The Energon Pub

Hasbro is undergoing a huge shift at the moment and while it started in 2024, we will be seeing that shift happen this year, in 2025. Chris Cocks, Hasbro's CEO who used to work at Microsoft, has been diverting assets to video game development and publishing. All the while, some major Hasbro toy brands will no longer be manufactured by Hasbro and instead will be produced under license by other companies. While Transformers won't be hit as hard with this shift, we are already seeing repercussions to their more risk averse outlook on toy production. While everything below has already been reported as we learnt of it, we will sum everything up for you so that you can see the context behind the current shift in focus from Hasbro.

Switching their Focus to Gaming

Hasbro has been wanting to diversify from being a toy manufacturer for a long time. Brian Goldner's mission was to turn Hasbro from a toy company to an IP company, often citing Disney as inspiration. It was under him that the Bayverse was at an all time high and that other brands, like GI Joe, became live action movie franchises. However, the time for Hasbro's involvement with film making has passed. They have since sold off their production assets and will no longer be financing Hasbro related projects with Paramount or other studios.

This big shift is happening under the new CEO Chris Cocks, who comes from Microsoft. He said in 2024, that the place he sees gaming as the largest potential source of growth for the company. Toys are simply not selling as well as before in general and the future is in digital play. It's there that he feels the company can reach a more mature market and they are so sure of this that he has bet $1 BILLION of Hasbro's money on game development. Their first games resulting from this investment will be released either later this year or in 2026. What is important here is Hasbro's involvement in the games. These aren't simply games using a license from Hasbro (like what Transformers Reactivate was going to be) but games that Hasbro is directly involved in and is financing.

Lowering their Focus on Toy Production

This restructuring of the company has had some massive repercussions in toy development. As we saw last year, there were massive layoffs, all across Hasbro, including the management of the Transformers toy brand. Teams are now leaner. The biggest change is with the Power Rangers brand, where Hasbro will not be making their toys anymore. Instead, Hasbro has licensed toy production out to Playmates. They will be handling the figures we see on shelves, and zords and everything to do with that brand, toy wise. With Power Rangers, Hasbro is using Playmates just as Disney uses Hasbro for Star Wars.



Speaking of Star Wars, that's another area where Hasbro is growing less and less involved in toy production since they have chosen to sublease their master license. While they still produce certain toys, this explains why we see other Star Wars toys on shelves made by different companies. This mitigates their risk of overstock, which has royally bit them in the behind multiple times before. Fun Fact: Them owning the master license is also why Star Wars Funko Pops must all be bobble heads as Funko does not have the right to make Star Wars figures, only Hasbro.

Now how about Transformers?

While we have already seen since Legacy Evolution, the productions numbers have dropped, meaning that seeing a toy at retail is no longer something that is a sure thing (it never was, but it's even less so the case now). Not only are less of a particular toy being made but there are less toys to make. Transformers One had one quarter of the output we saw with Rise of the Beasts, it only had one wave of product. While that means the film was solely relying on theatrical performance to break even, at least Hasbro did not have overstock or further warehouse storage costs, which can make a toyline far less profitable even if it sells more product.

And the trend of less product continues in 2025 as it has been revealed by Hasbro that yearly Transformers toylines like Age of the Primes will now have 3 waves instead of 4. So there will be less varied Transformers products in stores. Unlike the Power Rangers line though, the Transformers line will probably not be leased to another toy maker as it is already in partnership with another company, Takara, for design and distribution. Hasbro has been lowering their stance on forbidding companies licensing the Transformers brand from making toys that convert. We saw that with the Robosen toys and more recently with the Combot Prime which is an official product that has both a robot mode and an alt mode released by a company licensing the Transformers brand from Hasbro.



So all in all, while we have already been seeing changes at Hasbro in their toy production, 2025 is where their new phase truly begins and we'll keep following to see how that impacts the Transformers brand.

Buddy, Disney failed with their model. Look at star wars. So you want to copy it and alienate the majority of the consumers for your company? Last year was crap. Same toys clogged the shelves all year long. Why didn't sales improve? Because you never put out more product than the cartoon and tf one.

While the TF aspects of this are troubling, if Hasbro wants to just hand over G.I. Joe toys entirely to Super7, I'd be cool with it. Now that they're doing O-ring figures that should've been part of the original ARAH line, I couldn't care less about Classified.

I hope this doesn't lead to Disney yanking any licenses from them.

REACTIVATE was certainly NOT a good start.
Let's hope they will learn their lesson and make SOLID SINGLE PLAYER video games like the Activision classics.

