Universe 2.0 Cyclonus Pics

[STL]

No, they hope end consumer _buys_ their wares. Whether or not they enjoy isn't as important to Hasbro, who have stated in the past that they see retailers as the customer. Remember, Hasbro are assuming that this year's customers will largely outgrow Transformers in a year or two, anyway. If the end consumer buys a few toys, has a bad experience and moves on, it only matters to the manufacturer if that end consumer would have otherwise returned. Hasbro are driven by profit and keeping shareholders happy. They only need to care about the end consumer as far (s)he affects profits.

Yes, but I'm sure they do care. Just not enough to go that extra yard. There's a distinction that needs to be made in hte level of care we're talking about here. You seem to be suggesting that they only care about this year's stock movement and their relationship with retailers. That's a pretty cynical if not callow view. Most companies have focus group testing these days to try and determine what matters to the consumer which in turn keeps their product offering relevant and their shareholders and stakeholders such as retailers happy.

Certainly they care about the customer as far as he/she affects profit but they also make sure they meet the demands of the target market. I find it naive to suggest that it this modern day and age, a large corporation would as you suggest just design toys and care only about its retailer as its primary customer. Hasbro cares about its target demographic primarily which essentially is the 7-13 year old range and I am certain they designed a show around Animated and have designed Classics 2.0/Universe with the end target market in mind.

I understand there are disgruntled fans of which I am one, but I do believe that Hasbro does not aspire to a higher level of quality control and care purely b/c it does not matter to the market that they are selling to. If it did, then certainly, they'd be paying meticulous attention issues of quality control. But as far as most kids go, near enough is close enough so what bothers me in a gap-ridden Transformer doesn't even register with a kid. Do I like that? No. But I'm not about to peevishly turn around and claim that Hasbro doesn't give a stuff what all customers think. Fact is, they do. It's just their target market isn't necessarily collectors.

And as much as I'd love that to be the case, I'd certainly not entertain that thought.

[dirge]

Yes, but I'm sure they do care. Just not enough to go that extra yard. There's a distinction that needs to be made in hte level of care we're talking about here. You seem to be suggesting that they only care about this year's stock movement and their relationship with retailers. That's a pretty cynical if not callow view.

Perhaps... but I think the recent media exposure of large corporations going _bust_ without forewarning (usually due to creative accounting concealing operating losses), and many executives getting perfomance incentives regardless of share price movment suggest that the American corporate model has problems. It's hard not to be cynical when the boardroom can be so detached from the reality of the business.

A lot of companies take a short term approach, because the directors care more about being reelected by large shareholders than the company's products/services, reputation or (in some cases) long term survival.

I'm not suggesting that the designers don't care - some probably don't and others probably do. But if those in the position to make the end decisions regarding cost-to-retail price ratio and acceptable QC standards cared about customer satisfaction, we wouldn't be seeing some of the QC problems we're facing in current lines. I'd be surprised if marketing guys cared about quality of the product - their job is to make you want to buy it - how poor the product is simply outside their sphere of thinking. Which isn't to say that lazy marketing decisions (such as some of the early name uses in Universe, back in 03/04) don't influence the overall quality of the product - but they're not employed to care about product _quality_.

Certainly they care about the customer as far as he/she affects profit but they also make sure they meet the demands of the target market.

But the target market is retailers. In which case they only have to keep the retail buyers happy. That's the whole point. So long as it does what the retailer wants (ie _sells_), Hasbro see the target market's demands fulfilled.

I find it naive to suggest that it this modern day and age, a large corporation would as you suggest just design toys and care only about its retailer as its primary customer.

But they're on record saying that they see the retailer as the customer. They see their job as selling the stock to the retailer. I believe that it's naive of Hasbro to view the marketplace that way.

Hasbro cares about its target demographic primarily which essentially is the 7-13 year old range and I am certain they designed a show around Animated and have designed Classics 2.0/Universe with the end target market in mind.

They care that the 7-13 year old buys the product, because that keeps the retailer coming back for more. Which is why everything Ultra or bigger has electronics - more callouts on the box. The reason why the movie leaders all have gimmicks set into their chests - Megatron & Brawl are sucky purely as leader-sized Transformers, but the kid can be wowed by the button he can press in store. The packaging is geared towards convincing the kid to buy the toy, to the point where the toy itself is geared towards selling itself on the shelf, even at the expense of the experience later (ie once the kid opens leader Megatron and realises that the springs don't work, since he's hopelessly misassembled - which wasn't changed between batches - unlike the refund-inducing Bumblebee trigger problem).

