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fenrir72 wrote::-(

This was a poorly written, borderline irrelevant post that reflects poorly on the Seibertron.com community. I urge you to do better in the future and focus on the facts presented rather than associate them with carefully selected talking points that have nothing to do with the article posted.

Truth hurts?

Coptur wrote:Truth hurts?

It sure does.

The "Man Children" aren't buying them anymore. That's what hurts.

Fact: Iger is Disney CEO. He knows more than we do.
Fact? Too much SW every year diluted the brand. Open to debate. As if He'll admit to the public the real reason.

My linking to his statement on the status of ESPN not related? Really? Not related?

Hb got the exclusive rights to distribute a lot of Disney products. Star Wars being one of them. It's underperforming to put it lightly (the toys). Why it ain't moving? Some say the kids don't buy them anymore. Trouble is, it's the demographic with a lot of disposable income that isn't buying (i.e. the Man Children aka as you and me).

Why aren't they buying? What has dampened their appetite to buy? Aren't media like movies, comics etc the means to brainwash "encourage" the fans to buy? I only posited a very probable reason why no one is buying.

With SW hurt, Hb got hurt too! Hb get hurt, TF is affected too! Now we get these investor revolts.

Again, let's hope sanity returns to both sides (Hb and Disney) and just produce great APOLITCAL products that promotes escapism/suspension of disbelief.

ScottyP wrote:

fenrir72 wrote::-(

This was a poorly written, borderline irrelevant post that reflects poorly on the Seibertron.com community. I urge you to do better in the future and focus on the facts presented rather than associate them with carefully selected talking points that have nothing to do with the article posted.

It was rambling, but the basic point is valid. The more the companies that Hasbro is producing licensed items for do things to disenfranchise the fans (ie Kathleen Kennedy & Rian Johnson) the more it's going to affect the sales of the products that Hasbro sells and hurt Hasbro's bottom line. My figure buying habit was seriously affected by the lunatic rants of the earlier mentioned individuals. You throw out hate at your fan base, it's going to affect your bottom line.

Solo, although not a great movie was a fun one, was negatively affected by the the drama surrounding TLJ, so again product didn't sell (I still want figures from that line but I figure they'll end up on clearance soon enough). Star wars had really been a power house for Hasbro, until the people running Star Wars derailed the gravy train.

The quality of the Disney princess dolls hasn't really improved since Hasbro took over. They have more of a variety of faces and heads, but the same crappy articulation the Mattel ones had. They put a lot into the Decedents original line, and that sold well, but the sequel dolls are shelf warmers until clearanced out.

Marvel Comics could possibly be a thing of the past in the near future. Disney is already starting to license out characters to other companies. That is a direct result of the current batch of writers being well, I'll say it SJWs. Probably my favorite Comic in recent years was the Kamala Kahn Ms Marvel, then they got super political with it, and I stopped reading, although I did just buy her Marvel Rising doll, along with Ghost Spider.

Marvel Studies is more or less keeping the political stuff to a minimum, as is the Animation side of Marvel, but if they go the way of Star Wars, you'll see the Marvel figure revenue drop significantly as well.

That will have a negative effect on the Hasbro Bottom line, and Transformers will be negatively affected. Look at the number of terrible stickers they used in the POTP line (i mean seriously they had stickers on Starscream that you couldn't press flat because of details on the parts the stickers covered), when the previous lines had few on anything smaller then Titan Class. We could see more cheaply made figures for more money.

I didn't realize children's toy companies including messages of inclusiveness, diversity, honor, and the like counts as "leaning towards the left." But then again, I'm not paranoid.

Toys are tanking because electronics sales are up. Toys to life is surging again, and console sales are up (electronics are much more expensive and versatile than plastic figures). Hasbro's other IP's are doing average or about to be rebooted. (Transformers has gone full G1 to recenter the brand.) Xmas is around the corner and people tend to wait last minute. Marvel just dropped a huge cliffhanger and people won't be hype till Infinity War 2 unless they pull of a sleeper hit. The economy in general took a hit the past few months.

