Transformers questions by newbies, and not-so-newbies

[griffin]

Sorry, I thought Aaron Archer meant Hasbro's 20th Anniversary Prime got Masterpiece started from a one-off thing to a full on series.

His wording at the BotCon panel has him claiming to be responsible for the Masterpiece line, by creating the Anniversary Optimus, which would be sold in Japan as "MP-01"... not necessarily numbered because Japan had plans to do an ongoing line, but because they number everything, even one-off items "just in case".

His proudest achievements or what he wants to be known for...
- Instigating the 20th anniversary Optimus toy that led to the Masterpiece toyline.
- Bringing us licensed cars in a meaningful way with Alternators.
- Worked on the Minicon gimmick and gave them the name "MiniCons" and did the logo.
- Overseeing the Animated toyline with Eric Seibenaler.
- Bringing out a Unicron toy in 2004, and as late as 2002 they didn't think they'd ever have one.
- His work on the Movies (being in a senior role at the time they were started)
- Creating the story of the first 13.

Not sure how much of a part he played in the project though as many new concepts are done as a committee of various people, like brainstorming sessions.

AFIK, Hasbro Asia is distributing Japanese MPs in several Asian countries/regions, (similar to what we have here in Australia), so TakTom may think Hasbro as a distributor for markets abroad. Just my guess though.

Hasbro Asia in Hong Kong are quite the unique entity... a bit like Hong Kong is to China - they are part of Hasbro but have a lot of autonomy (at this time). They seem to have a really close relationship with TakaraTomy, to get their own production runs on the various Japanese Transformers, including the TakaraTomyMall exclusives.

As far a new mold Megatron, I'm not complaining/whining, just wondering why it hasn't been done now as to me it is a pretty logical choice. TFW2005 is having a poll now for "what do you wanna see as the next MP). Megs is at 2nd place trailing Jazz. And it's not a small poll, so yeah

Even though TakaraTomy would take into account the foreign demand of their products, I think they probably just don't want to risk Megatron just yet... and could just be waiting for demand to build to a point that it outweighs any prohibition or restrictions in various Western countries that would end up with the most of them (America, here, UK).
I think it might be soon though as this new size scale of MPs needs a new Megatron, and after the Coneheads are done, it might be a good time for one.

[GoktimusPrime]

AFIK, Hasbro Asia is distributing Japanese MPs in several Asian countries/regions, (similar to what we have here in Australia), so TakTom may think Hasbro as a distributor for markets abroad. Just my guess though.

Yes, but the toy is already well and truly beyond the conceptual design phase by the time that Hasbro AP gets around to striking a deal with TakaraTOMY to get excess stock for the Asia-Pacific market. It's so late in the deal that by the time Hasbro AP contacts me to translate the instructions/bios for the toy, I've already pre-ordered it from Amazon JP or HLJ, because at the time that the pre-order became available even I had no clue if Hasbro was going to be releasing it or not. Time frames can vary, but Hasbro AP's decision to import the toy can come as late as just 2~3 months before the toy's release date. As we all know, Transformers toys are conceived and designed about a year before their release, so by the time Hasbro AP seals the deal to do a special import of these toys, it's far too late for them to have any input in the design process.

Basically what happens is that TakaraTOMY develops these toys for their market - the news is announced and Hasbro may decide to release the toy as an 'after thought.' But it's not a decision that's made from the very beginning as it would be with toys that Hasbro and Takara(TOMY) collaboratively work on. If it were, then I would hope that Hasbro would've given me much more advance notice and time to work on adapting the instructions and bios to English, but with only 2~3 months out from the release date, we're running on a really tight schedule and I often only have days to complete the work (which isn't even my day job, so I have to squeeze time in to do it... there were lots of late nights (-_-)).

As far a new mold Megatron, I'm not complaining/whining, just wondering why it hasn't been done now as to me it is a pretty logical choice. TFW2005 is having a poll now for "what do you wanna see as the next MP). Megs is at 2nd place trailing Jazz. And it's not a small poll, so yeah

Okay, but as an unofficial fan poll it is exactly that. Unofficial. TakaraTOMY's poll results are fed directly back to TakaraTOMY's marketing team. It's an anonymous poll, so you don't see what anyone else nominated or voted on, but I can tell you that a lot of toys that my friends and I have voted or nominated on before in the past for reissues, BTs, MPs etc. have come to fruition.

