Quote Originally Posted by kup View Post
However (and I could be wrong) but didn't the movie licensing right earn them more money than what the toys did for all 3 TF movies?
I wouldn't know figures, but I can't imagine it. I do know that they were selling about $20million a year in Australia on TF toys during the Movie years... so to beat that in licensing fees, they'd need to have over 2,000 different licensed companies (each license of about $10,000 allows for a range of items, not just per item). We'd be lucky to have 30 or 40 merchandise licenses out here in Australia. The main ones I can think of include JayJays (several items under one license), Popbox (about a hundred items, probably for a couple of licenses), Icehouse Press (one license), Funtastic I think (a couple licenses for costumes and stationary). I could look at the Merchandise sightings topic for other random items we've had in the last year, but that's the majority of non-toy stuff in this country for about 10 licenses.
Each one would be looking at a million dollar license, per year, to beat Hasbro's sales in recent years.

The movie made $37 million at the box office last year for DotM in Australia, compared to an estimated $20 million in toy sales... and I'd imagine licensing would be making up a distant third in this country, with the scarcity of items here.
But that was the point though - licensing shouldn't be an element of revenue for Toyline Brands... it should be an element of marketing and advertising. For a greater success of the Toy brand itself.