The Energon Pub

Bowspearer wrote:It makes zero sense to you because your point defies the logic of businesses. Hasbro will do anything if there is enough of a market there. Also as for Hasbro never reissueing something Takara haven't; last I checked, Takara have yet to reissue the Seacons.

Takara re-issued the Seacons first before hasbro in the Takara Beastwars 2nd toy line.

Hasbro was only able to reissue the seacons for the TFCC club & then for BBTS.com due to takara finding the seacons master molds in 1997,then testing them,then releasing the seacons under the beastwars 2nd toy line banner.

Hasbro was trying for years to release those seacons to USA retail stores under the Universe toy line banner. hasbro said a major retail store in america was suspose to release them around the year 2003 but backed out of the deal at the very last minute. hasbro spent years trying to find the seacons a newer vendor. TFCC swooped in & made them TFCC club toys. then BBTS swooped in & made them BBTS.com site exclusive toys.

Tidalwavex wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:It makes zero sense to you because your point defies the logic of businesses. Hasbro will do anything if there is enough of a market there. Also as for Hasbro never reissueing something Takara haven't; last I checked, Takara have yet to reissue the Seacons.

Takara re-issued the Seacons first before hasbro in the Takara Beastwars 2nd toy line.

Hasbro was only able to reissue the seacons for the TFCC club & then for BBTS.com due to takara finding the seacons master molds in 1997,then testing them,then releasing the seacons under the beastwars 2nd toy line banner.

Hasbro was trying for years to release those seacons to USA retail stores under the Universe toy line banner. hasbro said a major retail store in america was suspose to release them around the year 2003 but backed out of the deal at the very last minute. hasbro spent years trying to find the seacons a newer vendor. TFCC swooped in & made them TFCC club toys. then BBTS swooped in & made them BBTS.com site exclusive toys.

Not just BBTS, they where a shared exclusive, Kapow-Toys and Robotkingdom also had them, that was the only way to get Hasbro to make them in the first place. And they wanted the reissue due to direct fan feedback on forums demanding it.

Bowspearer wrote:@Counterpunch & Dead Metal- every single issue you bring up there has been due to poor market research data- as well as the overproduction issues which have also been discussed in this thread. A census-based approach rather than a survey-based approach would eliminate those problems with the proper safeguards put in place in the data collection stage.

Nope, they where done due to the high demand for them, as for over production, they where made in the minimum numbers needed to make them feasible, as in reasonably priced.

Tidalwavex wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:It makes zero sense to you because your point defies the logic of businesses. Hasbro will do anything if there is enough of a market there. Also as for Hasbro never reissueing something Takara haven't; last I checked, Takara have yet to reissue the Seacons.

Takara re-issued the Seacons first before hasbro in the Takara Beastwars 2nd toy line.

Wrong. Takara recoloured 5 of the Seacons (Snaptrap, Overbite, Seawing, Tentakil & Skalor). Nautilator hadn't been done since the original release in G1. The point remains.

Dead Metal wrote:

Tidalwavex wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:It makes zero sense to you because your point defies the logic of businesses. Hasbro will do anything if there is enough of a market there. Also as for Hasbro never reissueing something Takara haven't; last I checked, Takara have yet to reissue the Seacons.

Takara re-issued the Seacons first before hasbro in the Takara Beastwars 2nd toy line.

Hasbro was only able to reissue the seacons for the TFCC club & then for BBTS.com due to takara finding the seacons master molds in 1997,then testing them,then releasing the seacons under the beastwars 2nd toy line banner.

Hasbro was trying for years to release those seacons to USA retail stores under the Universe toy line banner. hasbro said a major retail store in america was suspose to release them around the year 2003 but backed out of the deal at the very last minute. hasbro spent years trying to find the seacons a newer vendor. TFCC swooped in & made them TFCC club toys. then BBTS swooped in & made them BBTS.com site exclusive toys.

Not just BBTS, they where a shared exclusive, Kapow-Toys and Robotkingdom also had them, that was the only way to get Hasbro to make them in the first place. And they wanted the reissue due to direct fan feedback on forums demanding it.

Which is a survey based approach and not a detailed census-based approach. Not every fan who uses the net is going to be on forums, and of those who are, only a handful are going to be active members. Essentially it's just a larger version of a focus group, minus checks and balances to give a valid sample at that.

Dead Metal wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:@Counterpunch & Dead Metal- every single issue you bring up there has been due to poor market research data- as well as the overproduction issues which have also been discussed in this thread. A census-based approach rather than a survey-based approach would eliminate those problems with the proper safeguards put in place in the data collection stage.

Nope, they where done due to the high demand for them, as for over production, they where made in the minimum numbers needed to make them feasible, as in reasonably priced.

