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Randomhero wrote:

Black Hat wrote:Let's seriously hope this isn't happening. If it went ahead we'd have no "not completely crap but a bit more expensive" choice- it'd be Hasbro's underpainted figures with poorly applied stickers and no elbows or nothing. The MP line would either disappear completely or go to sh!t. And if this DID happen then Transformers as a brand would probably go under fairly quickly (contrary to popular belief, the collector market is bigger than most realize; 20% of Hasbro's TF profits are from collectors, and whilst that doesn't sound like much, it is a LOT of money from a company's perspective. Collectors abandoning the line would probably destroy Transformers completely, as the sharp fall in profits would cause the imbeciles in charge at Hasbro to cut back on the kid-oriented stuff, to the point quality would fall so low that even kids would begin to get sick of it.

Fiction would probably suffer too. With the brand entirely owned by an American company we'd most likely lose out on all Japanese influence on the fiction (no chance of that Trigger-produced anime I dream of) and the fiction would probably fall in line with the likes of modern Marvel; that is, pandering to people who don't even buy the things they want to change, and excluding the existing fanbase.

On the plus side, if this did happen, Hasbro might sell the brand to someone else with an actual idea of what they're doing. And who knows, the death of collector-oriented mainline toys might mean we see a return of CHUG scaled stuff in the 3P realm again.

I mean, I highly doubt this will happen, as this is an article from July and nothing has happened since then, but if it does, the Transformers might finally shed itself of the ball and chain that is Hasbro and their incompetence.

Let’s travel back to 2001 when takara was primarily in control the brand. We got the Unicron trilogy. We got toys that purposely pulled back on articulation like knees and elbows and such with Hasbro asking for certain things included and ignored by takara. Hasbro had to tell takara they wanted Unicron included and takara refused until they final gave in. That was a Hasbro thing. Hasbro is the reason we got that ginormous Unicron that turns into an actual planet and holds all the Minicons.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Takara wasn't actually in total control of the brand back then. Hasbro made most of the decisions regarding the toyline. A more accurate comparison would be with RID2001/Car Robots, where the original molds were absolutely superb.

Also, modern Hasbro and Takara=/=old Hasbro and Takara.

Let’s talk about animation. Again the Unicron trilogy. Takara was in control and wasn’t wanting to work with Hasbro. The animation was a huge step back and to boot was just sending them episodes without scripts. The American team had to figure out what the hell was going on half the time and rush to get them dubbed and put out. Same thing happened with Energon and is regarded as the worst cartoon ever made becuase of how awful it was done with bad animation and story telling. Again takara not communicating or even sending scripts. Get to cybertron and takara just full on ignored Hasbro and made the show a non continuation of Energon. They just made it a new show which forced Hasbro to add animation of Unicron debris throughout to make it a trilogy and explained stuff.

Aside from Energon, which was an unapologetic mess (though the dub was STILL inferior to the Japanese) the Unicron Trilogy wasn't THAT bad, especially in its original language (because if you're watching the vast majority of anime dubbed you're doing it wrong) and the latter end of Energon and the vast majority of Cybertron had a fantastic toyline. And again, Hasbro and Takara are NOT the same companies as they were years ago.

You really wanna say it’d get worse with Hasbro in control? After the Unicron trilogy we got animated and the aligned universe. You know what takara did to those? They made animated a continuation of the live action movie and turned Bulkhead into Ironhide from the movies and omitted pivotal episodes out becuase japan doesn’t like western show lengths.

Animated was good, yes (though the Japanese dub, whilst it suffers from the same issues that plague any localized kid's show, wasn't as bad as some make it out) but Aligned, with the exception of the games, was an inconsistent overrated mess with some of the worst toylines we've seen for a kid-centric series in a while (with a few hidden gems).

Same with prime. Takara just gave up in Prime. Season three and predacons rising was never released so the show in Japan legitimately ended with the autobot base being destroyed and Optimus looking like he died and the autobots lost.

