Fall of Cybertron figures! (images added - post 21)

[FFN]

Close. Every Toyfair (in around March), Hasbro (all toy companies really) pressure retailers to pre-order as much as they can convince them toy buy, and using the success of the second movie, Hasbro were able to fool the Retailers into thinking that the third movie toys would be even more successful. Retailers bought up big, and they got burnt.
Now the kids, fans and collectors suffer because retailers cancel any future stock orders they signed up to at Toyfair, and lose money on the brand by clearing stock out at a loss... making it less likely to order new stock of that brand when they finally do clear their shelves.

"fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me"

That's kind of a fannish way to sum of that DOTM toys didn't do as well as ROTF toys in Australia.

Yeah, Hasbro's job is to convince retail buyers that their product is "totally rad" and will sell by the truck load, and "fooling" them, as you say, suggests Hasbro had some sort of ability to see into the future and knew that DOTM would not do as well (or something) and were tricking their customers into purchasing stock they knew would not shift.

From what I recall of Hasbro's Q3 2011 earnings report, CEO Brian Goldner acknowledged that collectors in particular weren't as keen on DOTM toys because it was the same cast of characters again.

So in essence, the current way of marketting for Transformers is not helping Hasbro, retailers or consumers.

Hasbro loses sales from cancelled orders. Reatilers lose money by having to discount. Consumers lose by having the same characters for the next year with no new stock.

This would suggest to me that the current method is flawed. Perhaps a new way should be considered. But then I am a logical thinking dude who wonders about Astralian Business practices.

According to Hasbro's Q4 2011 earnings conference call, boys grew by 35%, with Transformers seeing 85% growth in 2011. The TF brand managed to bring in $483 million in revenue in 2011.

Hasbro reported that it did not do as well (overall) in the United States and Canada in 2011, though I'm not sure what exactly factored in that, as girls toys were down by 11% in 2011.

It seems like they're doing well for themselves.

IMO 3rd parties exists because Hasbro has neglected a clearly profitable section of their market.

If Hasbro continue releasing stuff like this Bruticus, then there won't be a need for 3rd parties. It is really all up to Hasbro's as it has always been.

Hasbro "neglecting" to cater to a relatively small portion of their customers doesn't automatically mean it's perfectly alright for somebody else to step up and profit from their intellectual property, and in some cases, knock off the transformation engineering and knock off the actual molds (all of iGear's Fake Masterpiece stuff) or knock off customs (iGear again) and garage kits made by actual fans. (X-Transbots)

I would think that Hasbro is doing Bruticus now because he's in the game. The last time they did biggish combiners was because Energon revolved around the Autobots combining. I'd love for them to do more combiner teams, but I acknowledge that they need a way to sell them.

Exactly. Hasbro makes their choices & a lot of them are bad ones when it comes to cashed up fans looking to spend their hard earned with them.

My Non Insecticons are better than 95% of the product Hasbro has released in the last 12 months here. That is not saying how high quality they are but how shabbily we fans get treated by Hasbro on a ongoing basis.

Considering we're not a significant proportion of their target markets? We're treated alright. It seems like when you're talking about "how shabbily [Hasbro treats you]" you actually mean "Hasbro isn't doing exactly what I want, and thus, I am offended."

Look at Generations, which are G1 character toys, some of them were quite obscure characters you never expected to see as toys again, or ever. Is that not good enough? Months back, some others hassled me about how great Mattel was at doing a direct-market approach for their Ghostbusters and MOTU stuff. My American friends hate dealing with Matty Collector. It is not a system Hasbro should emulate, and in any case, doesn't need to, because they *already* sell their collector-slanted figures in normal retail outlets.