TFW2005 Coverage Of Hasbro First Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call

I saw on Yahoo that Hasbro took a loss first Q.

Shouldn't have cancelled the FE line.

Kidding.

Interesting that the Transformers brand has remained flat compared to last year's revenues so far.

A good sign indeed. If Transformers can maintain its strength as a brand in non-movie years, then it also indicates the movies aren't as necessary as they used to be to maintain sales. Will be interesting to see how the trend continues though throughout 2012 as the last movie toys disappear and Prime toys completely take over.

While not being able to get a sneak peek at upcoming toys for Transformers is rather disappointing I would say just being able to get new toys is the more important part. Hopefully Generations will continue with a strong presence right along with TF Prime for those that collect that line. Because of FOC we know Generations will continue but hopefully there will also be G1-esque Classics releases too.

Rarrrrgh! Hasbro is going bankrupt because Prime Bumblebee is two different shades of yellow, etc etc.

This has kind of already happened if you think about it. Granted, there are still a few DOTM peg warmers hanging around, but overall Prime (at least in the stores I frequent) has supplanted DOTM merch in the Tformers section.

And I wonder how forward thinking Hasbro was this time in not lining up any DOTM merch to carry forward thru the end of 2012. Was it really just a case of retailers not ordering product or did they not plan any new product because it's not a movie year? And furthermore, I wonder if kids would continue to buy up movie related product if it were available? This doesn't appear to be the case with the OP w/trailer toys that seem to be littering toy aisles as I type this, but perhaps if the price point were lower, say Deluxe class?

IIRC, the figure assortments for product post ROTF continued with movie characters and or toys that weren't specifically movie but carried that theme forward- HFTD, RTS, etc- and those did pretty well. Not sure why Hasbro decided to completely cut-off DOTM merch in any form to make way for Prime. After all, a kid who loves the movies but may not be keen on the TV show will now have no other option but to buy Cliffjumper and/or Wheeljack rather than say; Acid Crumbling Ironhide, Head Pops-Off Megatron, or the sure to be a hit must buy toy of the year... one-armed movie Optimus Prime!!

Pretty sure it's retailer fatigue. After all, we know they originally planned to run a Movie Trilogy line in tandem with the PRiD toyline, but it got cancelled due to lack of interest.

This is always common since retail doesn't buy anything new until they get rid of last year's stock.

Still you'd think the worlds largest toy company would find away around this.

It's not like HTS and BBTS are pushing them away. But then BBTS price's are to much at times so I'm leaning more towards HTS with 10% off or free shipping promotion during CHUG droughts such as these.

I guarantee that if there was at least one new wave with 2 or more "Generations" TF figures shipped during 1st quarter, those numbers would've been higher.

If so I'm wondering why there wasn't retailer fatigue after ROTF was already a year gone, but they were still milking the line via the aforementioned line offshoots and tie-ins?

Key word being "new".
The DOTM line- for me at least- didn't offer anything new or innovative enough.

Bay-formers 3 figures were lamer than 1 and 2 so it figures that no one was interested.

In Preschool, SESAME STREET contributed to the year-over-year gains as did PLAYSKOOL HEROES, with TRANSFORMERS RESCUE BOTS leading PLAYSKOOL HEROES’ growth

THAT, makes me happy. My son LOVES Rescue bots. Rescue bots LEAD the growth! kick ass! good job on that one Hasbro! The show tie in and kiddie appeal is a home run!

Oh yeah I wonder why...

I would like to know what they are playing at by not making any Crossovers toys for ages despite it being a year with Star Wars TV show and a Movie reissue in 3D and all those Marvel related things too.

I would also like them to decide to release Takara's Battle Beast internationally even if it's not possible to do it in North America as the North American ones suck compared to the Takara ones and the takara ones fit better in their game related ideas.

I would also like to know if they are intending to allow Rescuebots to rot on the vine as the TV show is doing well but the Toyline is a poor representation of them characters and is actually really poorly distributed they need to redo them all with TV show accurate sidekicks (as they are doing with Cody) and new robots which have cabins in them and better heads and more joints they'd need to be a bit smaller than the non transforming ones and perhaps more like the Playskool gobots in terms of joints.

If they can't be bothered to do that they can at least reissue the existing ones with new heads and colours (so chase is blue for example). they could also expand the line a bit by making Rescuebot style toys of characters like Knockout or Grimlock.