Again. Prime is majorly overrated. It's not awful but it sure could be a whole lot better.

Really wanna day things would be worse with Hasbro in control? Some of us went through takara leadinng the charge and it wasn’t a fun ride.

Ah yes, those awful days of actual paint budgets and plastic that isn't light flimsy junk with more cavities than a sugar-addicted five year old. Thank goodness New HasbroTM is here to save us!

Dude come on. There was an episode in Armada called jungle where it all took place in a forest and another called Carnival that was actually a circus. Remember the three part premier that was actually a two parter with the third part just being a standard episode that was about building base.

Randomhero wrote:Dude come on. There was an episode in Armada called jungle where it all took place in a forest and another called Carnival that was actually a circus. Remember the three part premier that was actually a two parter with the third part just being a standard episode that was about building base.

Sounds pretty standard as far as TF fiction really. The vast majority of Transformers cartoons have been absolute garbage. I'd still argue that Armada was a better cartoon than G1 for the most part. It (generally) looked better and at least they TRIED.

Caminus9000 wrote:*sign* if this happens Hasbro will destroy the entire Masterpiece Movie series before it even started. Either they'll take control on who could be next for release which is the LAST thing we want because all they'll end up giving us is different versions of bumblebee or let their poopy designer (john warden) take over on making them.


TakaraTomy has always taken the initiative of servicing their fans and giving us the best quality of their toys while Hasbro hid in the shadows looking after themselves and constantly neglecting us.

You do realize that the MPM line is the one MP line that Hasbro actually works on directly with Takara Tomy right? They're logo even appears on the front of the Japanese box (which is different from the Hasbro box) just like TT's logo is on the Hasbro box. If any MP line is killed by this potential buy out it wont be this one.

And as a whole Hasbro understands that the Asian market is more willing to pay a premium for better quality than the rest of the world (or at least that's what they think and I'm fine with that). If they didn't then we wouldn't have seen so many big ticket releases through Hasbro Asia like most MPs and the Unite Warriors box sets. What probably would change is we'd see more uses of the same mold in the Legends line rather than Takara Tomy's "one use per line" mentality. I doubt we'll see any price drops, not when Hasbro themselves are raising prices.

Hasbro doesn't buy companies to lose money they aren't just going to shut them down and move into the country. Takara Tomy isn't having troubles because of the Transformers line so there's no reason to make drastic changes there. They're having trouble because they've lost some key licenses. It wasn't their fault they lost Pokemon, Nintendo refused to renew licenses around the world choosing to do as much as they can themselves and working with smaller companies they can have more control over. Same thing happened in North America with the anime, toys, and card game all going back to Nintendo and the Pokemon Company.

One thing the article seemed to be in error on (I guess, I didn't read the whole thing) is Takara Tomy not releasing toys outside of Japan. Takara has consistently released a small number of toys in the US since at least the '80s while Tomy has been around here since I believe the '70s. When the two merged in 2006 they both released their products under Tomy and still do today.

Black Hat wrote:(because if you're watching the vast majority of anime dubbed you're doing it wrong)

It's 2017, you can drop the weeaboo routine. Dubs have come a long ways since the old days when they'd grab anyone that could read off some lines to fill roles, and scripts were cleaned up in hopes of getting a show on Toonami. These days most recording studios wont even talk to you if you don't have at least some theater or radio experience and Toonami only wants grittier, violent shows. That isn't to say there aren't some bad dubs (Sentai really makes some weird casting choices sometimes), but it isn't like Japan hits a home run every time either (Black Clover is unwatchable for me in Japanese).

Emerje

It's 2017, you can drop the weeaboo routine. Dubs have come a long ways since the old days when they'd grab anyone that could read off some lines to fill roles, and scripts were cleaned up in hopes of getting a show on Toonami. These days most recording studios wont even talk to you if you don't have at least some theater or radio experience and Toonami only wants grittier, violent shows. That isn't to say there aren't some bad dubs (Sentai really makes some weird casting choices sometimes), but it isn't like Japan hits a home run every time either (Black Clover is unwatchable for me in Japanese).

