TF4 - 2014

[GoktimusPrime]

Brian Goldner is listed as the executive producer of all 3 TF movies (as well as Rise of Cobra). Hasbro probably made more profit from the box office take than from the toys.

Fair point. I'm still not sure about them sharing those profits with TakaraTOMY though.

[griffin]

I think TakaraTomy are getting the short end of the stick these days. They do the work with design/complex-engineering, and "own" the management of the outsourced, 3rd party Chinese factories on behalf of Hasbro, but it would appear that Hasbro has control over whatever the factories produce because retail prices (and obviously wholesale prices) in Japan are as high as they are here... So TT do all the work designing and getting the toys built, but Hasbro owns the physical product to actually sell to TT and the non-US Hasbro branches (which they do at more than twice the price they sell to their own US retailers, to make more commission-per-unit, out of foreign sales than they do from domestic sales). Which makes more work for those non-US markets/Branches to sell the Brand to retailers at that higher cost.

That's a pretty sweet arrangement for US Hasbro - they manage their Brand's direction and make the millions each year, but it's other bodies, before and after they get their hands on the toy-products, that do all the "heavy lifting" to give consumers & fans these toys.