by Bumblevivisector » Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:23 pm
I guess I should've chimed in earlier, but when I first heard this rumor, I guessed that is was in fact spawned by a sudden meeting between Disney and Hasbro, but that its coming so soon after the Lucasfilm buyout indicated a need to streamline the licensing deal between the two companies rather than a second buyout.
I'm as anti-corporate-consolidation-leading-to-evil-monopolies-etc. as the next guy, but there are far worse companies that could theoretically buy Hasbro. If I'm relieved, it's because the current situation is just good enough that I see no need to rock the boat: the franchise is fueled by huge movies that have given TF broader popularity than ever, most of the TV and comic series are now properly preserved, the Generations and Masterpiece lines are giving old-school fans a LOT of stuff we never thought we'd live to see, and 3rd party products filling the few remaining fan-demanded niches are (for the time being) allowed to exist in a gray area with occasional (fully justified) smackdowns from Hasbro to keep it out of the more mainstream markets. I don't know about everyone else, but for me personally, the only reason this isn't the greatest time ever to be a collector is my current inability to afford it all.
Sorry to bring up 3rd party stuff again, but that seemed to be the most persistent fear about a Disney buyout. While I share it, I found it an odd issue to jump to conclusions about, since we haven't even seen the full ramifications of how Hasbro will deal with it yet. This year's Botcon ban was so hasty that I doubt we got into the real nuts and bolt of how it'll be enforced from now on, and whether Hasbro or Disney's lawyers were to try and put their foot down on the whole market, overreach into fans' freedom of expression would likely end up being a serious problem. Disney-lawyers may have an infamous track-record, but I'm hardly "scared" of them. I'll say it right now: I have a bootleg DVD of 'Song of the South' because I know that one's NEVER leaving The Vault, so I'm just preserving a controversial piece of history rather than robbing anyone's money-making I.P. (Yeah, yeah, if they prove me wrong, I'll buy the DVD/Blu-Ray combo) Hell, the fact that Robert Smigel's 'Journey Into the Disney Vault' cartoon actually aired on SNL and got released on DVD shows that the Mouse must have a sense of humor. For all we know, Disney legal could just decide 3rd Party toys are 3-dimensional parodies and get back to work ironing out those EVIL work-for-hire contracts.
I guess all I'm saying is that despite essentially considering Transformrs to be my religion, I never saw any reason to get that worried about this. Slag happens...to not be a usable name on a toy package anymore, but no one's gonna' take away our right to call him that.