[GoktimusPrime]

Did they actually use the words "taking each other's markets into consideration", or was it more likely that they are just not permitted to sell in each other's markets?

Both. In 2003 I asked Hasbro AU if they would be willing to get a small batch of Transformer toys for the Sabretron 2004 convention. Hasbro told me that it was a minimum order of 1000 units, which was of course too many and too expensive. I then called Takara to see if I could just skip the middle man and see if Takara would be able to make these toys for us. I was told that because the convention would be in Australia, a Hasbro market, Takara could not make any toys for us without express approval/permission from Hasbro. Takara told me that Takara and Hasbro have a contract between the two companies which forbids them from developing products for each other's markets without express permission from each other. This was why they couldn't manufacture any exclusive toys for an Australian convention without Hasbro's permission.

In other words, if TakaraTomy only produced enough units for the Japanese market because they close their eyes to the bleeding of units to other countries, they would produce fewer units, making them really rare to everyone (in and out of Japan), and the toys would be lots more expensive to pay for the limited number (like the TTM exclusives).
It would be stupid for them to not include estimates of non-domestic customers in their production budget, because even though they might not be doing the exporting to a Hasbro country, their "middle-men" (the stores that do export, or sell to Japanese fans who on-sell to foreigners), sell a significant number on their behalf.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't be beneficial for TakaraTOMY to take foreign markets into consideration, but I can only tell you the facts as per what Takara explicitly told me in that telephone conversation. I was disappointed when I found out too! I wanted official exclusive toys for an Australian TF convention! And I did try to find loopholes around it, like telling him that these toys would only be sold directly to collectors at a convention, and that they would never be available for retail sale in stores, and thus it wouldn't be contaminating the mainstream Australian market. But I couldn't convince Takara to see otherwise, they were adamant that they had to stick to their legal contractual obligations with Hasbro.

I think at best, TakaraTOMY may guesstimate how overseas markets may respond to their toys. I think if they were explicitly thinking about overseas markets with Exhaust, then they might've thought about approximating the Marlboro logo; similar to what they did with the Red Cross logo on MP Ratchet. The fact that they've geoblocked all users from outside Japan from accessing the online survey also makes no sense if they want to gather information from overseas fans. It was a really easy way for us to give feedback to TakaraTOMY while appearing to only be targeting Japanese fans, since the survey was only in Japanese. But maybe they started noticing an increasing number of participants logging onto the survey with non-Japanese IPs and felt that they needed to put a geoblock in place in order to honour their contractual obligations. This is culturally a very Japanese thing to do -- they will honour what they consider to be the 'correct' or 'proper' thing to do, even if it's logically impractical. Geoblocking the survey only serves to further isolate non-Japanese fans from giving them valuable feedback. And I did make several requests to TakaraTOMY to lift the geoblock, but again, no deal.

I suspect that if TakaraTOMY were more mindful of the overseas market, then they may have considered making MP Road Rage a limited exclusive instead of a mass release retail figure like Exhaust. Because that toy is still shelfwarming at places like HLJ for about half the original pre-order price! Road Rage makes me think that TakTOM are kinda "shooting blind" when it comes to factoring in the foreign markets. The domestic market clearly hasn't been enough to absorb it, but they've obviously overestimated demand from overseas markets too, so now the combination of both markets are insufficient to move stock. Consequently we've seen TakaraTOMY learn from this experience and the upcoming MP Loud Pedal will be a limited exclusive. Even toys like MP11T Thundercracker and MP11NR Ramjet were limited exclusives, which indicates that TakaraTOMY may be playing things more conservatively after being burned with Road Rage.

Imagine how easily this could be avoided if:
* TakaraTOMY didn't geoblock their online survey.
* If the online survey was also available in other languages like English, Chinese etc.
* If the survey didn't make you enter your name in Japanese and only allows you to enter a Japanese residential address via drop down menus and manual typing in Japanese. Of course, people could easily get around this by copying and pasting names and addresses off a Google search, but it feels like yet another hurdle to make the survey less accessible to non-Japanese residents.