There's no need to get worked up and digging for hidden meanings. Companies restructure all the time. Things start anew. Trends and fads ebb and flow and come and go. You gotta take the good with the bad because with every upturn comes down, and Hasbro is trying to prepare so they can continue on with what they're doing.

Besides, they're multi-billion dollar corporations. They're fine as long as the CEOs don't destroy the company for personal gain like TRU America. And I'm sure keeping the Transformers IP around with tangible merch is more profitable then dropping it all.

We would see cheaply made figures anyway because that's how they maximise profit (by minimising costs). It has nothing to do with people who, at a fundemental level are trying to make things better and fairer. A minority don't go about it the best way but considering the hate that gets thrown at them, I'm not suprised there's an escalation in arguments between the opposing groups.

Now the article in question is light on details, like why they are being accused of security fraud.

Edit:

Also what Short Circuit put, all of it.

Look I have to pitch in here, mostly because there's clearly some bullshit here. Alright so the foremost thing about the toy market is it is changing, and not because of politics. The foremost reason is Hasbro and Mattel aren't the only game in town anymore. Unlike 1977, 1997 and 2007, the best outlet for star wars and marvel isn't the hasbro market; there are multiple third party companies like Hot Toys, MAFeX, and the Bandai Tamashii Nations; these companies do give the best representations of relevant movie centirc characters, like Captain America, Iron Man, Rey, and Kylo ren.

Sure they be comparatively more expensive import figures, but when you consider someone my take a couple of weeks and multiple trips to a target or Walmart to find a midling to decent 20-25 dollar black series/marvel legends figure. The cost differential isn't to extreme compared to buying a 50 to 60 dollar highly articulated, highly accurate S.H Figuarts from BBTS or AmiAmi in the comfort of your own home. Figures which will be released in japan on a set scheduled with equal distribution and will (probably) be at your house in 5 business days at the most. I work at a vintage toy store in downtown PDX, and the other day this kid, 7-10 was buying some oldschool vinyl Kaiju, when his mom chimed in "Don't you have the S.H MonsterArts gigan?". I'm not saying this is all kids and all collectors, but what i'm saying is the market for bigger better more expressive toys is open, it's not just collectors, it's also kids too, and most of those toys happen to be imports. I'm not saying this is the only reason, just that it's a major factor.

Hasbro will always have the comic exclusive interpretations of marvel characters and obscure star wars characters. One of my favorite black series Force Awakens figures is the Guavian bounty hunter and there ain't no way in heeeeeeell MAFeX is going to make him. Also for those people saying "oh star wars is too political with SJWS and thats why the toys aren't selling" people must be forgetting the absolute glut of Phantom Menace, Attack of The Clones, and Revenge of the Sith toys, and those movies are a hell of a lot weaker than TFA, TLJ, Rogue One, and the Han Solo Goes Solo, Solo Movie.

Short Circuit wrote:I didn't realize children's toy companies including messages of inclusiveness, diversity, honor, and the like counts as "leaning towards the left." But then again, I'm not paranoid.

The toys may not be political, but the people who direct their source material certainly are. And that's not on its own a bad thing, but it seems like in today's age if you don't agree with their stances 100%, they don't want you as part of their audience. That friction does not help with sales.

All of this is nonsense and it has nothing to do with the original post, it's all off-topic.

If you think the number of stickers on a Starscream figure has ANYTHING to do with big business entertainment and the culture wars, you lack the maturity to read investor reports and economic news, including posts like this one.

If you want to criticize contemporary corporate mores in favor of representation, there are plenty of alt-right websites for that. This is a toy forum, for Primus' sake.

I could get all raging "SJW" about things, but I'll say this instead.

Adult collectors make up a portion of toy consumers.

Straight white male collectors (what I infer to be the "disenfranchised" group of fans people are mewling about) make up a portion of adult collectors.

Politically conservative (or anti-liberal) collectors make up a portion of that "disenfranchised" demographic.

Collectors that pay attention to off-screen political twitter drama make up a portion of those conservative collectors.

Collectors that care enough about that drama to amend their shopping habits make up a portion of the collectors who pay attention to the drama.