As for Wizard Of The Coast, Dungeon & Dragon and Magic The Gathering became so woke that they are now parodies that would make the Babylon Bee jealous. If they want people to buy their stuff again, especially the old fans who are passing the torch to their kids and even grandkids, let's hope they will clean out the rot that is sabotaging them from the inside.

Over the last 4-ish years, Hasbro got clobbered because (among other things) they over-produced figures and toys for franchises that were experimental at best. We all saw how long that Wakanda Forever merch stayed rotting on shelves. Not to mention all the money they sank into making figures for Acolyte, The "Eternals", and a mess of other shows that nobody liked, and by association nobody bought any of the figures. They sank truckloads of cash into making figures and merch for those shows to be ready on the shelf the day the shows went live. The rest is history. The shows failed, the figures went unsold, and all the time/money Hasbro invested in these efforts was wasted.

They should have held off on making figures for any of those shows and movies until after they learned if they were successful or not. Especially given the disastrous track records of nearly every Marvel and Star Wars media that's come out in recent years. Hasbro ought to have been operating under a blanket expectation that any MCU, or Star Wars related movie was going to flop, and that any figures they made based on those movies wouldn't sell. Then they could have saved time and money for more profitable operations, instead of whining every quarter that 'sales didn't meet expectations'. The problem was that their expectations were based on every movie/show being a super-success, that all the related figures/merch would sell like hotcakes, and that sales would only increase every quarter. Which is, of course, absurd. Such sky-high expectations were doomed to failure.

They should also have assumed, as Kanrabat noted, that any products made 'wokeness' in mind would fail as well. Products designed to promote such ideologies are made as an attempt by companies to shape the public, rather than provide for them. They presume the customer is always wrong, which is dangerous. Quoth the Ventriloquist: "When the muscle starts thinkin' its the brains, it's time to amputate."

Yeah, I forgot that all the Disney crap were also made by Hasbro. Those were obligatory contracts that had to be fulfilled, but they really counted their chicks before they hatched. Let's hope they will tone down the licenced Disney stuff. Especially when most of their movies keep flopping.

I bet I'll see Zegler talking dolls and creepy-uncanny "magical creatures" clogging shelves sooner or later.

-Kanrabat- wrote:Yeah, I forgot that all the Disney crap were also made by Hasbro. Those were obligatory contracts that had to be fulfilled, but they really counted their chicks before they hatched. Let's hope they will tone down the licenced Disney stuff. Especially when most of their movies keep flopping.

I bet I'll see Zegler talking dolls and creepy-uncanny "magical creatures" clogging shelves sooner or later.

Mattel has the contract for Disney Dolls now.

william-james88 wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:Yeah, I forgot that all the Disney crap were also made by Hasbro. Those were obligatory contracts that had to be fulfilled, but they really counted their chicks before they hatched. Let's hope they will tone down the licenced Disney stuff. Especially when most of their movies keep flopping.

I bet I'll see Zegler talking dolls and creepy-uncanny "magical creatures" clogging shelves sooner or later.

Mattel has the contract for Disney Dolls now.

Well, it will be the same story, but at least this time around, will not be the one to get a loss.

Cheetron wrote:Buddy, Disney failed with their model. Look at star wars. So you want to copy it and alienate the majority of the consumers for your company? Last year was crap. Same toys clogged the shelves all year long. Why didn't sales improve? Because you never put out more product than the cartoon and tf one.

They didn't even give TFOne a full toyline, as I wrote in the article. The film had tons of characters and the 13 primes and all we got were 4 deluxes. Airachnid only got a one step, not even a toy with her proper alt mode. It was bleak.

About Disney though, they rose like a Pheonix in 2024. The top 3 films of the year in terms of box office are from them and only Disney films made over 1 billion. So I get the hate, but it seems general audiences are still more than willing to give them their money.

If they really want to succeed here they need to branch out alot more with their game design. Instead of just a decent FPS action game they need to have stuff that is single player high quality (PC/console games instead of cell phone/tablet gachas) that feels like a multiplayer MMO world but is in fact offline. Several games have achieved that already but would be awesome to see TF do it. Id love to see also something in the style of Fire Emblem or even an older style Zelda sort of thing, where in Fire Emblem style you would strategize the entire team of TFs you play as, and in the Zelda type you would follow the story of a main character like Optimus Prime as they develop on. So far from what they have revealed the best looking thing in gaming this year is gacha idle Eternal War... not interactive enough really and probably not with enough plot going on. TF could easily get a game in the quality of the newer Dragon Quest, like XI and be amazing though, especially if it had more action than turn based gameplay, though that is not as relevant to what could be done overall.

