Hasbro Chairman and CEO Brian Goldner was interviewed by Yahoo Finance for their recent success. He was pretty happy to talk about Transformers.
Regarding the recently concluded Transformers: Combiner Wars webseries by Machinima, Mr. Goldner stated that the show had 100 Million Views.
Speaking about China and its involvement with the Transformers Franchise:
“I think China and Transformers is one of the biggest growth areas of our company. It’s a beloved brand that’s been known since the 1980s. In fact it was on the air since the animation in 1980s. Every time I travel to China, I meet a lot of grown adults who talk to me about how they are such fans of the brand. We only just scratched the surface of what’s possible in China. This past quarter we’ve seen a great growth in Chinese business and we’ve seen a great growth overall from China and our emerging market business. We really believe we are in the starting gate of what’s possible in China for the Transformers business.”
Check out the full interview at Yahoo Finance.
unexistance
starting ROTF I'm guessing? Since that's when the TF toys lowers the plastic quality…
Design is getting more awesome tho…
RKillian
Is he really? If he were running Food Lion, he'd be just as "excited" for this week's sale on Folger's coffee. It just reads as insincere, especially with that "we're not a toy company, we're a licensing company" push. I've heard people who were passionate about the product they were pushing but so much of what reaches investors or the media could just as well be about mutual funds or banana futures for all the difference it makes.
38RPM
China didn't get Transformers until 1989, and in a weird twist, they got the line about 4 years back. I remember buying 1985 Snarl in 1989 BNIB because that's when it was released. They kept releasing old toys up to 1995 (when Powermaster era toys started hitting). That's a cool part of Transformers history because I believe since Hasbro actually re-released all the old G1 stuff in this lagged format, a lot of Chinese fans actually became fans of G1, '84 to '88 line up which they otherwise wouldn't have been if Hasbro didn't do this. I think that also explains why we have so many 3rd party companies doing dedicated G1 products and things like that guy making a homemade Cyclonus costume, etc. W
If Hasbro hadn't done that and had released G2 or Beast Wars straight into the China, it would be a much different world. Now since they did that, the Chinese market has an appreciation for a lot of characters we all love and that drives the economic engine behind the wonderful world we live in today where we get tons of G1 inspired 3rd party toys and first party homages up the wazoo like Combiner Wars, Masterpiece, Titans Return, etc. Without China, I don't think the Japanese/American markets alone could support this.
Deadend
So in other words as the business leader at Hasbro he's likely to want to fund more transformers brand things as it's doing well.
This is a good sign for more media endeavors and figures. The better the numbers look to him about the market acceptance, the better. This means he'll be open to paying for more talent and more media and figures will reach market.
So instead of nitpicking, how about we celebrate that the current head of Hasbro is excited for the brand because it's doing well. It doing well means he signs off on more getting made and projects keep getting funded. This bodes well for the brand completely. Doesn't matter if he's completely in the know about every detail of the brand, he's not the one personally making the toys and the media. All he has to see is that it's doing well, and making profit so he'll keep signing off on more getting made from those teams that were hired that are giving us the material we like. It is a business after all. Profit and numbers are the top concern and maintaining those benefits all of us fans in getting the material and media we want.
motorthing
Great. More Corporate Panda-hugging by a barely engaged mouthpiece: "I know fuck all about one of my main Brands but don't worry, I have a passport and know where China is. Save me Investors!"
jamarmiller
a part of me does hope that combiner wars got 100 million views, that would show the power of g1 inspired fiction and hopefully get us more.
On the other hand, it really really sucked and hope it doesnt inspire them to do more crap like that
Strife
How about they take the guys who come up with Transformers Platinum and just put them on other jobs and bring the Asia Premium Series stuff over stateside.
They get
\'just sayin.
SPLIT LIP
I feel bad for Goldner, I really do. He really just wants to say "I don't give a shit" whenever people ask him these questions about the details of the brands, and you can feel it in these half canned/half apathetic answers. I mean I get it, he's not a micro-manager and clearly isn't concerned with the franchises under Hasbro in any way but as numbers on sales charts, but he seriously comes across as startlingly out of touch whenever he tries to comment on the brand's history.
I'd really rather have interviews with the people who actually work on these brands.
Autobot Burnout
While it has since been corrected by SilverOptimus, the fact is Goldner still does not have that firm a grasp on any aspect of the franchise not involving the films. Namely, in an interview from the beginning of the year IIRC, he went on to describe Bumblebee as being mute.
The current flagship series of the franchise as of that interview – and really the only one with media presence – was NewRID. Bumblebee stopped being mute at the end of the previous series. So Goldner outright demonstrated he didn't even have a clue that the current version of Bumblebee can even talk. And technically, Movie BB isn't mute either – he does speak at the end of the first film and ROTF establishes he just doesn't keep talking because it hurts to speak at length (and also the fact radiospeak is his gimmick).
RKillian
I wish I could like your post a hundred times, Autobot Burnout. These press releases are 120% horse shit.
SilverOptimus
My apologies. There was a missing "s". It's "1980s" and not "1980".
God Ginrai
"In fact it was on the air since the animation in 1980."
Brian Goldner doesn't even know when Transformers started…
Autobot Burnout
This article is tragically hillarious in how it tries to sugarcoat how out of touch Hasbro is with the things coming out of Goldner's mouth.
So it's on par with Rebecca Black's Friday – because that's totally a standard of online media quality.
Because AoE getting that film agreement with the Chinese government certainly didn't make this evident.
1984 you dumbass, not 1980! The toy that would become Optimus Prime didn't even exist until 1983 as a toy show prototype!
And how many times has Goldner traveled to China?
Yeah, because moving toy production out of that country and the associated costs of production certainly means more money coming from China than is going straight back in.
Because we just imagined every single time in the past decade where China got exclusive Universe 2.0 Combiner repaints that would be shoved into ROTF a year later, or how an entire subline of Generations retools known as GDO almost never would have gotten US release if TRU hadn't suddenly intervened.
Because it sounds far less impressive by stating it's all just Disney.
Saving this quote because it straight up says Goldner is trying to turn Hasbro away from primarily making toys – and after the fall of The HUB that is not working out suffice to say.
PFFFFAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I can't even begin on this, it's…oh, God it is all over the place with what is going on with the toylines.
All Disney sub franchises that 'character development' is entirely on Disney and not at all Hasbro's responsibility.
Because the fact the MLP franchise got big with boys may be due to the show not being shit like what girl stereotype shows generally are – and certainly not for a lack of trying on Hasbro's part to force it into that mold after Faust, the show's creator, suddenly quit over what was revealed to be Equestria Girls – and not because the toys took five fucking years to start looking like the show character models en masse with articulation has nothing to do with it, apparently.
l0te
Wow, grown adults who are fans of transformers… those definitely don't exist in any other market.
I hope they don't count 100mil views as a success for that dumpster fire. I watched all of the episodes because of misplaced hope and content deprivation, not because it was actually worth watching.
Ladiesman118
Brian Goldner: talking like he cares about the franchise or fans since 2003.
wildfly
Brian Goldner: Talking about China since 2011.
SilverOptimus
News Post: Brian Goldner Talks About The Growth Of Transformers In Recent Times