News: Hasbro to attend Auto Assembly 2008!

Discussion in 'Transformers Conventions and Get Togethers' started by FatMick Prime, Jul 24, 2008.

  1. FatMick Prime

    FatMick Prime Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!

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    From Auto Assembly Forum:

     
  2. Erector

    Erector I ruined the Hall of Fame

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    Wow!!! Good stuff :D 
     
  3. Fort Max

    Fort Max Too many is never enough. Veteran

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    How has this got only only one reply, and why is it not on the bleeding frontpage??

    Hasbro are attending a convention in the UK for what's possibly the first time ever and I had to find out about it from Scourge 151!

    I'll bring my camera and maybe even some money...
     
  4. Omnius

    Omnius Guest

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    w00t! :D  Here's hoping we get a look at some forthcoming Universe goodies.
     
  5. Chris McFeely

    Chris McFeely Well-Known Member

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    Holy Good God Crap Jesus! Hasbro at a UK convention!? That's GOT to be somewhere on the list of signs of the End Times.

    I suppose, really, this is the first time since conventions existed that Hasbro UK reps COULD safely come to one without fear of being lynched, drawn, quartered, hung and poisoned - since everything is coming out over here in a timely fashion now, instead of six months later after two other waves got skipped, and suchlike.
     
  6. BigPhill

    BigPhill Well-Known Member

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    Although it was good to see the Hasbro guys there, it was a bit of a farce.

    They didn't know if the Target and Walmart exclusives they had on show would be released in the UK or not, and although they took the "Exclusive to Target" stickers off the relevant packages, they left an "Exclusive to WallMart" one on another.
     
  7. Omnius

    Omnius Guest

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    And they teased us with Leader Ultra Magnus. :( 
     
  8. BigPhill

    BigPhill Well-Known Member

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    I also heard that they didn't know that the Megatron, Prime and Bulkhead were in fact prizes!
     
  9. Mxprime

    Mxprime Banned

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    Hmmmmm they were prizes? I thought they were just display pieces and in the end I saw someone with wave three figs did the hasbro guys sell em? excuse if I missed something I missed the first two hours of AA thanks to my bus.
     
  10. TheSpacebridge

    TheSpacebridge The Spacebridge

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    The guys weren't Hasbro staff. They are the fan liasons to Hasbro for Transformers. One is a former Hasbro employee and IS a fan. They knew all about the prizes but they didn't know they were hardcopy prototypes. They wouldn't know about the exclusives, sometimes stores arrange them directly (ASDA/Wal*Mart and Tesco/Target) arrange exclusives without involving Hasbro. It's a start guys, next year hopefully we can get direct Hasbro guys involved
    Hitch
     
  11. Fort Max

    Fort Max Too many is never enough. Veteran

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    I made a post in the "win the hardcopy's thread" about who those guys were and what their connection to Hasbro was.

    I think it's unfair to call it a farce, Hasbro's brand manager wanted to come to the show but couldn't so she asked them to go and gave them all those toys to show off. Which they were only too happy to do so, they could of just as easily been in glass cases with a surly guy standing by to make sure you didn't stare at them too hard in case the paint faded.

    It was a good start and will hopefully lead to an actual offical presence next year.
     
  12. boris1162

    boris1162 Well-Known Member

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    i was there and had a chat b4 the show started the to men dint even work 4 hasbro i small guy did but left and what they had on show was poor only about 10 toys 4 display only i though thay would have took more 2 sell
     
  13. Simes

    Simes Well-Known Member

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    As Paul from Spacebridge said, they were there to represent Hasbro, not from Hasbro and as I said in the original news story the intention for the table that they had it was to be a display from Hasbro, never a sales table and - I'm sure someone will correct me - but I believe that they just display at other events as well and not sell.

    The main thrust of the display was the competition toys and I never expected them to send anything else - just those and information about it. And to give Hasbro credit, they have expressed interest already in Auto Assembly 2009 and did send a massive amount of toys along for the auction and raffle so their involvement in Auto Assembly 2008 went beyond the display on show.

    Simon
    Auto Assembly
     
  14. TF@TM

    TF@TM Lucky Draw Collector

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    Simes and Paul are right, as is Fort Max. The UK brand manager for Transformers is on holiday this week, so she wasn't able to make it. She did want to go, and has said that she wants to next year, it was just bad timing that AA was on the same week as her holiday.

    Hasbro UK admit that they've been a little slow in realising the popularity of Transformers, but thanks to the Movie and Animated, along with the guys doing the AA display (I forget their names) and the new brand manager (they've had three in the last few years), they've started to educate the brass at Hasbro UK in what they need to do.
     
  15. Fort Max

    Fort Max Too many is never enough. Veteran

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    That's good to hear, sounds like there could finally be a ball rolling. :D 
     
  16. bluestreak56

    bluestreak56 Well-Known Member

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    Hi all,

    Thanks to Fort Max, Paul, Simon & the Moonians for clearing up the rumours.

    Let me just explain exactly who we are and how the Hasbro display at AA came around.