Let's be generous and say that 50% of toy buyers are adult collectors, 50% of those collectors are part of a "disenfranchised" demographic (I have to use quotes because I can't even type that with a straight face), 50% of that demographic is anti-liberal, 50% of those anti-liberal collectors pay attention to what directors & content producers say on platforms like Twitter (which is really unlikely since only 20% of Americans use Twitter), and that 50% of those people will forego buying a Solo action figure because of something the director of another movie said that offended them.

.50 ^ 5 = 0.03125

So in the extremely unlikely situation that all of those strata are split 50/50, that accounts for a 3% dip in toy sales, and only in the licensed, collector-marketed toy sales (e.g., Star Wars: Black Series), which themselves make up only a portion of Hasbro's products. And that also doesn't consider the corresponding increase in toy sales that would come from inclusive story-telling and content creators voicing progressive morals.

Meanwhile, child population growth is slowing due to people having fewer kids, and children are continuing to shift their interest to interactive media (e.g., tablet games, consoles) for their indoor entertainment. I suspect that has a LOT more to do with poor brand performance than some anti-SJWs feeling butt-hurt because companies are paying attention to other demographic groups.

what about the less quality and still more expensive than last years products and of course products that are not good even if the materials and prices were better?

im not going to say anything else about lack of articulation or simplified toys, that honestly depends on each persons preferences but overall lower quality and higher prices, and lackluster products design isnt going to do any good to hasbro at this point

Let's not forget mass retail action figures aren't really a thing kids want these days. Videogames have been the hot 'new' thing (not so new anymore, but still) and have long relegated action figures to a secondary, if not tertiary role next to just wasting time on your phone. We might forget this when we collect Transformers because we still buy toys in our '30 and '40.

Star Wars has had problems on multiple angles, namely:
-The toys are overpriced.
-There is too much merchandise, since there is more than just the playset, figures and lego but also a ton of stuff like huge out of scale Stormtroopers and lightsaber builders and other tacky crap nobody wants, neither kids nor adult collectors.
-Said stuff is constantly on shelves due to Star Wars now being a yearly thing.
-The new movies haven't really been good at selling the new characters to an audience, meaning what does sell even decades later are your Darth Vaders and Luke Skywalkers.
-A sizable chunk of people didn't like The Last Jedi and Solo for a variety of reasons and that hurt merchandise sale.

Of course this is going to hurt Hasbro's bottom line when entire sublines of useless Star Wars merch end up clogging shelves, taking immense space in a market where toys increasingly sell less. It's basic economics: they offered too much of stuff nobody wanted. Simply spacing these movies by 2-3 years in between would have alleviated some of the problems.

Think the biggest issue was toys r us’ demise. But hey I’m just an adult tyo collector...

Admittedly, I dont speak Legalese, but I think we are all getting the wrong c9nclusion here.

What I am interpretting (and very likely could be wrong) is that a few highwr ups did something illegal, which could be embezzling or falsely reporting money or lying on Quarterly Profits. The Investors want the Truth so they launched an investigation, and as a way of keeping the organization as a while clean, what we are seeing as "Layoffs" is is a nonbiased way of saying "Hasbro is electing to let go of the people under indictment and or the people under indictment and those guilty of assisting (secretaries etc.) In the lie." Possibly, a few innocent parties may get cut as well to make up the dofference of what might be owed to investors.

And again, I cpuld ve totally wrong. And maybe the Accused did what they did to hide that everythung was not hunky dory in sales, but that just doesnt feel likevthe whole stpry here.

In my experience, Star Wars and TLK stuff shelfwarmed HARD. There's still legions of Sqweeks and Barricade Deluxes on shelves, and the amount of assorted 5POA SW figures rotting away isn't pretty either. In the case of SW especially, not helped IMO by how bad some of those figures look. Like, I know a pocket money toy is never going to stand up to a Figuarts, but when the majority of the figures on sale are these mushy little 5POA things that wouldn't look out of place in the late 70s (and don't even have the same charm as the older figures) and the few decently poseable figures are too expensive for the young 'uns (£20 is a lot for a 6" figure in the context of little Jimmy's pocket money) and too poorly made for us overgrown children (compared to the Figuarts or Mafex offerings, Hasbro's SW figures just aren't very good) you can see why they didn't exactly fly off shelves.

