The Energon Pub

[alldarker]

Imagine you're Paramount pictures, and a car company comes to you and says "we'll loan you a free car, and pay you a few million dollars if you put our car in your movie". You really going to worry about what kind of arrangement the car company and the toy company make?

If I was Paramount, I'd totally agree.
If I was Hasbro however, and Paramount was offering to shoot a movie based on my intellectual property, I'd make sure that my intellectual property comes out well in that deal, instead of being left with practically empty hands.

Still I think we can all agree that Hasbro's marketing section isn't really 'on the ball' any more. I'd say that, ever since 'Star Wars' came out in 1977, EVERYBODY knows that (toy-based) merchandising can be a HUGE additional benefit to a movie. Back in the day, 'Transformers: The Movie' was specifically intended to introduce a whole new series of TF toys. And both 'The Transformers' and 'TF: DotM' did their toy-marketing a whole lot smarter.