Was there really high enough demand, if there was overkill on the numbers? If there was demand, was the price just slightly too high to be attractive to people? That's what I mean about having accurate census data- not only can you look at numbers but you can look at feasibility too.

Bowspearer wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:

Tidalwavex wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:It makes zero sense to you because your point defies the logic of businesses. Hasbro will do anything if there is enough of a market there. Also as for Hasbro never reissueing something Takara haven't; last I checked, Takara have yet to reissue the Seacons.

Takara re-issued the Seacons first before hasbro in the Takara Beastwars 2nd toy line.

Hasbro was only able to reissue the seacons for the TFCC club & then for BBTS.com due to takara finding the seacons master molds in 1997,then testing them,then releasing the seacons under the beastwars 2nd toy line banner.

Hasbro was trying for years to release those seacons to USA retail stores under the Universe toy line banner. hasbro said a major retail store in america was suspose to release them around the year 2003 but backed out of the deal at the very last minute. hasbro spent years trying to find the seacons a newer vendor. TFCC swooped in & made them TFCC club toys. then BBTS swooped in & made them BBTS.com site exclusive toys.

Not just BBTS, they where a shared exclusive, Kapow-Toys and Robotkingdom also had them, that was the only way to get Hasbro to make them in the first place. And they wanted the reissue due to direct fan feedback on forums demanding it.

Which is a survey based approach and not a detailed census-based approach. Not every fan who uses the net is going to be on forums, and of those who are, only a handful are going to be active members. Essentially it's just a larger version of a focus group, minus checks and balances to give a valid sample at that.

How else would you do it? And why should Hasbro care to invest so much money and effort into something that, based on past experiences, will likely fail?

Dead Metal wrote:

Bowspearer wrote:@Counterpunch & Dead Metal- every single issue you bring up there has been due to poor market research data- as well as the overproduction issues which have also been discussed in this thread. A census-based approach rather than a survey-based approach would eliminate those problems with the proper safeguards put in place in the data collection stage.

Nope, they where done due to the high demand for them, as for over production, they where made in the minimum numbers needed to make them feasible, as in reasonably priced.

Was there really high enough demand, if there was overkill on the numbers? If there was demand, was the price just slightly too high to be attractive to people? That's what I mean about having accurate census data- not only can you look at numbers but you can look at feasibility too.

They where some of the strongest demanded figures back then, fans kept demanding them at BotCon, e-mails, internet etc. The prices they fetched on the secondary market where gigantic, and this is based on auctions that started off at a reasonable price.

Also reissues are expensive due to their high production costs and the usually low production runs, due to the fact that they only appeal to adult collectors, which are a much smaller group than Hadbro's target market: children. They they make too much they loose money due to having too much unsold product, if they make too little the price will be too high for people to justify buying them.

Dead Metal wrote:How else would you do it?

You take a census based approach rather than a survey-based approach so you have far more accurate data to work with.

Dead Metal wrote:And why should Hasbro care to invest so much money and effort into something that, based on past experiences, will likely fail?

Effective market research fails companies? Since when? Also Hasbro have never to my knowledge, taken a census based approach. Even forum consultations are only a fraction of the actual fan base and therefore buying market. As for the cost of it, it would pay for itself in terms of the system being able to be used theoretically on any toy line they chose with some minor tweaks and well into the future from that point on.

Dead Metal wrote:They where some of the strongest demanded figures back then, fans kept demanding them at BotCon, e-mails, internet etc. The prices they fetched on the secondary market where gigantic, and this is based on auctions that started off at a reasonable price.

How many fans worldwide attend Botcon (bear in mind that the attendance is roughly a thousand people - or 3-4 millionths of a percent of the US population - in a country that makes up less than 5% of the world market)? Next to none percentage-wise.

High auction costs only tell you what some fans will pay, not your whole market.

The other thing is take a look at what Hasbro does now in terms of interaction. They segment their customer service by country and in cases like Australia, their customer service depts are useless (and to be fair on that one woman working part time, it's not her fault either as the customer service dept is undermanned to the extreme). I've heard people accuse Hasbro of acting at times like the rest of the world outside of the US doesn't exist. When you have issues with o/s customer service depts like this; that sort of criticism does appear valid.

Hasbro for the most part are flying blind- taking a survey based approach and then wondering why things went wrong when they do go wrong.

Dead Metal wrote:Also reissues are expensive due to their high production costs and the usually low production runs, due to the fact that they only appeal to adult collectors, which are a much smaller group than Hadbro's target market: children. They they make too much they loose money due to having too much unsold product, if they make too little the price will be too high for people to justify buying them.

Which again is where good market research data comes in, as it will tell you not only what demand there are for certain things, but whether the price people will pay for something makes production of it feasible.

