The Energon Pub

Seibertron wrote:In 2014, did they make approximately $500,000 profit after expenses, salaries, and other expenses related to business, employment, and operating costs? That's not a lot of money all things considered. The ROI seems extremely small. Something about these financial numbers is escaping my understanding at the moment.

I need to go listen to the audio to see if it provides more context. That said, I'd expect this is top line revenue only, in thousands. That's $500 million to Hasbro for the brand in a movie year before any expenses whatsoever and that sounds about right to me.

Again, I need to go listen to the audio to be sure. Guess I might throw that on while working and come back here after.

Seibertron wrote:In 2014, did they make approximately $500,000 profit after expenses, salaries, and other expenses related to business, employment, and operating costs? That's not a lot of money all things considered. The ROI seems extremely small. Something about these financial numbers is escaping my understanding at the moment.

I need to go listen to the audio to see if it provides more context. That said, I'd expect this is top line revenue only, in thousands. That's $500 million to Hasbro for the brand in a movie year before any expenses whatsoever and that sounds about right to me.

Again, I need to go listen to the audio to be sure. Guess I might throw that on while working and come back here after.

Edit: They don't clarify, the slide is just there as an example of how they built a brand through storytelling. Some google searching led me to a figure that Hasbro's Transformers toy revenue from the 2007 movie was $470 million, which lines up with the graph in the presentation. So yeah, revenue to Hasbro from Transformers (in other words, what Hasbro sold themselves, which would be to distributors/retailers, not what consumers purchased from said channels), was $500 million dollars in 2014.

Exactly what goes into their revenue calc depends on their corporate accounting policies - does it include merchandise returned by distributors? Do they even allow that? Does it account for purchase orders made where payment is expected but not received? We don't know, but here's two takeaways for anyone skimming this post:

1. The numbers shown are not indicative of retail sales figures (the amount of product, in dollars, sold by stores to folks like us, kids, parents, etc.)
2. The numbers shown are not profit.

Hope that helps. These threads always make my head hurt, but this stuff is both boring and not everyone's cup of tea so I try to keep that in mind.

ScottyP wrote:
Exactly what goes into their revenue calc depends on their corporate accounting policies - does it include merchandise returned by distributors? Do they even allow that? Does it account for purchase orders made where payment is expected but not received? We don't know, but here's two takeaways for anyone skimming this post:

1. The numbers shown are not indicative of retail sales figures (the amount of product, in dollars, sold by stores to folks like us, kids, parents, etc.)
2. The numbers shown are not profit.

Hope that helps. These threads always make my head hurt, but this stuff is both boring and not everyone's cup of tea so I try to keep that in mind.

On those two points I highlighted:

I read that Hasbro does not allow distributors/retailers to send back inventory. And that makes sense since Hasbro items are very common at discount chains, meaning that Walmart and TRU bulk sale their leftover stock rather than sending it back to Hasbro.

That means that while the sales numbers are of what sold to the retailers as opposed to us, I would assume that since there is no buy back, retailers will buy what they think they need. And thus that amount does reflect the aniticipated demand for figures depending on the year. Since 2007 saw such a big demand from retailers, they asked for more for the next film and I guess that didnt work as well as planned since they cut back the following movie year.

Duke of Luns wrote:

Starsaber468 wrote:Once again Hasbro suprises us with something (I am not sure if the micronauts were ever released in the US) a little new and old. I gotta say I never expected the micronauts to be back, but its awesome, and I surely do like it!

Micronauts were indeed released in the U.S.! There was even a Marvel comic that outlasted the toyline(much like ROM Spaceknight). I've not read any of it though, mostly cause I've never run across it in the wild and haven't had the notion to track it down. It was supposed to be quite good and there's a crossover with the X-Men, and I think Man-Thing popped up for an issue or two in the regular series.

The figures came out in the very late 70's I believe, and there was a sort of revival around the early 2000's in the U.S. However I do remember reading reviews that the 2000's Microman figures weren't of great quality and broke pretty easy. I remember seeing them at Suncoast on clearance once back in the day but didn't pick any up.

Oh yeah and Micronauts big bad Baron Karza wasn't from the original Microman line but a repainted/remolded super robot called Jeeg.

The marvel comic not only outlasted the toys, the characters outlasted marvel's right to the license! The characters had been heavily integrated (much more than the TF's with Spidey and a few other things) into the mainstream marvel universe, so after they had to stop calling them micronauts, they started calling them Microns.


I do wonder, when did Hasbro acquire the brand? They weren't the company that put out the original US line, after all. I'm not sure Tak could just hand it to them, as while they own the toys, the name Micronauts originated with the US version.

Mego is the company who licensed the toys from Takara in the 70's in the US. There were 2 or 3 other companies who licensed the toys in Europe.
Not sure what happened to the license after Mego went out of buisness. Around 99 to 2001 a company called Palisades had the license for the toys, and did a bunch of reissues. That was also the same time Takara was doing their Microman reissue revival, and reboot series.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think Hasbro scooped up the toy license when Palisades went under in the early 2000s. Takara has no claim to the Micronauts license, only Microman.

Actually SOTA had the license for a short time but let it expire when they couldn't get any retail interest (likely thanks to the Palisades debacle). When MEGO folded it's likely everything associated with Micronauts reverted back to Takara. That would explain why the names persist rather than being forced into the Japanese names.

I do think that's Bug in the image, Hasbro seems like him, enough so that he made a cameo in Transformers Animated. Let's keep in mind that's likely not finalized art and just something they could use to promote the series to retailers and licensees.

Emerje

william-james88 wrote:That means that while the sales numbers are of what sold to the retailers as opposed to us, I would assume that since there is no buy back, retailers will buy what they think they need. And thus that amount does reflect the aniticipated demand for figures depending on the year. Since 2007 saw such a big demand from retailers, they asked for more for the next film and I guess that didnt work as well as planned since they cut back the following movie year.

Bingo! This hits the nail right on the head.

Hence why earlier in the thread I stated that next year's revenues would be a better indicator of the success of RiD and Combiner Wars than the current year's numbers. These are a trailing indicator of retailer demand, which they do their best to try and match to consumer demand. They like money.

That said, not all Retail Buyers (that's a formal term for the people at retailers that place the orders for product with Hasbro's distributors, e.g. "Six cases of Assortment XYZ for each B-level store in the Midwest region plz") are good at what they do. Some are better than others. Others may be told not to micro-manage assortments, just to use historical numbers to grab an assortment of stuff from a brand to make a segment of shelving look like it has product for that brand. What's that, your Walmart has 23 AoE Deluxes, 678 Power Attackers, 3 Flip and Change Grimlocks, 98 RiD One Step Changers, and 1.2 Combiner Wars Voyagers because someone package swapped and returned a few Energon Mega-Class figures in the boxes? Blame Walmart, not Hasbro. Or be nihilistic about it like you're in a Final Fantasy themed SRPG where life is pain. Whatever makes you feel better.

Places like Amazon and to a lesser extent, EE and BBTS influence this as well, but not on the scale of a Walmart or Target where it seems the majority of folks tend to get most of their toys.

Emerje wrote:

Starsaber468 wrote:Ok that probably makes sjnce though the RID line where I live kinda is shelf-formers though. Btw isn't this probably I redesigned familiar micronaut cough cough a certain robot one cough cough

I really hope that's not supposed to be Biotron, though I'm more likely to believe it's Phobos. But to be entirely honest the colors make it look more like some sort of Ant-Man robot. Who knows?

Emerje

Thanks for the link in your post. I had no idea what you were all talking about. I never looked into the Micronauts line before.