Some big company like Bandai-Namco could pull off a similar thing as they have done for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot or Wrath of the White Witch and would be out in a year or two.

zko wrote:Fire Emblem style you would strategize the entire team of TFs you play as

You can solve the maps with a few units and an expeditive playstyle,you don't need the whole army,see the speedruns for more informations.You may do a pseudo scoring in order to unlock all of them and their discussions,really pseudo.The individual power of a single unit is the main difference between it and ADVANCE WARS,the second is the progression system:"adventure versus arcade".

Strategize is a very vague word.The selected characters at any moment?Stats optimisation?The expeditive strategy of the speedruns may shock you.Tactic is a different thing:"major plan versus minor solution''.

I'm not interested in suggesting exemples of game,even more when they already well known but that's not the principal.They are always minor anyway.

About Disney though, they rose like a Pheonix in 2024. The top 3 films of the year in terms of box office are from them and only Disney films made over 1 billion. So I get the hate, but it seems general audiences are still more than willing to give them their money.

Disney's successes last year were accompanied by a string of colossal failures. The Marvels, Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, Wish, Secret Invasion, Book of Boba Fett, not to mention Acolyte. It was not exactly a banner year for them.

PerfectVision wrote:

zko wrote:Fire Emblem style you would strategize the entire team of TFs you play as

You can solve the maps with a few units and an expeditive playstyle,you don't need the whole army,see the speedruns for more informations.You may do a pseudo scoring in order to unlock all of them and their discussions,really pseudo.The individual power of a single unit is the main difference between it and ADVANCE WARS,the second is the progression system:"adventure versus arcade".

Strategize is a very vague word.The selected characters at any moment?Stats optimisation?The expeditive strategy of the speedruns may shock you.Tactic is a different thing:"major plan versus minor solution''.

I'm not interested in suggesting exemples of game,even more when they already well known but that's not the principal.They are always minor anyway.

Speedrunning is a bad example of what is required for any game style or for the quality of the game played. It is designed around brute force scientifically breaking down the game into its simplest solution, no matter what the game is, and has been done even for many very challenging games like Hollow Knight and I recently saw a news story that Elden Ring had an NG+1000 hitless speed run... most people will take at least 30 hrs first time through Hollow Knight and for some longer JRPGs maybe 100 hrs that is a bad example of the games fun level and what can be done in plot in any case all I mean is that you control and make decisions for the whole team instead of just a single character, and most of my point for the post was that they need to ditch these mobile gachas like the plague. The only console games theyve made in the last few years for TF have been very simple kids arcade ones or very simple strategy, like the racing and shooting one that recently came out, or the tie ins to cyberverse and earthspark. All the mobile gacha stuff with Earth Wars, the fighting one, etc etc. Are just simplified games, they need to be more complex and not monetized like a mobile game.

william-james88 wrote:

Cheetron wrote:Buddy, Disney failed with their model. Look at star wars. So you want to copy it and alienate the majority of the consumers for your company? Last year was crap. Same toys clogged the shelves all year long. Why didn't sales improve? Because you never put out more product than the cartoon and tf one.

They didn't even give TFOne a full toyline, as I wrote in the article. The film had tons of characters and the 13 primes and all we got were 4 deluxes. Airachnid only got a one step, not even a toy with her proper alt mode. It was bleak.

About Disney though, they rose like a Pheonix in 2024. The top 3 films of the year in terms of box office are from them and only Disney films made over 1 billion. So I get the hate, but it seems general audiences are still more than willing to give them their money.

As for tf one, all my stores had were the same 3. The shipper came and never left. No studio series. No legacy. Nothing but the same 3 to ones. The shelves have been clogged with the same toys since may. Nothing new for the kids at Christmas. I have traveled over multiple states to find something. Anything. Something to make my collecting worthwhile. 2024 was the worst year for transformers. I don't make the money to shell out for the expensive ones. I cannot afford add on kits.

I watched all Disney TV shows crash and burn. The acolyte anyone? Marvel is failing because Disney bought them.

zko wrote:Speedrunning is a bad example of what is required for any game style or for the quality of the game played.

Only with bugs.If i say that the FE's are designed to get a lot of power in a few units (like the cards in MM:BATTLE NETWORK):it still stands regardless of common knowledge,no bug involved:it's really the design,BATTLEGROUNDS IS more complex if it doesn't allow that."A pseudo chess game where you destroy everything with just Optimus" AND NOT BECAUSE OF A BUG!PURELY DESIGNED THIS WAY!A way to say it's a garbage franchise,you got distracted too much by the word speedrun,it was only a proof.The RISE OF THE DARK SPARK on 3DS was like that,a minor game again.