And of course, the packaging, instructions etc. would already be multilingual if TakaraTOMY were factoring in overseas markets -- just as a lot of Hasbro's packaging is multilingual.

[doublespy]

His wording at the BotCon panel has him claiming to be responsible for the Masterpiece line, by creating the Anniversary Optimus,

Ah thanks, I do remember in the MP official guide book there was an MP01 concept drawing done clearly by Hasbro with various Dreamwave inspired design tidbits on it as "guidelines" to Takara designers (simply put, do this, don't do that, a common Hasbro approach we've come to know and love) It was possibly put together at the same time when they decided to do BT/Alt.

Yes, but the toy is already well and truly beyond the conceptual design phase by the time that Hasbro AP gets around to striking a deal with TakaraTOMY to get excess stock for the Asia-Pacific market. It's so late in the deal that by the time Hasbro AP contacts me to translate the instructions/bios for the toy, I've already pre-ordered it from Amazon JP or HLJ, because at the time that the pre-order became available even I had no clue if Hasbro was going to be releasing it or not.

I'm 100% sure but as griffin noted above, business wise it wouldn't be smart for them to only produce enough for the Japanese market alone; and it definitely wouldn't be "excessive stock", as a lot of the more recent MPs come out in mainland China/Taiwan at the same time as the Japanese market, with Japanese instructions and translated Chinese ones. The production had been planned all along. Why? The market is big enough there.

[doublespy]

Both. In 2003 I asked Hasbro AU if they would be willing to get a small batch of Transformer toys for the Sabretron 2004 convention. Hasbro told me that it was a minimum order of 1000 units, which was of course too many and too expensive. I then called Takara to see if I could just skip the middle man and see if Takara would be able to make these toys for us. I was told that because the convention would be in Australia, a Hasbro market, Takara could not make any toys for us without express approval/permission from Hasbro. Takara told me that Takara and Hasbro have a contract between the two companies which forbids them from developing products for each other's markets without express permission from each other. This was why they couldn't manufacture any exclusive toys for an Australian convention without Hasbro's permission.


I'm not saying that it wouldn't be beneficial for TakaraTOMY to take foreign markets into consideration, but I can only tell you the facts as per what Takara explicitly told me in that telephone conversation. I was disappointed when I found out too! I wanted official exclusive toys for an Australian TF convention! And I did try to find loopholes around it, like telling him that these toys would only be sold directly to collectors at a convention, and that they would never be available for retail sale in stores, and thus it wouldn't be contaminating the mainstream Australian market. But I couldn't convince Takara to see otherwise, they were adamant that they had to stick to their legal contractual obligations with Hasbro.

I think at best, TakaraTOMY may guesstimate how overseas markets may respond to their toys. I think if they were explicitly thinking about overseas markets with Exhaust, then they might've thought about approximating the Marlboro logo; similar to what they did with the Red Cross logo on MP Ratchet. The fact that they've geoblocked all users from outside Japan from accessing the online survey also makes no sense if they want to gather information from overseas fans. It was a really easy way for us to give feedback to TakaraTOMY while appearing to only be targeting Japanese fans, since the survey was only in Japanese. But maybe they started noticing an increasing number of participants logging onto the survey with non-Japanese IPs and felt that they needed to put a geoblock in place in order to honour their contractual obligations. This is culturally a very Japanese thing to do -- they will honour what they consider to be the 'correct' or 'proper' thing to do, even if it's logically impractical. Geoblocking the survey only serves to further isolate non-Japanese fans from giving them valuable feedback. And I did make several requests to TakaraTOMY to lift the geoblock, but again, no deal.

I suspect that if TakaraTOMY were more mindful of the overseas market, then they may have considered making MP Road Rage a limited exclusive instead of a mass release retail figure like Exhaust. Because that toy is still shelfwarming at places like HLJ for about half the original pre-order price! Road Rage makes me think that TakTOM are kinda "shooting blind" when it comes to factoring in the foreign markets. The domestic market clearly hasn't been enough to absorb it, but they've obviously overestimated demand from overseas markets too, so now the combination of both markets are insufficient to move stock. Consequently we've seen TakaraTOMY learn from this experience and the upcoming MP Loud Pedal will be a limited exclusive. Even toys like MP11T Thundercracker and MP11NR Ramjet were limited exclusives, which indicates that TakaraTOMY may be playing things more conservatively after being burned with Road Rage.

