They won't go out of business between the next two years, especially not when they have My Little Pony.

 

I think whats being overlooked is this....
Sales have declined tremendously for Hasbro. True some of it is in part to higher prices and poor quality, BUT in my opinion a LARGE part of the problem is the fact that this is a video game age. Hand held devices, iPods, iPads, smartphones, all kinds of gadgets. Kids today prefer these over toys. Us collectors are truly only a small part of the targeted audience. The target demographic (kids) are less interested in plastic toys today and want more for those gadgets. Off all the kids in my extended family, not a one…not a SINGLE one…wanted anything other than some gadget. 6, 7 and 10 year olds wanted a DS, or PSP or something of that nature for Xmas. Without the target demographic wanting the product, sales will decline. TO keep the line going Hasbro had to make compromises that we as collectors don’t like…which in turn hurts sales more. I can see Hasbro cutting way back or even cutting out some of the line. There just is not much of a market anymore. We may be relegated to Buying overseas products from Tommy/Takara in the future :-(

 

Another example of results from: 1)people not moving their currency, and 2) the Fed continuing to print.

 

Newsflash Hasbro Ship more of the stuff people want.

More MP Optimus Prime , Generations Hotshot , GDO Deluxes and should of shipped FOC Generations Deluxe Wave 3 and Voyager Wave 2 before Xmas.

 

DOTM's horrible mishandling leads to hasbro losing money
Hasbro cuts cost's on Prime/Generations 2012, figure quality drops considerably
No one buys 2012 toys, hasbro loses more money
hasbro fires a crapton of people, figure quality affected?


if ye wanna hear more of my dotm gripe I'll elaborate in a pm

and yes, battleship sinking and GI Joe getting delayed hurts hasbro pretty bad as well
and I'm sure the layoffs are also the result of a weakened economy,but i'm not on these boards to talk politics, i'm here to talk about giant robots

and yeah, giving all of the exlcusives to TRU hurts pretty bad, but i can understand why Walmart and target didn't pick up any exclusives this year, they got burned pretty bad with DOTM's exclusives

personally I think Hasbro should axe a few of the superfluous lines like Botshots, Constructibots, Kreo, Cyberverse, and the RC cars. Then put the money saved from developing those line back into the Proper Scout/Deluxe/Voyager/Ultra/Supreme line (weather it be Prime and/or Generations)

 

Fixed it for you ;-)

 

Awe, they only posted 1.28 Billion Dollars in profit for the last 3 months? Poor little gazillion dollar publicly traded global corporation   What ever shall they do.

 

All of this happened under Goldner's Watch, Battleship, ROC (While it made money at the Box office it tanked as a Toy Line) , the gutting of first GI Joe and now Transformers while jacking the prices. After the Battleship Disaster they are still going forward with movies based on Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos!!??? Goldner definitely deserves an FU and Worse, he should be fired.

 

I was thinking the same thing. They are Way too overextended and need to focus on core brands.

 

If only the people at Hasbro would put you in charge of the company for a day!






....
it would be wrecked.

 

For all the Goldner hate, it's worth pointing out that he was also at the helm during Hasbro's last high point. So yeah; do remember to keep things in perspective.

Bringing in a new CEO might not be a bad thing, but it also might not be a good thing for TF collectors. And we knew they were gonna be taking a hit due to Retaliation getting pushed back, after all, and Battleship's flop.

I'm curious though how much of this loss is due to the Hub, and what this means for future programming on that network, given Hasbro was already talking about how they're now cutting back episode orders on existing shows.

 

You are kidding right? Haha. Did you even read the article you linked?
Universal is paying Hasbro, not the other way around.

They have to pay Hasbro because their original license deal was that for 6 years movies would be made out of the ip licenses they obtained, and they only delivered movies for 4. That's a breach of contract, and the penalty is having to pay Hasbro.
I haven't seen Battleship,it's probably pretty terrible, but I'd say it was actually *somewhat* useful for Hasbro: with Lego's license to building bricks finally expiring, they are now free to create similar building systems - hence: KRE-O. And now, with the release of a Battleship movie, they didn't just have one active property to use (Transformers), they had two.

Some people at Universal screwed up. They probably imagined toy properties would, after superhero properties, be the next undiscovered oil reservoir. But while some brands (such as GI JOE and Transformers) are just as strong as a Marvel or DC property, most others would of course be terrible to make a movie about.
I think it's pretty hilarious some suits even thought about doing it.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean billions of dollars. Battleship flops. You really can't predict these kinds of things, writing off ALL movies based on whatever goofy source materials is impractical.

 

read it wrong my bad

 

The Hub's role in stuff like this, and how Hasbro approaches The Hub, is something I am very curious about too.

 

Sad times.  

 

Quality goes down since several Transformers lines before Transformers Prime and I wonder how far it can go down.

 

I don't think kids, the target group for Hasbro, care that much about substandard plastics, less plastic and less paint apps. Not enough to have had this big of an impact.
If we could settle for shitty cartoon likeness in the 80s, I'm sure kids of today can live with fewer paint apps.

 

It's a shame about all of those people who will lose their jobs. Massive lay offs are always horrible. Hopefully they can pull through and find something new quick. My heart goes out to them.

The toy industry is changing and Hasbro is trying to adapt. I think these lay offs are less of a result of poor sales and more of a way of combining jobs and refining them. Hopefully they can get their stuff together soon so no one else has to lose their job. They are on the right track with Transformers in the respect that they actually have the product on the shelf a little before the new episodes actually air instead of a year later.

 

Oh look, yet another thread where people can boast their amazingy huge and comprehensive knowledge on corperations, the economy and how businesses work.

And by "amazingly huge" I mean none whatsoever. Except for Digilaut, who's owning this thread.