Not always viable. Especially with old media, there was no habit of preserving the raw audio tracks. You'd have to take the composite audio and manually strip out things like sound effects and background music, if the scene was especially busy (and then now you're adding the fees of a sound engineer on top of your budget). Plus the recording quality back then wasn't great, and when you filter that further through the tinny toy-quality speaker, it sounds even worse.

 

Side tangent on MP-44, but Peter Cullen is a union actor right? Did he get paid for using his voice on that figure?

 

Not sure how that works with international licensing, and the fact that TT did just strip audio from TF:TM, rather than get new recordings.

 

If I am remembering correctly, he did record brand new lines for MP-44 as did the Japanese voice actors for MP-44 and 41. Since it was made by TT instead of Hasbro I don't think the whole "no union actor" policy applied and I assume he was paid for the lines.

 

"Can" and "could" I feel are the wrong words to use with the these projects. Hasbro with the money they have could do all sorts of wild shit if management agrees on it. The right word is "will". Will they do it?

 

One would think that there would still be some kind of residuals that would have to be paid even if you're using old voice recordings right? Honestly not sure how that works and the fact that it would be international licensing muddies the waters too.

 

I asked as if that is the case and he was properly paid that would explain the price and that can factor in an increase with a sound chip

 

It's definitely the international thing that's the big question mark there. Just like how anime will sometimes use Western music for theme songs quite freely, often enabled by the fact that the anime studio happens to be a subsidiary of the Japanese license holder for that particular record. But then when it comes to importing said anime to the US, the rights get snarled because those song licenses absolutely do not transfer over.

 

Those weren't TF:TM audio tho, for the Peter Cullen voices anyway.

 

Sorry, Movie 2007. I forgot.

 

You need to understand that if retailers arenot willing to buy the units to resell then a company is not able to force then to do it anyway. Will they piss off investors and shareholders to put a product out the with no way to get it to mass market because no one will carry it? No.... It is could they do this, and can they not lose profit in the venture. Management is not going to say I don't care if we have no buyers for the item and stores won't make self room we are making it anyway and fill up a warehouse with product that may or may not sell.

 

They have their own website to sell it on, but it looks like you're pretty much agreeing with me. Hasbro currently has the resources do something like that, but they will not.

 

But they are doing it. That's what HasLab is.

The big difference here is the magnitudes of volume that separate these "crowdfunded" efforts versus what a standard retail order can sustain.

A unit order of 10,000 might sound like a lot, but it's probably 5-10x less than a standard retail order (and that's in today's reduced marketplace. At the brand's peak in 2007-2009, I'm sure some items were manufactured in the millions). That huge difference in cash flow adds a whole level of extra financial security and surety.

 

In the case of Victory they would also have to pay licensing fees to Toei to use audio clips from the show

 

Yeah, what you are describing is HasLab, the thing they are already doing...

 

I'm beginning to think that they either stopped teaching economics in school or these guys just didn't pay attention in class, because these issues shouldn't have to be spelled out multiple times like this.

 

Thanks, that's better than what I was going to say.

 

I was talking about the comment about making it for sale without HasLab. They have the resources to do something like that, but won't.

 

Economics hasn't been taught in schools (at least not all schools) for a long time. Graduated in 2005 and never took an economics class. Hell didn't even take one in college or trade school but working in estimating helps with understanding the ins and outs haha

 

Cheers man. I just had a hell of a haul delivered today so I'm kinda broke lol