Yes, instead of unbearable screechy voice acting by no-name "talents" we have the same few studios and actors dubbing everything and injecting unwanted political nonsense into the dialogue for no reason whatsoever. How far we've come!

Yes, there are good dubs, but they're few and far between. And in any case, if you're going to watch something from another country you might as well watch it in the original language. That isn't being a weeaboo, that's just respecting the source material and the culture that birthed it. I wouldn't want to watch Amelie with people dubbing over the French dialogue after all.

Takara's offerings in recent years seem to be much fewer and the retools have been saved for special cases.

Trying to be positive, here's what I'd imagine:

Takara gets put in charge of premium decos and retools for conventions and Platinum series. Takara always had a better handle on premium decos than Hasbro. Platinum series in the US are often warehouse shelf warmers. Whereas Takara premium decos have a big international market. So the same decos get used worldwide but Takara designers handle the premium redecos.

Masterpiece probably gets cut down to one figure a year. Maybe rebooted as a line that's more of a compromise between MP and high quality Generations. Less weak fiddly bits. Some silhouette sacrifices.

I can see where Hasbro might want to leverage Japanese toy branding. Maybe an SH Figuarts or Revoltech style line of cross brand figures with the Takara label. I'd expect Star Wars and Marvel to get prominent offerings but maybe some TFs as well. A big change is I'd expect Takara sublicensing of TF's to end largely in favor of Hasbro funded competing projects with Revoltech, Ex Gokin, etc. You might see Kidrobot or somebody handling vinyls but I imagine a lot of the stuff Takara licenses out to other Japanese companies would get reassigned to Takara because Takara would be "freed up" from doing mass release design work aside from translation.

Microman and Diaclone get used to beef up the Rom branding further. Hasbro is looking to expand its smaller brands and clone TF's success. Titans Return could be R&D for this. Hasbro would almost certainly comb through Takara's IPs for movies, comics, and kids' toys.

Black Hat wrote:Yes, instead of unbearable screechy voice acting by no-name "talents" we have the same few studios and actors dubbing everything and injecting unwanted political nonsense into the dialogue for no reason whatsoever. How far we've come!

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. There's a few cases where dubs have gone off the rails, but they're hardly the norm. As far as the same few actors go, Japan does the same thing. Any given season you're going to hear the same dozen or so popular actors pop up. It's a job no matter what country you're in and the better you are at it the more work you get. You probably haven't noticed that all of the English studios have been bolstering their actor stables to help supply the increasing demand for dub streams. Funimation has about tripled their actors for their simuldubs, Sentai has increased and will probably be doing simuldubs on their new HiDive platform once they've built it up enough, and now Netflix is getting in on their own dubs as well.

Yes, there are good dubs, but they're few and far between. And in any case, if you're going to watch something from another country you might as well watch it in the original language. That isn't being a weeaboo, that's just respecting the source material and the culture that birthed it. I wouldn't want to watch Amelie with people dubbing over the French dialogue after all.

I don't know how you can say they're few and far between if you don't watch them to begin with. And watching something in its original language isn't a requirement to enjoy it, nor is it disrespectful. As much as I love the stuff and as much as I spend on it ever month, at the end of the day it's just a factory produced product that's made quite literally by committee to make money. They want you to watch it in whatever language you like best. What they wouldn't want is people telling others how they should watch their anime. Personally I leave all of my options open with paid subscriptions to Crunchyroll, Funimation, HiDive, Hulu, Netflix, Anime Strike/Amazon Prime, and VRV. Some shows I prefer to watch in Japanese, some shows I can only watch in Japanese, and some shows I watch both in Japanese and English if they're good enough, I have that freedom.

BTW, the Japanese dub over western shows and movies as well. Guess they're being disrespectful, too.