I don't think fan imput will work beyond what we already have. The fandom can't agree on a damned thing.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:I don't think fan imput will work beyond what we already have. The fandom can't agree on a damned thing.

I don't agree with this "imput".

In fact, this "fandom" you speak of is a whorish lie.

Freakin My Little Pony avatars, off topic rants, and armchair lawyers... you make me loff.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:I don't think fan imput will work beyond what we already have. The fandom can't agree on a damned thing.

They wouldn't have to if it was done in terms of isolated forms and not forums. Let me put it this way. You have a series of forms which people with accounts (which duplication of would be minimised through ISP emails, combined with IP address logging and other measures) fill in. An interesting twist could be if kids did want to participate, that it had to be their parent/guardian who did it on their behalf when they were under a certain age.

People list their say, top 50 reissue picks for example. No reasons why, just a list. The system could then cross-reference that come up with a short list of say, 10 or 20.

Internally to Hasbro, there would be market research data on each one, showing how many people wanted certain figures and from there, a pricing scale could be determined. It would also provide a breakdown per country in terms of what was in demand.

At that point, an invite to a survey could be sent out to the email address linked to each account, asking how much people would pay for certain reissues.

At that point, Hasbro could gauge numbers and the RRP people found reasonable and work out which reissues were reasonable, and which weren't.

You wind up getting almost entirely accurate market research data (allowing for the potential for someone to find a loophole in the system) which not only gives Hasbro an idea of what is feasible, but also for them to use when persuading a store chain, to take them on. It would even help them to determine whether it was better to offer something at retail in certain markets, across several markets, or exclusively online.

It still wouldn't work. For the simple reason that the fandom (the G1 collectors at least), in general, wouldn't be happy until all old TFs have been reissued cheaply. Until then you'll always have a large number saying Hasbro / Takara just isn't doing enough to please the fans and that they "have to" resort to KOs.

Nevermind that sales, from Hasbro's point of view, just aren't worth it (as was previously mentioned).

You can't win. Because the ONLY answer that'll really satisfy some people is a sustained G1 product line that keeps prices low enough to buy, but with a WIDE variety of characters. And that's just never going to happen with Hasbro, although it seems to be happening with the G1 KOs. Yeah, it's an unreasonable stance, but I've met some pretty unreasonable people who seem to think this way.

I'm not really sure how we got to talking about fan interaction from KOs. Hopefully I tied it back into the main point.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:I don't think fan imput will work beyond what we already have. The fandom can't agree on a damned thing.

Also some fans in this fandom have more spare time than others. some fans use that more free time to cheat when voting in these on-line polls. recent example is Erector.

It makes zero sense to do on-line polls is fans are gonna get greedy & cheat.

the whole purpose of on-line polls is to let everyone's opinion be heard equally.

lately all on-line polls are is a cheating game of whoever has more spare time wins via casting a qua-zillion votes.

having mail in votes is too outdated & is no longer a option. thus it's off the table. no sane/competent workers at hasbro are going to waste their time opening up letters & logging in the votes afterwards. hasbro would be bombarded with mail & they have to hire extra workers to deal with this.

Back to on-line voting,Hasbro isn't gonna spend a billion years checking every voters ISP or IP or nntp or email or iphone internet data trail or whatever. the hasbro company doesn't care & their too cheap,they'll count all votes regardless is jimmy bob voted a zillion times.

Hasbro has never taken the lead in releasing reissues first before takara. hasbro will never take the lead because of poor sales & low volume units.

Hasbro was able to re-release the seacons molds because takara used them recently for the beastwars 2nd toy line.

Prove that people "cheat". Come on. Prove it.

Burn wrote:Prove that people "cheat". Come on. Prove it.

all those qua-zillion erector votes.

Tidalwavex wrote:

Burn wrote:Prove that people "cheat". Come on. Prove it.

all those qua-zillion erector votes.

Erector did not win. Nor was he ever going to.

Flux Convoy wrote:

Tidalwavex wrote:

Burn wrote:Prove that people "cheat". Come on. Prove it.

all those qua-zillion erector votes.

Erector did not win. Nor was he ever going to.

because other fans who weren't voting for erector alerted Hasbro.

Tidalwavex wrote:

Flux Convoy wrote:

Tidalwavex wrote:

Burn wrote:Prove that people "cheat". Come on. Prove it.

all those qua-zillion erector votes.

Erector did not win. Nor was he ever going to.

because other fans who weren't voting for erector alerted Hasbro.

What? Erector didn't win because more people voted for Waspinator. There's a plethora of fans who can get by without dick jokes every day. If you want to throw evidence out try using factual numbers instead of qua-zillion, which isn't even a number to begin with.

I'm done with this, the topic's far deviated from it's original intent.