Imagine how easily this could be avoided if:
* TakaraTOMY didn't geoblock their online survey.
* If the online survey was also available in other languages like English, Chinese etc.
* If the survey didn't make you enter your name in Japanese and only allows you to enter a Japanese residential address via drop down menus and manual typing in Japanese. Of course, people could easily get around this by copying and pasting names and addresses off a Google search, but it feels like yet another hurdle to make the survey less accessible to non-Japanese residents.

And of course, the packaging, instructions etc. would already be multilingual if TakaraTOMY were factoring in overseas markets -- just as a lot of Hasbro's packaging is multilingual.

Thanks. That's very informative. But I also think just like what they did with Ratchet's Red Cross, TakTom definitely should've/might have already found a way around their legal obligations. Having Hasbro Asia as an agent/distributor makes perfect business sense while technically not breaching their contract.

[Bladestorm]

The fact that they've geoblocked all users from outside Japan from accessing the online survey also makes no sense if they want to gather information from overseas fans.

You may find the geoblock isn't willingly in place but perhaps due to international corporate pressure from overseas franchisees.
I am pretty sure Tak Tomy would gladly look at the non Japanese market if there was an easy way to do so. Japanese toy makers have had some pressure on them to keep their stuff as local release only; most recently with another big movie franchise causing some ripples so it is easy to speculate their may be more to the restriction than ... uh... meets the eye.

[GoktimusPrime]

^good point

I'm 100% sure but as griffin noted above, business wise it wouldn't be smart for them to only produce enough for the Japanese market alone; and it definitely wouldn't be "excessive stock", as a lot of the more recent MPs come out in mainland China/Taiwan at the same time as the Japanese market, with Japanese instructions and translated Chinese ones. The production had been planned all along. Why? The market is big enough there.

As someone who's worked on translation instructions, I can tell you that these decisions are made pretty late in the piece. It's entirely possible that the Chinese instructions may have been done as late as 3 months prior to the toy's Japanese release date.

And I know that it makes business sense for TakaraTOMY to factor in the overseas markets - you don't need to convince me of this. But I'm also telling you that it's extremely typically Japanese to stick to the rules over doing what may be more practical. Here's an example that anyone who's lived in Japan would have seen (and those of you who've visited there may have seen): Japanese people never cross at a pedestrian crossing when the light is red, even when it's perfectly clear to do so. It may be 01:00 and there isn't a car in sight, Japanese people will continue to stand and wait for the signal to turn green before crossing. And when foreigners like me just ignore the red signal and jay walk across that crossing, I get dirty looks. Japan is culturally quite OCD.

[doublespy]

^good point

As someone who's worked on translation instructions, I can tell you that these decisions are made pretty late in the piece. It's entirely possible that the Chinese instructions may have been done as late as 3 months prior to the toy's Japanese release date.

Yes translation work can be done as late as it gets, but production planning can not. And we're not looking at a mere 300 units sort of thing like we have here in Australia. If you check the Asian hobby shops and online retailers you'd know MPs are moving fast. As a distributor, Hasbro Asia may have done one of two things: they either placed order on TakTom as early as when TakTom are scheduling for their own production runs, or they took ordered some stock in production, and some on back order, so the factory will extend their production schedule to fill these units on back order.

The point being, it was probably planned production that TakTom can take into account when forecasting demand if they wanted

[GoktimusPrime]

The point being, it was probably planned production that TakTom can take into account when forecasting demand if they wanted

It's not an issue of whether they can or not, but TakaraTOMY won't because they legally cannot due to contractual obligations with Hasbro. What we may think about this "no cross market contamination" clause is immaterial, the fact is that it exists. That's why I've been saying for years that the best way for fans - in or outside of Japan - to let Takara(TOMY) know what they think is to vote/nominate regularly. That's why I went to the trouble of maintaining the survey translation thread to allow non-Japanese speaking fans to also partake in the survey. There's nothing I can do about the geoblocking but there was a good 6 year window for everyone to submit their preferences directly to TakaraTOMY.

[Verno]

How do you pronounce the 'G' of Ginrai? Is it 'G' as in Guinness, or 'G' as in gin?