RodimusRex wrote:Trying to be positive, here's what I'd imagine:

Yikes! That all sounds just as pessimistic as everyone else. Again, if Hasbro is going to buy Takara Tomy they're going to do it to make money. Transformers is not where TT is losing money, having licenses expire is. Hasbro knows what the Asian market wants and has been releasing TT's collector lines through Hasbro Asia for a long time now. They aren't going to cut costs or reduced supply when they know full well that the market there can sustain it. It's us in the west that they don't trust as collectors after canceling two box sets and shutting down BotCon and the club, somewhere around $1000 in exclusives, and replacing all of that with three Titans Return exclusives worth $68 total (to say nothing of the smaller offerings at SDCC).

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Black Hat wrote:Yes, instead of unbearable screechy voice acting by no-name "talents" we have the same few studios and actors dubbing everything and injecting unwanted political nonsense into the dialogue for no reason whatsoever. How far we've come!

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. There's a few cases where dubs have gone off the rails, but they're hardly the norm. As far as the same few actors go, Japan does the same thing. Any given season you're going to hear the same dozen or so popular actors pop up. It's a job no matter what country you're in and the better you are at it the more work you get. You probably haven't noticed that all of the English studios have been bolstering their actor stables to help supply the increasing demand for dub streams. Funimation has about tripled their actors for their simuldubs, Sentai has increased and will probably be doing simuldubs on their new HiDive platform once they've built it up enough, and now Netflix is getting in on their own dubs as well.

Yes, there are good dubs, but they're few and far between. And in any case, if you're going to watch something from another country you might as well watch it in the original language. That isn't being a weeaboo, that's just respecting the source material and the culture that birthed it. I wouldn't want to watch Amelie with people dubbing over the French dialogue after all.

I don't know how you can say they're few and far between if you don't watch them to begin with. And watching something in its original language isn't a requirement to enjoy it, nor is it disrespectful. As much as I love the stuff and as much as I spend on it ever month, at the end of the day it's just a factory produced product that's made quite literally by committee to make money. They want you to watch it in whatever language you like best. What they wouldn't want is people telling others how they should watch their anime. Personally I leave all of my options open with paid subscriptions to Crunchyroll, Funimation, HiDive, Hulu, Netflix, Anime Strike/Amazon Prime, and VRV. Some shows I prefer to watch in Japanese, some shows I can only watch in Japanese, and some shows I watch both in Japanese and English if they're good enough, I have that freedom.

BTW, the Japanese dub over western shows and movies as well. Guess they're being disrespectful, too.

RodimusRex wrote:Trying to be positive, here's what I'd imagine:

Yikes! That all sounds just as pessimistic as everyone else. Again, if Hasbro is going to buy Takara Tomy they're going to do it to make money. Transformers is not where TT is losing money, having licenses expire is. Hasbro knows what the Asian market wants and has been releasing TT's collector lines through Hasbro Asia for a long time now. They aren't going to cut costs or reduced supply when they know full well that the market there can sustain it. It's us in the west that they don't trust as collectors after canceling two box sets and shutting down BotCon and the club, somewhere around $1000 in exclusives, and replacing all of that with three Titans Return exclusives worth $68 total (to say nothing of the smaller offerings at SDCC).

Emerje

At a minimum, I can see consolidating Platinum, Tribute, and HTS exclusives with TT premium versions of figures. It would make PLENTY of sense for Hasbro to disrupt the import market by importing TT figures themselves.

Instead of fans going to BBTS or EE and paying $100 for a TT Leader, Hasbro could probably move more volume and pocket a healthy return selling those direct for $65 and selling them to online retailers who commit to minimum orders for an "exclusive" for much less than the inefficiency of businesses importing TT figures by the case.

If Hasbro kills the Masterpiece line, the 3P companies will just step in to fill the market vacuum. There's too much opportunity there. If they were smart they would expand it, get the jump on the Third Parties. They could have Takara-Tomy be their higher-end collectors label so they don't have to worry about being viewed as children's toys. You know, pretty much how it operates now, but TT would be able to license in the States.

