Mike Ballog and Aron Archer spoke at the Paramount Press Junket recently, describing big news for the toy realm of the Transformers brand, and confirmation that a line similar to
Universe 2.0 from 08' and
Classics from late 06' is on the way, next Fall.
From Lonegamer of The Allspark:
Questions with Hasbro Director of Global Design and Development Aaron Archer post panel
Is a toy line similar in concept to Classics and Universe 2.0 - classic characters in updated bodies - going to be released next Fall?
Yeah, everything that isn’t movie, should fit in to that kind of area that we’re now calling Universe. So anything that doesn’t quite fit in movie, so whether it be Beast Wars, or re-imagining of , you know, Bluestreak or something, a favorite, will be in that kind of line. So we are going to do new updates.
So classic characters in updated bodies.
How many of those, I can’t really get into, but that’s something we know works for the fans, that kinda complete that new style – expression – and we’re happy to do that. We love to bring back old characters that you wouldn’t have thought we’d redo. It’s kinda a fun little designer challenge now going on. Mirage, he’s out.
Release date next fall?
I think mostly next fall is when you’ll see more of that.
Any update on release dates for the remaining Animated stuff?
[San Diego] Comic-Con, we showed what the few remaining guys were out there that we will produce at some point, whether in Animated packaging or not. But I don’t know the release dates, I focus on the creation and stuff. I don’t want to give the wrong date, but they are definitely coming out. We want all that stuff to come.
How does Hasbro handle the cultural differences, such as when it came to localizing the Unicron Trilogy and “Robots in Disguise” (“Car Robots” in Japan)?
It’s a challenge because it’s culturally two different ways to tell stories. So we kinda trade off – we wanted a particular type of thing, Takara will need a certain type of thing. What works well in the Japanese market is kinda the combining figures and different event-base products coming out, so there’s telling those stories, and we have a different take on that. So we make compromises on both sides and try to make it work. For Animated, it was more of a US-led production, and I think they’re trying to figure it out on their end how they’re going to make it fit into the universe they have. It’s not always easy but it’s not too difficult either.
Any thoughts on Japanese storytelling compared to Western storytelling?
I think for the Japanese… it’s one episode every week, it’s 52 episodes, more of a soap opera, in a way. Whereas we’re just telling fun action stories, character driven, from an American or Western sensibility, of course. Those are the really two big kind of things we navigate, and in Animated we led that production with Cartoon Network, so we didn’t do 52 episodes stand alone episodes, and all of that. It just work better for the US and some of the markets that Hasbro participates in.
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