Hasbro also see the 7-13 year olds as being fertile (as consumers!) for a year or two, tops. Most kids these days stop buying toys around the age of 10. So they don't have to really take customer satisfaction into account as part of their business model. Which isn't to say they shouldn't - but it's effect is fairly minimal.

If those making the decisions see their job as keeping the stockholers happy, and believe that customer satisfaction won't affect the end result for stockholders, they can disregard customer experience. I don't believe - based on the evidence of the last few years - that the corporate culture in Pawtucket places much emphasis on Customer Satisfaction.

But as far as most kids go, near enough is close enough so what bothers me in a gap-ridden Transformer doesn't even register with a kid.

Well, it most likely does. As a 7 year old, I was spectacularly unimpressed with Wheelie's weird bodyshape and hood thing. I was also unimpressed with the transformation being shunted to the accessories a few years later when half the line was Actionmasters. The fact that Hasbro US wound up the line after Actionmasters suggests that I probably wasn't the only one. I'm sure that everyone on this board remembers getting a toy as a kid and being disappointed by some feature or other.

Kids _are_ discerning, and are quite capable of thinking for themselves, but there's an assumption out there that kids aren't as smart as adults. When it comes to stuff like running a household or planning a family, that assumption is pretty much correct. When it comes to evaluating a toy, I think kids are often underestimated.

As MV75 mentioned above, if a kid is unimpressed with a Transformer he doesn't come online and talk about it, instead he heads into the next aisle and buys (say) a Star Wars toy or a console game. If enough kids start passing up on the line, then it'll choke the shelves. At that point Hasbro will either 1) work harder to please the retailer or 2) move onto something else, believing the market has changed (rather than the product, or the overall quality of it.) This happened when G1 was awash with Micromasters and Actionmasters. It happened when kids largely rejected G2's cr4ppy repaints and (generally better) new toys that didn't even appear in the dated cartoon which was trying to sell them.

What troubles me is the possbility of the line shutting down _again_. I've seen it happen twice - I was part of the online fandom when G2 was cancelled, and there was no guarantee of Transformers coming back. Kenner took a chance and really worked hard to make BW work, but nowadays if the line was canned, we don't know if Hasbro would take that same chance.

[GoktimusPrime]

You don't want Hasbro or Transformers to be in the same position as it is in Japan where it's not doing nearly as well, is obscure and the company that originated the toys that led to the creation of the brand is now owned by Tomy.

1/ Transformers has a lot of competition in Japan where it is only one of many super robot franchises. In Western markets Transformers has no viable competition (Roadbots isn't a viable competitor unlike say Gundam or Macross).

2/ Takara's marketing of Transformers wasn't directly responsible for Takara's financial woes in 2000 and their later merger with TOMY. But after Takara announced that they were in financial trouble they actually managed to rescue themselves by reviving Beyblade. Beyblade became a gianormous success. Other Takara lines like Transformers suffered as a result because Takara decided to put all their eggs in the one Beyblade basket. Japanese Transfans complained about the neglect that Takara was showing toward Transformers as a result (i.e.: after Car Robot there was nothing new from Takara - they spent 2 years just pumping out G1 reissues, it wouldn't be until Micron Legend came along that broke the drought). But Beyblade did work fantastically in saving Takara. Takara then merged with TOMY not because they were in trouble anymore and needed TOMY to rescue them - they'd already rescued themselves. I'm not entirely sure why the merger occured, but perhaps Takara saw it as a way to strengthen themselves to prevent the downturn of 2000 from happening again.

Takara is not the giant corporate "Microsoft" conglomerate that Hasbro is - they never have been and frankly don't seem to intend on being (unlike Hasbro Takara doesn't have a long history of buying out their competitors).

So I would say that it's not entirely accurate to say that Takara's more end-customer-satisfaction driven marketing was the reason for Takara's downturn in 2000 and their subsequent merger with TOMY. I'd say the latter occured in spite of the former, not because of it.

Well, it most likely does. As a 7 year old, I was spectacularly unimpressed with Wheelie's weird bodyshape and hood thing. I was also unimpressed with the transformation being shunted to the accessories a few years later when half the line was Actionmasters. The fact that Hasbro US wound up the line after Actionmasters suggests that I probably wasn't the only one. I'm sure that everyone on this board remembers getting a toy as a kid and being disappointed by some feature or other.

