I dont know if this is considered news or not, but i thought it was.

Apparently hasbro's profits are down 47%, which also means that transformers profits are down In the first quarter of the year hasbro's profits have declined by 47%, while mattel only reported a 15% decline.

does this affect what tfs come out like the new movie line, or the last animated wave?

Veiw the origonal artical here:

 

Last animated wave??? Animated is continuing into ROTF....

 

Well I don't know if this is bad or just normal.

I mean, the TF movie had sales that went ULTRA overboard, so it was always expected that the next Hasbro products wouldn't sell as good.

 

Sales are declining because we only got a handful of new figures since the beginning of the year.

 

yea there's one last one that we know of... thats the wave of rodimus, blackout, arcee, and so on... i thought that was the last one.

 

We are in an almost depression. Over 639,000 jobs were lost this past March. Somehow toys aren't as important as paying for your kids educations, food, and care.

 

don't worry folks. it was expected. recession and all. They are hoping that sales from thier up comming movie lines will help out. wolverine, transformers and gi joe.

 

This. Plus the price hike didn't help too.

 

Yeah but the internet loves to take it out of context. C'mon who needs food?

 

Thats putting it lightly  
Hopefully things will pick up with the movie.

 

They aren't all in the same wave. They're divided into at least three.

 

exactly! food is for chumps...

 

oh..k, so i sould of said the last waves of animated...oops

 

Not all that surprising. The movie line should help at least a little bit. We've also got the rest of this years Animated figures to go threw, so having those on the shelves as the same time as the movie figures (giving some variety to what people can buy), should also help a little bit, imo. It doesn't help that distribution this year, so far, has been extremely poor.

 

Transformers toys are expensive as hell for what they are. So logic says when the economy is down the expensive stuff has to go first.

Also 07 was an amazing year due to the film far outdoing their own projections so a slump is a given in between films now maybe 09 will be even more profitable what with both TF's and GIJoe in the cinemas

 

I'm sure that once rotf comes out, sales will be booming again.

 

TF1 had uber-sales, but the misaligned show/toy launch for TFA + recession = profits down.

 

That, and the fact that boys don't play with toys as much as they used too. Now most boys want the newest videogame or ipod.

 

I'd like to know how their profit margin is doing, but that information seems to be difficult/impossible to find.

Anyway, a combination of a number of factors makes this not at all surprising:

- General recession means people aren't spending as much on non-essential items like toys...especially after Christmas.
- Price increases on all sizes of TFs by both Wal-Mart and Target. I can't remember off-hand whether the MSRPs of TFs have increased and if Hasbro is seeing any extra money from that price increase.
- TF shelf presence restricted to a pair of lines (Animated and Universe) which don't have the same popularity and exposure as the live-action movie line...and neither of which, from what I've seen/heard, sell all that well.
- Limited number of new TF figures released in the first quarter of the year - There's only been two TFA Deluxes (S-Prowl, Waspinator), two TFA Voyagers (Wreckgar, Atomic Lugnut), two TFA Target-exclusives, four TFU Deluxes (Smokescreen, Dinobot, Ratchet, Hot Shot), a couple of TFU Voyagers and one TRU-exclusive TFU Ultra. So that's a total of maybe 15 new figures in the main lines, plus 6 Mighty Muggs.
- Retailers may have cut back orders of other TF stuff to clear out their warehouses for RotF stuff.

 

i'd say it's a mixture of this (the fact that the majority of figures released in the last few months have been repaints)

and because sales were huge when the first movie came out (and for a while after). obviously there's going to be a decrease after a huge inflation