Randomhero wrote:

Rated X wrote:Im down with a one size fits all worldwide deco if it means "platinum" style figures for everyone and the death of the el cheapo Has-deco. No more off white and grey plastic and non painted hubcaps are a good thing. No more ridiculous prices for 50 cents worth of extra paint is also a good thing. As the Franchise ages and starts to gear more towards lifelong adult fans rather than kids, Hasbro might be influenced by the Japanese to make stuff more collector oriented and gimmick free. The transformers franchise needs more Japanese influence and less influence from corporate middle America.

If takara profits are down like it’s said why the Hell would Hasbro acquire them and say “hey let’s do what they’re doing and focus on grown men who don’t grow up instead of focusing on the broadest audience which kids.” There’s a reason there’s posts every year that shows Hasbro increases every year it ain’t the 20-40 fans that buy toys.

Does nobody here have kids or shop in public? Doe everyone here just click a mouse and have their stuff delivered becuase they’re too sheltered in their home and embarrassed to buy toys in public. Sorry but my best friend is 31 and only shops online becuase he doesn’t like complete strangers seeing him buy toys. I know that’s a thing.

We are not the majority. I’m sorry if you can’t comprehend that but takara focusing on collectors is probably where they got to where they are with this. Doing insanely overpriced takara Mall exclusives, only putting out 20-30 figures a year with transformers and purposely ignoring certain molds becuase they don’t have a backstory from 30 years ago -cough took 2 years to release generations skids cough-

Hasbro’s primary focus is kids. We are the bonus.

Dude, what kind of kids do you know? Out here in Miami kids are playing with PlayStations and Iphones and RC drones. Action figures are on the decline. Whats ironic is is chug went from being a subline to the main line of the franchise. Believe me, its not 5 year olds influencing combiner wars, titans return, and now power of the primes. Its 40 something collectors (and their kids) who pushed chug to the top of the franchise. And I still buy toys in person. I dont know much about geek culture, I just happen to like Transformers. I walk in to the TRU and tell the sexy ass cashier I collect toys and she will be shocked because I dont look like the type. Hell I even rock my Decepticon and Autobot silver chains in the bars and clubs. So tell your buddy thats afraid to buy toys in person to get a life lol. But back on topic, Hasbro isnt stupid. If they want to buy takara, they know what the Japanese will buy and what they wont. And I seriously doubt anyone will be out of a job either. It will be business as usual, just with a much larger budget. And my gut instinct tells me it means bigger runs of premium decos and less el cheapo decos. Hasbro wont want to to multiple runs of the same figure so we might stand to benefit from the so called "Asian market" raising the bar. Think about it, its easier to put 50 cents more worth of paint on each figure instead of doing 2 seperate runs in 2 almost similar decos just to say Japan gets something different. Anyways, thats my theory.

Emerje wrote:

Black Hat wrote:Yes, instead of unbearable screechy voice acting by no-name "talents" we have the same few studios and actors dubbing everything and injecting unwanted political nonsense into the dialogue for no reason whatsoever. How far we've come!

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. There's a few cases where dubs have gone off the rails, but they're hardly the norm. As far as the same few actors go, Japan does the same thing. Any given season you're going to hear the same dozen or so popular actors pop up. It's a job no matter what country you're in and the better you are at it the more work you get. You probably haven't noticed that all of the English studios have been bolstering their actor stables to help supply the increasing demand for dub streams. Funimation has about tripled their actors for their simuldubs, Sentai has increased and will probably be doing simuldubs on their new HiDive platform once they've built it up enough, and now Netflix is getting in on their own dubs as well.

Yes, there are good dubs, but they're few and far between. And in any case, if you're going to watch something from another country you might as well watch it in the original language. That isn't being a weeaboo, that's just respecting the source material and the culture that birthed it. I wouldn't want to watch Amelie with people dubbing over the French dialogue after all.