Kids _are_ discerning, and are quite capable of thinking for themselves, but there's an assumption out there that kids aren't as smart as adults. When it comes to stuff like running a household or planning a family, that assumption is pretty much correct. When it comes to evaluating a toy, I think kids are often underestimated.

As MV75 mentioned above, if a kid is unimpressed with a Transformer he doesn't come online and talk about it, instead he heads into the next aisle and buys (say) a Star Wars toy or a console game. If enough kids start passing up on the line, then it'll choke the shelves. At that point Hasbro will either 1) work harder to please the retailer or 2) move onto something else, believing the market has changed (rather than the product, or the overall quality of it.) This happened when G1 was awash with Micromasters and Actionmasters. It happened when kids largely rejected G2's cr4ppy repaints and (generally better) new toys that didn't even appear in the dated cartoon which was trying to sell them.

+1 QFT

When Action Masters and G2 came out, it's not as if we hopped onto local dial-up BBSs and complained about them... we just didn't buy them! (well I bought a few... but overall I was very unimpressed with them - to this day my G2 collection remains quite small, only 2 shelves*)

P.S.: *including the fact that I display my Laser Prime's trailer in it's massively spread-out battle-platform mode and I have Laser Magnus on that shelf in truck mode. ;p

[kurdt_the_goat]

Perhaps this is a bit off topic, but I was really surprised when i visited japan, to see the prevalance of advertising for company identities. Check out this shot -


It gives me the impression the littler companies are just lost in the sea.. perhaps this is one of the reasons for merging.

[STL]

I was going to reply but maybe we should start up a Hasbro complaint thread? Too often are we in these topics straying onto issues of Hasbro's quality control and lack of customer focus. It does detract from the main news item here. While the odd comment about Hasbro's QC or customer ignorance is cool, I feel getting into long winded expositions about Hasbro's deficiencies obstructs the purpose of many of the news threads.

Perhaps in the Kup's Discussion area?

[kup]

I was going to reply but maybe we should start up a Hasbro complaint thread? Too often are we in these topics straying onto issues of Hasbro's quality control and lack of customer focus. It does detract from the main news item here. While the odd comment about Hasbro's QC or customer ignorance is cool, I feel getting into long winded expositions about Hasbro's deficiencies obstructs the purpose of many of the news threads.

Perhaps in the Kup's Discussion area?

If this sort of thing didn't happen so often we wouldn't have to.

It would not have hurt Hasbro to paint silver on the exposed plastic parts of this release. We know they can because they have released figures this year with much more complex paint jobs such as deluxe Crasher. I am sure if they had painted those exposed bits silver, we would not be complaining like we are now.

[Demonac]

It would not have hurt Hasbro to paint silver on the exposed plastic parts of this release. We know they can because they have released figures this year with much more complex paint jobs such as deluxe Crasher. I am sure if they had painted those exposed bits silver, we would not be complaining like we are now.

One of the things we were shown at the Hasbro tour was that they have 'x' hours & 'y' dollars to design 'z' number of toys.
So what happens is that they will go the extra yard for some toys, at the expense of others.

I think its still pretty good that we DO get obscure references like Crasher, or any of the classics toys.
Who remembers the absolute laziness that was RiD?
With great tributes like 'Prowl 2', 'Movor', & 'X-Brawn'.

[FFN]

Also, Fracture was a redeco of a mold they already got their money's worth out of. Generally Hasbro puts more paint in redeco releases (see Energon Galvatron's bucketloads of paint) than then initial release.


Gok, would it be utterly impossible for a franchise such as Transformers, with the right marketing and promotion, to challenge the might of Gundam and (whatever else is really big in japan in the mecha subculture)? Personally, I think it was a mistake to obscure the robots in one of the Japanese theatre poster designs.

In the west, Transformers actually does have one main competitor: Power Rangers, which has consistently beaten Transformers since it's inception.

[Soundwarp]

Umm guys this thread is about Cyclonus 2.0, i come in to read about that not all of your opinions on other stuff.

A new thread perhaps?





I think his face is a little too fat.
Perhaps the Takara version will fix the little paint app mistakes, i hope so as i think the mould is a winner.

[lcz128]

Agreed Soundwarp - the mould looks to be a winner!
And the more and more i look at this, it just makes me think of how much better it'd look with several coats of paint...
Thanks to TDD for asking me to repaint his sscreams - given me a whole new appreciation for the mould and hence I can 'see' the potential this one has