BotCon Panels 8/12 - Hasbro Product Review (no movie stuff)
This is the censored version of the first Hasbro panel, with no Movie stuff here to spoil your day.
Saturday 1pm (2 hours)
Panelists - Greg Lombardo (Senior Marketting), Aaron Archer (Senior Design Director), Eric Seibenaler (Senior Designer), Bill Rawley (Senior Product Designer), Joe Kyde (Designer), Forrest Lee (Writer), Mike Blaylock (Product Marketting).
Slideshow first.
Store Exclusives.
- 6inch Titaniums Optimus, Thrust, Hot Zone (US Target excl).
(each is just a redeco - WW Optimus, WW Starscream, RiD Optimus)
- Commemorative Insecticons (TRU 3-pack)
- Commemorative Perceptor (TRU)
(both sets have their chromed parts and all weapons, but Perceptor's missile launcher has no spring)
- Masterpiece Skywarp (Walmart) with a more toy-accurate deco to the JP one.
Animated toys are intended to be released at the end of 2009/early 2010, but no exact timings yet. (Probably because these are a number of toys that have reached tooling stage, and need to be produced to make back their investment)
- Electrostatic Soundwave with Ratbat (Deluxe Decep)
- Arcee (Deluxe Auto)
- Rodimus Minor (Deluxe Auto)
- Cybertronian Ratchet (Deluxe Auto)
- Cybertronian Ironhide (Deluxe Auto), Ratchet redeco with a new head.
- Fugitive Waspinator (Deluxe Auto), green Bumblebee redeco. They wanted a new head, but cost prevented them, so Forrest wrote up the bio to explain it as being Wasp during the episode where he pretends to be Bumblebee.
- Goldfire Grimlock (Voyager Auto), gold redeco (slide called it Goldfire, while the display case tag called it Golfire)
-Hydrodrive Bumblebee (Voyager Auto), new smaller Bumblebee.
- Blackout (Voyager Decep), in 'Earth mode' as a helicopter like 2007 Movie Blackout.
- Wingblade Optimus (Voyager Auto), Deluxe Optimus with extra bits.
- Thundercracker (Voyager Decep), Starscream redeco.
Q&A.
Universe line won't be back until Fall 2010 (our spring), because the movie line is expected to continue unitl mid 2010.
Drift - answer in tomorrow's Hasbro panel.
The new series on the new network left no room for Animated to continue.
Masterpiece Grimlock will be done by the end of next year (12-18 months).
No more Gen-1 Robot Heroes for the foreseeable future (apparently a number of unreleased ones are therefore cancelled).
No Deluxe Animated Cliffjumper because there is an Activator one.
No plans for any 'Base-formers' for next couple of years.
Over the next year they will be replacing twist-ties (with something else that is bio-degradable) and reduce packaging size in an attempt to go green (and cut costs).
Mighty Muggs - there are no current plans for the 3rd wave (Jazz and Shockwave) to be released, and the line is on hold until they can find a home (store exclusive) for them. (no great loss...)
(rumour I overheard was that US TRU may be taking on the entire Mighty Muggs range as a store exclusive, but that is so unconfirmed I am hesitant in even mentioning it)
Greg made a statement on behalf of Hasbro about the recent surge in fan-made, unlicensed toys and accessories. They were willing to ignore them when the occasional one popped up, but now that there are quite a few being produced and in the works, they are starting to look at putting a stop to them, because it still infringes on their Intellectual Property (that bit about all concepts and likenesses are the property of Hasbro, etc etc...). As more unauthorised product gets out there into the hands on kids and parents who aren't aware of them being items that aren't produced by Hasbro/Tomy, and subsequently not properly tested as required by law, who do those people turn to when they have a problem with poor quality or injury? They chase up Hasbro, because the product resembles a Transformers product, even if it doesn't use the names on its packaging. And more importantly, they would want to stop fan projects that use their Transformers products to promote/market their items in photos or on the packaging.
It might still be too early to tell what Hasbro are going to do about it, but wanted to put those unauthorised projects on notice that they are looking more at them now, to protect their brand's image, reputation and integrity from items that could mislead others into thinking they are official or at the same quality as the real things.
Maybe nothing will happen at all, because we saw how successful they were on stopping the production of counterfeit TFs with several Movie KOs released before the real things (from all those toys being leaked from the Chinese factories).
Greg concluded by saying that none of those people making the fan-made items ever approached Hasbro for a license.
There wasn't going to be an Animated Cyclonus because of the Universe one.
No plans for a Universe Red Alert (Tomy have released one). (but I would expect it would be one of the first released if Universe comes back in late 2010)
The Swine Flu prevented the Tomy guests from attending this year.
The character of Yokitron in Animated was named after one of the JP designers.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by griffin