DeathReviews wrote:

About Disney though, they rose like a Pheonix in 2024. The top 3 films of the year in terms of box office are from them and only Disney films made over 1 billion. So I get the hate, but it seems general audiences are still more than willing to give them their money.

Disney's successes last year were accompanied by a string of colossal failures. The Marvels, Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, Wish, Secret Invasion, Book of Boba Fett, not to mention Acolyte. It was not exactly a banner year for them.

Most of what you mentioned didn't come out last year. Book of Bobba Fett started coming out in 2021.

In terms of marketshare, 2024 had Disney as beating every other studio. I know there's a lot of disney hate going around (and not unwarranted, no one liked the Acolyte), but let's not have our feelings get in the way of facts. 2024 was a great year for Disney, financially speaking.

Most of what you mentioned didn't come out last year. Book of Bobba Fett started coming out in 2021.

In terms of marketshare, 2024 had Disney as beating every other studio. I know there's a lot of disney hate going around (and not unwarranted, no one liked the Acolyte), but let's not have our feelings get in the way of facts. 2024 was a great year for Disney, financially speaking.

Given that every other studio is struggling too, comparing Disney's 2024 numbers to other studios isn't exactly shooting for the moon. All the reports for 2024 said that Disney made money and did well - but I think they're only saying that by comparing 2024's numbers to their numbers from 2023, which were among the worst they've ever had. That was the year they laid off lots of people (which Hasbro did too, coincidentally). Compared to 2023, ANY improvement could be interpreted as success. Even 'lose money slightly less quickly' could make that claim. Disney is a long-entrenched franchise, with a lot of fans who want them to be doing well. Their successes last year were mostly in the form of movies/shows that weren't so grossly overt trying to push cultural/social/political issues. If they can keep that in mind, and restrain themselves, they may manage to keep things turned around. Time will tell if they've learned their lesson. We'll see if "Snow White" is ballyhooed as a great success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgPDxRkci_A&t=107s

So... Hasbro will be focusing on video games instead of toys, and they cancelled the only TF game some fans were looking forward to... So fans are doomed to trash mobile games for the foreseeable future, and that's about it? Little to zero budget AI generated "animation" on Youtube? This is pretty sad.

Witnessing the implosion of a brand. Thank God for Takara/Tomy and 3rd Party figures.

Dino-Snarl wrote:Witnessing the implosion of a brand. Thank God for Takara/Tomy and 3rd Party figures.

The article is about Hasbro as a whole, we dont know the repercussions their shift in focus will have on the Transformers brand, if any.

And we’ll also see if outsourcing their toy brands, like Power Rangers, will make for better toys. Thats the bit I’m most curious about.

william-james88 wrote:

Dino-Snarl wrote:Witnessing the implosion of a brand. Thank God for Takara/Tomy and 3rd Party figures.

The article is about Hasbro as a whole, we dont know the repercussions their shift in focus will have on the Transformers brand, if any.

And we’ll also see if outsourcing their toy brands, like Power Rangers, will make for better toys. Thats the bit I’m most curious about.

We hope for the best. Always.

Update and rerelease the Armada game for current consoles. Make a Decepticon campaign.

As for the toys, if they're making fewer, that means I'll be tempted less. My wallet will approve.

So... Transformers Reactivate - a VIDEO GAME... failed, crashed, burned and got cancelled before it was even released. And this Hasbro boss now thinks the ticket to bringing prosperity and success back to Hasbro is to... make MORE video games? This thing among mortals which you call 'logic' seems flawed to me!

DeathReviews wrote:So... Transformers Reactivate - a VIDEO GAME... failed, crashed, burned and got cancelled before it was even released. And this Hasbro boss now thinks the ticket to bringing prosperity and success back to Hasbro is to... make MORE video games? This thing among mortals which you call 'logic' seems flawed to me!

Well, if they stop making live service / mobile garbage, and make proper games like the Activision classics, they could do good.

The first step would be to do something easy. Just remaster the two WFC/FOC games and release them on PC and consoles for like, 20$ each. If they do this barely minimum thing, I'll have more confidence in them.

DeathReviews wrote:So... Transformers Reactivate - a VIDEO GAME... failed, crashed, burned and got cancelled before it was even released. And this Hasbro boss now thinks the ticket to bringing prosperity and success back to Hasbro is to... make MORE video games? This thing among mortals which you call 'logic' seems flawed to me!

I wouldn’t compare the two scenarios. Transformers reactivate was a licensed game with no involvement from Hasbro and turned out to be a scam to fleece money from investors, it was never going to come out.

What’s happening here instead is Hasbro investing in their own video game studio and becoming a gaming company. Half of all their R&D money will go to games now and they will be releasing two games a year with the first of these games to be announced later this year.