They have made 3 playsets so far but they are not easy to find and I wish they'd carry on making them but perhaps tweak the last few so they can all link up into one big playset.

Overall I like them but they could do with drifting towards having better human character toys and the line being closer to the TV show. Movable visors would be good as a gimic for example as they all have that on the show. and each character needs a few more joints at least 5. but ideally with movable wrist swivels too. They need this so they can actually hold their tools properly.

I wonder if there's a Chinese range catalogue image some place for future Rescuebots toys too ? as there was only a tiny number of new toys show at toyfair the Optimus Firetruck playset with a show like Cody and
the Chase Police HQ playset. (plus the additional tools that have been on the Hasbro toyshop site for months).

It must confuse the kids that the toyline is so unlike the TV show.

I hope Hasbro have enough sense to develop Microman/Micronauts along with Takara for a relaunch in 2013-2014 that would provide the ideal antidote to another TF movieline for those who a re weary of that and Microman/Micronauts is a group of lines popular with many Transformers fans (as it's sort of it's ancestor really) so if they can take the good bits of Microman 1999 update the best ideas from the 1970's and ad some sprinkles from the Micronauts universe using a body that share the things they have learned from making Gi Joe & Marvel figures - and combine that with the variety of play value the 70's and 1999 line had but with none of the fragility or over japanesyness of the 20** lines then they could make a really cool line from it with a broad appeal - and a line worth of its own TV show perhaps too.

It seems like it's an idea worth following to me as it puts the transformation and combination play pattern into the vehicles and allows them to still sell relatively cheap Action figures with it too.

THEY DESERVED THE LOSS . HA HA HA... Cancelled the First Edition Prime ?? and put 3 Bumblebee in a case of RiD Revealer class in first and second waves.. that is just suicidal.

Let me share my thought... the day I heard they cancelled the F.E. I emailed the Hasbro Rep through their web site. The day they announced the assortment package with 3 bb in an assortment, I emailed the Hasbro Rep and hoping they 'd make a revision. Yes, they listened but they don't care our deepest concern !! The stuff don't sell and will just sit at any stores forever till those things go clearance... they placed a bet on that...

Good result for their loss.. PERIOD... HASBRO I hope you guys listened to us...

LOL, oh man how did I know people were going to respond to this with "FE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN CANCELED" rubbish, as if those had anything to do with the poor sales.

What's that ubiquioutus meme-like saying that everyone seems to echo in times like this.... "Haters gonna hate"....

It doesn't help Hasbro either when you have multiple retailers selling DOTM figures at such wide ranging price points. In my area Target sells them at $15.99 KMart at $13.99, then Walmart has them at $7.27, to include the latest wave. Yet when I see the voyager class figures, they are all within 1-2 dollars of each, yet TRU is $6-$7 more. With such a weird pricing setup, it seems some stores keep getting new stock due to have lower prices and taking away from the higher priced store, and thus the higher price store ends up with tons of overstock.

I wanna say its not the FE's that caused this,it was plain old Hasbro,and I gotta say people should get ready as I am sure Hasbro is gonna call it quits for the transformers brand,it is so obvious when you look at sagging sales,lack of figures,and just everything else its not hard to figure out something is wrong.And I don't mind saying it has been almost 30 years of transformers and I would be happy with that if they did say that,so I just finish this post with it has been a great 30 Years.

Pfffffffhahahahahahahahahaha

Riiiight. Hasbro is going to call it quits on their #1 horse for the boys demographic because Q1 (in a non-movie year) sales are down compared to last year, even though they are flat, being that sales figures are equal to last year's Q1.
Please forward me your dealer's pager number as I would love to get whatever you're on...

That's ok hasbro...you let the 3rd party people take over and let them reap the benefits of your product.

Dude...Thats just crappy. Isnt that like being a crackhead and getting giddy about your dealer getting locked up?

Yea...Im PISSED about Ha soundwave, Leadfoot and Wheeljack...But all in all..Hasbro does a pretty damn good job. If they feel they need to scrap some ideas to remain a toy powerhouse...so be it....I want my kids, kids to play with Hasbro toys.

I wouldnt mind seeing that. If Hasbro wont hire the 3rd party designers, maybe 3rd parties can hire the Hasbro TF design team when they get their pink slips.

No botcon spoilers.

