merchandising deal if the movie robots looked exactly or very similar to previous Hasbro products.

I've given this theory a lot of thought during the past few days. It seems like there could certainly be "more than meets the eye" with the merchandising deals. I don't think I've read about anyone discussing this train of thought before so I thought I'd throw it out there to see what some of you think. Maybe someone who has dealt with legal scenarios before regarding copyright and trademark issues can help shed some light on this theory I have. I'd love to read further explanations to the robot designs looking the way they do in regards to possible legal ramifications of a licensing deal.

Liege Evilmus wrote:But if they're so intent on making this as something different, why not just make something different!?!