So between that and TRU's demise I'm not surprised to see Hasbro struggling. The supposed fraud/whatever charges though, that is concerning.

Just a quick note for everyone: the lawsuit alleges misrepresentation, but is not itself evidence of fraud. The suit itself basically boils down to a very simple idea: the collapse of TRU had a significant impact on Hasbro's business and Hasbro knew more about the risk from TRU than they disclosed to investors. This kind of thing happens all the time when there are big stock drops.

I mention all of this as a casual observer, I have no personal or professional stake in any of this. Lawsuits are never good news, but there's nothing in this that should concern casual toy collectors. This is up to their legal teams and insurance.

Black Hat wrote:In the case of SW especially, not helped IMO by how bad some of those figures look. Like, I know a pocket money toy is never going to stand up to a Figuarts, but when the majority of the figures on sale are these mushy little 5POA things that wouldn't look out of place in the late 70s (and don't even have the same charm as the older figures) and the few decently poseable figures are too expensive for the young 'uns (£20 is a lot for a 6" figure in the context of little Jimmy's pocket money) and too poorly made for us overgrown children (compared to the Figuarts or Mafex offerings, Hasbro's SW figures just aren't very good) you can see why they didn't exactly fly off shelves.

I have dozens of fully articulated Episode III clone troopers. It's a collection I was able to collect as a less than prosperous undergrad, built over ten years ago, but they look a hell of a lot better (and are definitely more fun to play with) than almost any of the toys out there now.

AcademyofDrX wrote:Just a quick note for everyone: the lawsuit alleges misrepresentation, but is not itself evidence of fraud. The suit itself basically boils down to a very simple idea: the collapse of TRU had a significant impact on Hasbro's business and Hasbro knew more about the risk from TRU than they disclosed to investors. This kind of thing happens all the time when there are big stock drops.

I mention all of this as a casual observer, I have no personal or professional stake in any of this. Lawsuits are never good news, but there's nothing in this that should concern casual toy collectors. This is up to their legal teams and insurance.

Thank you for the clarification

Flashwave wrote:...What I am interpreting is that a few higher ups did something illegal, which could be embezzling or falsely reporting money or lying on Quarterly Profits. ....as a way of keeping the organization as a while clean, what we are seeing as "Layoffs" is is a non-biased way of saying "Hasbro is electing to let go of the people under indictment and or the people under indictment and those guilty of assisting...

AcademyofDrX wrote:....The suit itself basically boils down to a very simple idea: the collapse of TRU had a significant impact on Hasbro's business and Hasbro knew more about the risk from TRU than they disclosed to investors....

There's nothing in this that should concern casual toy collectors. This is up to their legal teams and insurance.

I think both of you are right. TRU being probably a consumer of at least a quarter of hasbro's inventory and then dropping off the map screwed them hard, and the distribution woes and pallets worth of brand new titans return stock showing up at discount outlets are part of the result. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if someone in finances got a word from a higher up to change some ones and zeros around in order to help make things work.

The lawsuit doesn't allege that kind of fraud. The excerpt below is directly from PR wire copy:

"According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Hasbro's relationship with Toys ''R'' Us was becoming increasingly important to Hasbro's business, but Toys ''R'' Us was in far worse financial condition than was being publicly reported; (2) Hasbro was experiencing significant undisclosed adverse sales issues in two key markets - the United Kingdom and Brazil - which were negatively impacting Hasbro's efforts to grow sales in those markets; and (3) as a result of foregoing, defendants' statements about Hasbro's business and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages."

Companies are required by law to tell their shareholders how their business is doing. These statements have to be truthful. The alleged fraud is basically that before the TRU bankruptcy, Hasbro said that things were okay, and after they weren't very okay. That's the gist of it. Ther no expectation that there are fudged numbers in a ledger, but if Hasbro knew the risks of the bankruptcy and didn't tell investors, that would make those statements false. I wouldn't recommend reading too much into this stuff.