So is the cancelled investors day, just because they don't want information to leak out of it? Its all coming full circle. Stringing the pegs together on the map.

I think Hasbro deserves the loss as well, and I also believe the idiot execs may think about slowing/canceling the line soon, its just how they think now adays.

My local walmart still has now over 25 RiD BBs sitting on pegs with all other figures sold, way too much BB saturation from DOTM and now RiD, FIRE the fuck who keeps saying BB sells because from every store I have ever visited that is not the case.

I also think canceling the Prime FE line also is somewhat to blame, as they had the Prime TV show on for just about a YEAR with no toys to go with it at all. FE should have been released back in march before DOTM toys up until december when RiD launched. Would have helped with Brand attachment to the characters and show.

I knew someone would chime in that I am full of it,but can you honestly say Dark Magnus that sales are steady or up,no you can't,also can you tell me that the figures were delayed for almost a year till Prime Season 2 started.All I am saying is delays and cancellations and Q1 Sales Decrease sure ain't no Yippity Doodah time for celebration,cause even if I am dead wrong about the line being cancelled the proof is sales are down,so you decide what that means.

The reason the FE thing is bad is simply that if you look at it dispassionately they didn't release any toys based on the Prime TV show for more than a year and when they did finally make them they were super hard to get and not internationally distributed and the toyline for Prime only showed up nearly a year and a half after the show first aired on the Hub and a good many months after it had started being shown in many international markets.

Simply put they failed to release the last batch of DOTM deluxes, they didn't even design any new DOTM Voyagers for most of the DOTM toylines lifetime leaving the shelve empty of new products into and through the holiday season.

So the end result was little or no new toys to speak of for more than 6 months. And there other Boystoys products were similarly mishandled so it's not like I could go out and by something else instead as there was nothing else to buy.

We should probably be on Prime Cyberverse wave 3 by now they are just to far behind.

I can't just blame Hasbro though the likes of Target, & Walmart are also partly to blame.

I think the biggest "mistake" made was the massive run of the first few waves of DOTM stuff. Everything got screwed up from that. So much shit sitting on shelves, stores wont buy no more..

Hasbro just needs to put limits on runs of molds, and IF all those BBs sell out, revisit the mold down the road....The sheer amount of DOTM deluxes in my area is staggering.

But I still dont agree with the "hahahaha thats what you get" mentality.

Sales are down because the movie came out in the summer, so the hype from that is gone, and very few people, save for collectors, buy toys AFTER the holiday season. BUT, sales compared to Q1 last year are flat, meaning they're at the same this year as they were last year.

Also, yes, I can tell you that Prime figures were delayed until season 2 started, because that happened. Not sure where you were going with that but, I told you because you asked me to...

Besides, Hasbro hasn't canceled the Star Wars line of toys that goes through the same exact up and down cycle with movie and off-movie years like Transformers is experiencing right now. So forgive me for not yelling that the sky is falling just yet...

I have to agree with the above. After buying Transformers since Generation 1, just from a buyer's natural sense of "time" in terms of each line's "lifespan" (armada, classics, rotf, etc.), I felt that for DOTM, the repaints, remolds, the other versions/size-classes of single characters(Prime, BumbleBee, etc.) came far too soon within the line's time frame. It had always been that repaints and remolds would come in the following sub-line phase.

Here we had mold reuses coming in at the beginning/1st half/mainline phase. THAT was faaaaaar too soon to have been happening.

They should have saved those BumbleBee and Optimus repaints/remolds for the trilogy line. Same goes for the Human Alliance BumbleBee and Skids repaints that stores still cannot sell. Even when those two first came out they sat on shelves. They should have put out repaints of figures most folks still don't have like Human Alliance Mudflap and Barricade. Also, Shockwave should have been the Leader with Sentinel Prime and Ironhide, with BumbleBee following in trilogy or not being made at all. And if they needed to even out the number of Leaders even more, they could have introduced a final Megatron or brought over Striker Optimus, possibly as a store exclusive.

See here: Subline imprint - Transformers Wiki

Agreed, I have never seen distribution the likes of DOTM and now PRIME. They seem to be betting heavily on BB and Prime, yet in RECENT years past (armada/energon/cybertron/RiD2000) EVERY figure sold much better because the case assortments were much more even. DOTM was a complete debacle and Hasbro SHOULD pay for it and learn from their mistakes but it seems Prime RiD BBs line the shelves alone yet again.