    As some of you may know we are long time Transformers fans ourselves and have been on tf&themoon for many years. I myself have been collecting transformers for 21 years and my brother ever since he was old enough!

    We attended AA03 and Transforce04 purely as fans, even though I did try to get Toys R Us (my employer at the time) to come to Transforce themselves.

    As Fort Max stated in his other post here : http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/trans...n-3-hard-copy-transformers-animated-toys.html

    neither of us actually work for Hasbro. I worked for Hasbro for a total of 2 years in the IT department by the end of which I was known around the building as the Transformers guy. Since then I have held the position of Transformers Fan Liaison Consultant in an unpaid and unofficial role, whereby I try my best to benifit the fans and Hasbro to try and bring the two closer together.

    As Simon says, the main focus of the event for Hasbro was to display the competition prizes and talk about the competition and thats all. With regards to some of the rumours, yes we did know the resin samples were for the competition, thats why we were handing our leaflets and encouraging people to enter...

    I asked Hasbro to provide us with more product that was not available in the UK to display to make it more interesting for you guys.

    The Transformers brand manager did as the moon said want to come and I believe she will surely try to next year.

    As for the event, we had a great time even though we didnt earn anything from it.

    I thoroughly believe that this is one more step in the right direction as fort max has said, hopefully it will get the ball rolling.

    As such I open the floor to all of you to provide me with feedback about you liked and didnt like from our display this year AND what you would like to see from Hasbro next year.

    All constructive feedback will be fed back to the right people.

    I hope I have answered all your questions, but if you have anymore or wish to email comments / suggestions / feedback, please feel free to email me on :

    [email protected]

    Cheers
     
  17. Fort Max

    Fort Max Too many is never enough. Veteran

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    Wow, great début post there Bluestreak56, thanks for coming on here to clear things up and for being there in the first place. :thumb 

    I'll be honest, I was as disappointed as most on first seeing that the Hasbro stand was just a display and had nothing for sale (not that anything new would have lasted long in there!) but it was a very good/attractive display and being able yet alone encouraged to get a good look at the products was very welcome and something I think even the official American convention doesn't do.

    And then there's the hardcopy contest, I was very surprised to see this as I'm sure that Hasbro US reps have said before at Botcon that they never had any intention of selling or making available any of the various prototyping stages of the toys. But there they were and with some very tidy custom display cases to boot, I'd love to hear how Hasbro UK was able to make this happen if they do have someone there next year.

    Speaking of which, a Q & A like the American convention has is pretty much a must if they are looking for things they could do in the future to make a connection with fans. Going along with that they could score a lot of points with fans if they were more forthcoming about which toys will be released here in the future and perhaps more importantly, which one's won't. A lot of us have spent good money importing American store exclusives never expected to be released here that then inexplicably turned up on UK high streets for half the cost.

    More ambitiously, I've no doubt it would be very well received if they could bring more soon to be released product to the show and perhaps have them out of package in display cases like Botcon and the San Diego Comic Con are treated to.

    The holy grail is of course for a Hasbro UK rep to do a full UK excluisve future product unveiling but I guess that would be at the discretion of Hasbro's main office to decide on what gets shown as a sneak preview and where/when.

    In the meantime, I don't suppose you could ask them to do a bit more work on their website to keep it up to date, fix a really annoying automatic script/command/I don't know what it is that bounces us back to the UK Official Transformers site when we're trying to look at news posted on the US one and to tidy up the Hasbro toy shop a little. It could use a little more organization, I was looking at this morning to see what I could buy for the contest and on any random page there was a bizzare mix of toys from several series/size classes etc with seemingly no order to them. An automatic e-mail when new toys are added would be welcome too.

    Whew, there's a *few* ideas for you, sorry I typed so much but I've been willing this to happen for years and to say I'm pleased would be an understatement.

    Thanks again for everything you did at the show and thanks especially for bringing Ultra Magnus along. :drool:  I'm curious to know if his batteries did last till the end of the day though. :lol 
     
  18. bluestreak56

    bluestreak56 Well-Known Member

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    Hey Fort Max,

    Thanks for those very constructive comments, I feel the same way you do and its great to hear it coming from other fans. I will of course be forwarding on all your suggestions to Hasbro, I feel they have come on leaps and bounds from when I first started annoying them as a placement student way back in 2005!

    To answer your question, YES thankfully Magnus' batteries did last till the end of the convention and im sure with fantastic feedback as you have provided above people like us can really help to improve the bond between Hasbro and us the fans...

    Appreciate all your comments and hope for even more to come :-D
     
  19. Fort Max

    Fort Max Too many is never enough. Veteran

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    You're very welcome bluestreak56, I'll spread this linky around a bit so some more UK'ers will see it and come over to give their thoughts. ;) 
     
  20. Optimus Sledge

    Optimus Sledge Yar har fiddle di dee

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    I don't think it's possible to emphasise enough how important this is. Plus, it would benefit Hasbro UK. I don't think Masterpiece Prime would be shelf-warming at my local Entertainer if we hadn't had to wait so long for him to be available.