AcademyofDrX wrote:The lawsuit doesn't allege that kind of fraud. The excerpt below is directly from PR wire copy:

"According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Hasbro's relationship with Toys ''R'' Us was becoming increasingly important to Hasbro's business, but Toys ''R'' Us was in far worse financial condition than was being publicly reported; (2) Hasbro was experiencing significant undisclosed adverse sales issues in two key markets - the United Kingdom and Brazil - which were negatively impacting Hasbro's efforts to grow sales in those markets; and (3) as a result of foregoing, defendants' statements about Hasbro's business and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages."

Companies are required by law to tell their shareholders how their business is doing. These statements have to be truthful. The alleged fraud is basically that before the TRU bankruptcy, Hasbro said that things were okay, and after they weren't very okay. That's the gist of it. Ther no expectation that there are fudged numbers...
.

Could we put this in the News Article, cause this really helps shape context more than the vague snippets in the post. Its not about Hasbro being in trouble because of shelfwarming or bad toy drsigns, its about lying and lying about the TRU impact.

Caelus wrote:I could get all raging "SJW" about things, but I'll say this instead.

Adult collectors make up a portion of toy consumers.

Straight white male collectors (what I infer to be the "disenfranchised" group of fans people are mewling about) make up a portion of adult collectors.

Politically conservative (or anti-liberal) collectors make up a portion of that "disenfranchised" demographic.

Collectors that pay attention to off-screen political twitter drama make up a portion of those conservative collectors.

Collectors that care enough about that drama to amend their shopping habits make up a portion of the collectors who pay attention to the drama.

Let's be generous and say that 50% of toy buyers are adult collectors, 50% of those collectors are part of a "disenfranchised" demographic (I have to use quotes because I can't even type that with a straight face), 50% of that demographic is anti-liberal, 50% of those anti-liberal collectors pay attention to what directors & content producers say on platforms like Twitter (which is really unlikely since only 20% of Americans use Twitter), and that 50% of those people will forego buying a Solo action figure because of something the director of another movie said that offended them.

.50 ^ 5 = 0.03125

So in the extremely unlikely situation that all of those strata are split 50/50, that accounts for a 3% dip in toy sales, and only in the licensed, collector-marketed toy sales (e.g., Star Wars: Black Series), which themselves make up only a portion of Hasbro's products. And that also doesn't consider the corresponding increase in toy sales that would come from inclusive story-telling and content creators voicing progressive morals.

Meanwhile, child population growth is slowing due to people having fewer kids, and children are continuing to shift their interest to interactive media (e.g., tablet games, consoles) for their indoor entertainment. I suspect that has a LOT more to do with poor brand performance than some anti-SJWs feeling butt-hurt because companies are paying attention to other demographic groups.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!! THANK YOU

Flashwave wrote: Could we put this in the News Article, cause this really helps shape context more than the vague snippets in the post. Its not about Hasbro being in trouble because of shelfwarming or bad toy drsigns, its about lying and lying about the TRU impact.

It's just an accusation of "lying," there's no reason to grant that it could be true. This lawsuit is very simple: investors lost money because of a couple big events, and they wish they hadn't. Did Hasbro know more about the risk than they disclosed? Certainly possible.

Speaking personally, I wish this stuff didn't get covered on fan blogs. The article writers can't give it the necessary context, and forum visitors don't want to talk about business considerations, they want to talk about the products and what they think Hasbro should do differently. (Or they want to make baseless assertions that fan protests have anything to do with the corporate bottom line.)

I do appreciate covering the business in passing, but speculating about the causes or consequences of a business reorganization is fundamentally different than trying to guess about upcoming remolds or exercising wish fulfillment about future toys.

If you want to worry about the industry, spend less time reading quarterly updates at places like this and pay attention to the broader industry trends. I don't know how much business Hasbro does with Barnes & Noble, but they'll probably be the next big retailer to either go under or significantly change their business structure. As others have mentioned, the toy industry has been trying to adapt to broader consumer change with challenges. Hasbro competitors like Lego are also going through restructuring including staff cuts, with likely changes to product lines as a result. And the US and other mature markets are only part of the equation; Lego, Hasbro, and others have been trying to expand into new markets with inconsistent success. Put another way, there's a lot more going on than what can be effectively represented in this type of article.