I don't know how you can say they're few and far between if you don't watch them to begin with. And watching something in its original language isn't a requirement to enjoy it, nor is it disrespectful. As much as I love the stuff and as much as I spend on it ever month, at the end of the day it's just a factory produced product that's made quite literally by committee to make money. They want you to watch it in whatever language you like best. What they wouldn't want is people telling others how they should watch their anime. Personally I leave all of my options open with paid subscriptions to Crunchyroll, Funimation, HiDive, Hulu, Netflix, Anime Strike/Amazon Prime, and VRV. Some shows I prefer to watch in Japanese, some shows I can only watch in Japanese, and some shows I watch both in Japanese and English if they're good enough, I have that freedom.
exclusives worth $68 total (to say nothing of the smaller offerings at SDCC).

Emerje

What does dubbing anime have to do in this? On my part I prefer subs! Hearing Miko Mido and Imari Kurumi speak in native tongue is waaaaaaaaaay better than their Western dubbed versions. Imari especially

Anyway you gloss over the main reason for the loses, it IS NOT just expiring franchises like Pokemon but because Japan ain't producing enough babies to replace the overgrown ones (those who complain a lot............wait, those are the Western babies) to serve as the target audience for their kid products which is supposedly their bread and butter.

I'm not going to overreact here. I cant predict the future any more than anyone else, but I can think of all sorts of speculation...

On one side, it could be nice because then we know we would be getting the same product world wide, and would not have to pay extra money for (generally superior) product....Or would we??...would the diversity really go away?

I would think that Hasbro would still have to maintain regional packaging, unless they add Japanese/Chinese etc... and they start producing universal packaging that has like 10+ languages on it (imagine how small the bios would be then LOL!).

Still, as we know, the Japanese market is very different form others. What if in the future another Japanese anime TF series were to be produced. Would Hasbro be willing to produce toys for that series just in Japan? Or would the purchase by Hasbro eliminate that possibility (of both exclusive anime and exclusive toys)

Understands that the Japanese market mostly appreciates the animated continuity (as do I), so would Hasbro still diversify toys for that market? I love the idea that LioConvoy came form TR Alpha Trion, or ConvoBat from Mindwipe. Would things like this cease to exist? I have no idea. I cant imagine Hasbro trying to sell TR Sentinel Prime or Alpha Trion in Japan...but who knows?

Also, are there any other distributors for Transformers in the world market besides & ? I know GiG used to distribute in Italy back in the Original Series era...not sure about now. How about South America? The Middle East? Africa? (not sure if some of those places even have Transformers...but if they do, who distributes them??)

(The following statement has nothing to do with Transformers) Honestly, If this happens, I just hope this means Zoids will return to the US.

o.supreme wrote:Also, are there any other distributors for Transformers in the world market besides & ? I know GiG used to distribute in Italy back in the Original Series era...not sure about now. How about South America? The Middle East? Africa? (not sure if some of those places even have Transformers...but if they do, who distributes them??)

All of it is done via their local Hasbro departments, it's all streamlined. Quite different from the fragmented 80's. GiG is a bit of a special case if I may add, as it dealt mainly with Takara for figures, not Hasbro. That's how they got more combiner gift sets, that Legends 4-pack, and Galaxy Shuttle

Hasbro wants to acquire TakaraTomy? I say they do not. History has shown that most of Hasbro's acquisitions over the years were based in the U.S. Only two were outside: a distributor in South East Asia, and a minor toy company in Japan. Chances are very slim that Hasbro is looking over the world for companies to gobble up, especially since it's now represented in a lot of areas all over the world.
Besides, it seems to me that the writer of the article is basing the notion on the simple fact that TakaraTomy has a special relationship with Hasbro, and nothing else. To me, that actually works in favor of keeping the former as is as much as possible. At most Hasbro would probably buy maybe 49% of the shares, not the majority, but more than likely Hasbro would stay out of it and do business with whoever buys TakaraTomy out should the worst come to pass.