As well it shouldn't have, I would personally add "No Deco" to that as well.

 

Saw a lil boy not even 6 years old and his mother deciding which Transformer he wanted. And reminding him he already had that one or something similar. Just happy the Transformers brand is still going strong. Never want to see the dark days of the late 80s early 90s ever again.

 

I've never had a hockey coach call a game a "match" lol.

 

Those hollow arms did pay off, folks!

 

Yet the quality only seems to go down.

 

Quality and innovation in the Transformers brand went down so that the profit increased.

 

You know I don't actually mind repaints it's not the repaints that are an issue so much as BAD REAINTS. For example Age of Extinction went kind of bonkers on Leader Grimlock Repaints making far to many of them most of which were not the colour he was in the Movie.

But for me the real issue with repaints is incomplete sets but also how repaints are released - I consider releasing the Combiner Wars Leader Seekers one after another with barely a break and also releasing Armada Megatron and G1ish Megatron in the same wave a whopper of a mistake. If you have a repaint that isn't of huge interest but is still worth doing then the platinum releases are a better place for those.
So for example i'd be perfectly fine with a Platinum CW Leader Sunstorm for example. but i'd be pretty irritated to see him give a full leader slot.

The reason is that such bad choices discourage retailers from buying the size category in at all. Perhaps there is an argument to be made if they had cases of 3 and 2 were silver Megatron and one the green then that would have been fine or even a triple case of Thundercracker/Starscream/Skywarp at the same time. (to get them out of the way).

But we now have a situation where Hasbro seems to think the best idea for the Last Knight Toyline is to make half of it the AOE toyline again and not even think to complete peoples sets with their colour choices.

Grimlock and Slash are nice enough - but I see them as a missed oppurtunity to complete some existing sets that they have failed to do yet again. As I would have said back in 2012 I don't object to price increase, less paint or gapy parts, clip on wheels and ugly peeling stickers what I object to is getting most or all of that at the same time.

Putting your toys in a pretty box isn't really cutting it for me. fortunately there have been some sales - so that helped a lot - but the availability of products is still pretty poor on Hasbro brands in general and not just Transformers.

 

Hollow figures, no paint, weak plastic, simple packaging, no extra's , weak articulation, re-use of design to infinite ... it pays of indeed  

I'm glad to say i did not contribute to this remarkable result  

 

At least Hasbro isn't anything like Mattel. Transformers is STILL out there making money. Mattel didn't know what to do with He-Man or ThunderCats, two of the biggest 80's properties besides TF.

 

One-Step-Changers are the key to all of this.

 

I think it was Evasion Optimus rather Leader Grimlock that had the excessive repaints (Grimlock only had the Hasbro version, the Takara Black Knight version and the Platinum Edition version), but I know what you mean. Rather than just doing one good, definitive version there are loads of repaints with almost random decos. WIth RID a lot of the repaints could've just as easily been replaced with the original deco and would still sell because kids are basically after the character they like, and aren't bothered about collecting multiple non-show decos of the same toys.

The boxes would be a great way to showcase proper premium quality figures. I must say Beserker looks good in his, but even Optimus looks cheap and horrible, more so because the CGI image is there right next to the figure showing how inaccurate it is.

 

Gee, what a surprise.  Isn\'t much of that profit from Star Wars?  Also, look at how cheaply made the Hasbro Jurassic World line was.  That crap was expensive, and fell apart if you looked at it wrong.  The paint was awful, the limbs fell off and the rubber cracks apart.  Hasbro has the most popular toy brands so I think that has to do with their profit.  I miss the days of really great TF movie figures of 2007 and 2009.

Thankfully Mattel has the rights to Jurassic Park. 

 

Definitely a mixture of this and increasingly favorable trade terms with manufacturing countries. And by 'favorable trade terms' I mean lower labour standards. I used to work in research for labour rights orgs (mostly around garments) and peers who work around plastics & toys tell me exploitation in the toy industry is at an all time high as big brand manufacturers, like Hasbro, are forcing factories to lower costs at production end. And the countries are forced to lower their regulations to conform to US trade agreements. Its like how there are so many factories supplying the US in Mexico. The way a lot of the factories operate would be illegal on US soil but NAFTA lets US companies do it abroad. So apparently Toys has become one of the worst industries for this. Basically its like Cybertron before Megatron revolts

 

Just as an NB, this is not my area of expertise, just what I've heard from people whose it is.

 

This is interesting. Because, remember, Hasbro gives itself a "most ethical company in America" award every f*cking year. It's grating, because even without your valuable insight, you know they're doing something either borderline or outright illegal - no company that massive is so "ethical" it deserves an award. Though, in a broad sense, I suppose they are considering environmental and child safety as the primary factor for deserving such a title... when they most likely are endangering children and damaging the environment outside the USA!   I mean, it's really suspect when they raise the MSRP of these toys, but move production to cheaper countries like Vietnam.  

With the sluggish boy-toy industry the way it is, you might think they would pass some savings along and encourage shoppers... For example, as a parent, it's definitely a strong factor in my buying decision when a deluxe-sized toy increases from $9.99 to $16.99 in just a few short years - Hasbro fails to understand that my income is not rising exponentially, but their production costs are dropping (smaller toys, cheaper labor/manufacturing, less plastic per toy, large reduction in metal pins/screws, etc.).

Especially poignant to this issue is how Hasbro MSRPs are now approaching (or even matching) those of smaller toy companies in the 3P sphere. And if price is similar (i.e. $20 for a 3P Legends vs $10 for Hasbro Legends, or $150 for a 3P MP Megatron vs $230 for a Takara MP Meg!), what incentive do I have to purchase from Hasbro itself? Especially when the process to acquire a Hasbro toy has become the same as that of a 3P toy (i.e. online only!)?

 

I've been reading about Hasbro "cheapening" toys for years. If the trend was really as people suggest, they'd be piles of mush in a bag right now.

 

This thread is so predictable.

Hasbro's failing! But, they're not failing, so the quality has gone down and toys are shit as a result! Yet, people still buy them obviously, and a lot of fans like the current figures, and some are better designed than toys from seven years ago so, um... uhhh...

I've heard it, too, but then I've also heard from people who seem much more informed and offer more evidence say the contrary.

 

I'd love to take the time to agree with folks in here that all modern Hasbro TFs are hollow garbage, but I'm just so damn swamped with enjoying the hell out of the Titans Return line.

 

I was going to snip a lot of this out. But I think that would dilute what you're saying. Which is invariably correct. The MSRP of a lot of toys is driving the purchasing power of collectors, but also in a way that as collectors we're moving toward what is considered higher quality through 3P (or even crazier, KO 3P figures). Let that one sink in. Knockoff. Third party.

Equally, while I don't have hard numbers, I have heard more often than not many long time collectors are boiling down their investments to Masterpiece, which is giving money to Takara, not Hasbro.

Ultimately, collectors are going to buy off the shelves what they want, but you're right.