Switching their Focus to Gaming
Hasbro has been wanting to diversify from being a toy manufacturer for a long time. Brian Goldner's mission was to turn Hasbro from a toy company to an IP company, often citing Disney as inspiration. It was under him that the Bayverse was at an all time high and that other brands, like GI Joe, became live action movie franchises. However, the time for Hasbro's involvement with film making has passed. They have since sold off their production assets and will no longer be financing Hasbro related projects with Paramount or other studios.
This big shift is happening under the new CEO Chris Cocks, who comes from Microsoft. He said in 2024, that the place he sees gaming as the largest potential source of growth for the company. Toys are simply not selling as well as before in general and the future is in digital play. It's there that he feels the company can reach a more mature market and they are so sure of this that he has bet $1 BILLION of Hasbro's money on game development. Their first games resulting from this investment will be released either later this year or in 2026. What is important here is Hasbro's involvement in the games. These aren't simply games using a license from Hasbro (like what Transformers Reactivate was going to be) but games that Hasbro is directly involved in and is financing.
Lowering their Focus on Toy Production
This restructuring of the company has had some massive repercussions in toy development. As we saw last year, there were massive layoffs, all across Hasbro, including the management of the Transformers toy brand. Teams are now leaner. The biggest change is with the Power Rangers brand, where Hasbro will not be making their toys anymore. Instead, Hasbro has licensed toy production out to Playmates. They will be handling the figures we see on shelves, and zords and everything to do with that brand, toy wise. With Power Rangers, Hasbro is using Playmates just as Disney uses Hasbro for Star Wars.
Speaking of Star Wars, that's another area where Hasbro is growing less and less involved in toy production since they have chosen to sublease their master license. While they still produce certain toys, this explains why we see other Star Wars toys on shelves made by different companies. This mitigates their risk of overstock, which has royally bit them in the behind multiple times before. Fun Fact: Them owning the master license is also why Star Wars Funko Pops must all be bobble heads as Funko does not have the right to make Star Wars figures, only Hasbro.
Now how about Transformers?
Becoming apparent with Legacy Evolution, the productions numbers have dropped, meaning that seeing a toy at retail is no longer something that is a sure thing (it never was, but it's even less so the case now). Not only are less of a particular toy being made but there are less toys to make. Transformers One had one quarter of the output we saw with Rise of the Beasts, it only had one wave of product for the deluxe class figures. While that means the film was solely relying on theatrical performance to break even, at least Hasbro did not have overstock or further warehouse storage costs, which can make a toyline far less profitable even if it sells more product.
And the trend of less product continues in 2025 as it has been revealed by Hasbro that yearly Transformers toylines like Age of the Primes will now have 3 waves instead of 4. Unlike the Power Rangers line though, the Transformers line will probably not be leased to another toy maker as it is already in partnership with another company, Takara, for design and distribution. Hasbro has been lowering their stance on forbidding companies licensing the Transformers brand from making toys that convert. We saw that with the Robosen toys and more recently with the Combot Prime which is an official product that has both a robot mode and an alt mode released by a company licensing the Transformers brand from Hasbro.
So all in all, while we have already been seeing changes at Hasbro in their toy production, 2025 is where their new phase truly begins and we'll keep following to see how that impacts the Transformers brand.
