Designer Alexander Kubalsky toy sketches

[doublespy]

TakTom designers do MPs from scratch to finish (Hasui's drawings are awesome...) they certainly have the capability to design awesome robots without Hasbro's creative input.

I've been having this theory that the reason Hasbro not doing any actual industrial design/engineering is that it might just be too expensive to hire someone to do in-house in the States. They do have someone to check-up and test-out the final design (from the Gizmodo interview a while ago) but I really doubt if they can make it without TakTom's engineering capabilities (the Titanium series was completely done in-house IIRC and it wasn't the finest work in the franchise)

[griffin]

I actually asked the question at BotCon last year to the Hasbro Marketing Rep - would Hasbro be able to cope with a worst-case scenario of a sudden split with TakaraTomy or they get bought out (again) that leaves them with no engineers to design their Transformers toys.... the guy was cagey, but assured that a sudden loss of the JP designers would not impact on Transformers. (it was actually amusing to note that he didn't reject my assertion that Hasbro don't, or can't, do any of the complex engineering/designing of TFs toys)

I guess they could stall with redecos for 6-12 months until they employ enough engineers to meet their needs. But this answer was before they announced their new "simplified" approach to Transformers toys, and since I think they did their Marvel and Star Wars crossovers in-house (because they weren't designed/drawn by the Transformers team at Hasbro, and they are a lot simpler design), they might have some experienced people already there to tap into.

[DELTAprime]

I don't think they could stall with repaints. Remember Takara control the use of all molds designed by them.

[Hursticon]

Remember Takara control the use of all molds designed by them.

I get the feeling , due to the business arrangement the 2 companies have, that it's a lot greyer than that.