Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company?

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Onslaught Six
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Onslaught Six »

Read: "They were going to gimp Deluxes and shrink them down and simultaneously raise the price to $15, and I said, fuck you!"
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Tigermegatron »

Think it's very unprofessional that these X-Hasbro employees discussed with the fandom why and how they all got fired from Hasbro. I find it hard to believe their firing or quitting stories as it's all one sided. since Hasbro is too professional and mature of a company to reveal their side why they fired these guys.

Find it hard to believe some guys quit, Think they all got fired from Hasbro.

Seriously think creating this PWTT company is a act of immaturity and comes off as childish trollish revenge.

Think all of thse PWTT toys look like garbage and are all so undersirable. Think those X-Hasbro employees were attempting to ripp off Hasbro's "Hero Smashers" toy line idea with these PWTT toys. If this is the best these X-Hasbro employees can create, Then it's no wonder they all got fired.

Noticed most of the PWTT employees are made up of guys that got fired and some were huge internet forum trolls. If this is all PWTT wants to hire then it's no wonder their products are so inferior to the competition and will ultimately suffer in sales.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by JediTricks »

Archer wasn't in charge of brand development anymore, he had been promoted above the toys to brand story VP, basically he was overseeing TF for movies, TV shows, books, games, apps, basically everything non-toy. If he claimed he moved on because of the way Hasbro was treating the brand and making it impossible for him to work, that's highly difficult to believe.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Sparky Prime »

What reason would he have to be dishonest about why he left Hasbro? I mean, he's always been pretty open about talking to the fandom. And even if he wasn't in charge of toy design anymore, that doesn't mean he still couldn't have resigned in protest to the direction the company was moving with the figures. I'd have to think the product would still reflect on him to some degree as a VP of Intellectual Property Development.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Almighty Unicron »

Sparky Prime wrote:What reason would he have to be dishonest about why he left Hasbro? I mean, he's always been pretty open about talking to the fandom. And even if he wasn't in charge of toy design anymore, that doesn't mean he still couldn't have resigned in protest to the direction the company was moving with the figures. I'd have to think the product would still reflect on him to some degree as a VP of Intellectual Property Development.
A combination of having signed NDAs that still persist and not wanting to burn bridges in his industry, I'd wager.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

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Almighty Unicron wrote:A combination of having signed NDAs that still persist and not wanting to burn bridges in his industry, I'd wager.
What makes you think he's under a NDA when he's always been so open about talking to the fandom? Or that it would apply to his reasoning for quitting the company? According to his deviantArt page, he currently works his own freelance studio, so I don't see that he really is in the toy industry anymore. Looks like he mostly does illustration work now.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Almighty Unicron »

Sparky Prime wrote:
Almighty Unicron wrote:A combination of having signed NDAs that still persist and not wanting to burn bridges in his industry, I'd wager.
What makes you think he's under a NDA when he's always been so open about talking to the fandom? Or that it would apply to his reasoning for quitting the company? According to his deviantArt page, he currently works his own freelance studio, so I don't see that he really is in the toy industry anymore. Looks like he mostly does illustration work now.
I interned once with Blizzard Entertainment for the summer of 2012. I'm still under NDAs with them. Some of them can be quite long lasting, and yes, legally actionable. If anything, after how open he was with fans in the past I'd imagine he'd be smarter about disclosure now. He probably got a few slaps on the wrist for his stint as Orson but now takes them much more seriously.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Sparky Prime »

Almighty Unicron wrote:I interned once with Blizzard Entertainment for the summer of 2012. I'm still under NDAs with them. Some of them can be quite long lasting, and yes, legally actionable. If anything, after how open he was with fans in the past I'd imagine he'd be smarter about disclosure now. He probably got a few slaps on the wrist for his stint as Orson but now takes them much more seriously.
I'm not doubting NDA's are long lasting and brings with them legal action, I just don't see any evidence to doubt Archer at his own word here. I mean, if he's under a NDA about why he left Hasbro, why would he say anything about it at all? And it's not like he really gave anything away during his time with Orson's World, the problem with that was that some other fansites got jealous TFW2005 had someone from Hasbro talking directly to them and bitched to Hasbro about it, causing them to force it to be shut down.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Onslaught Six »

Fine, if copypaste won't work right on my iPhone, netbook it is.

The Kickstarter is up:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/44 ... nav_search

Just some quick thoughts: I think I originally said that if these were decently priced ($25-30 before shipping) I would buy a couple of them; $55 for a six-inch (more like 7 inch with the monster dudes) figure, shipped, is pretty steep, and a lot of the early-level stuff (like the Skeletor and Hordak inspired repaints) don't interest me. The only other one that interested me was the not-Landmine design, and that's apparently just not part of the Kickstarter (yet). Another bad thing is that there is apparently not an option to get not-Blood and not-Skullgrin as a set at $100; if that was available I could have been tempted, but we'll see what happens on that front.

As it is right now, I'm only picking up not-Blood. I definitely am not interested in any of the stuff like the extra heads, head stands, staffs or anything like that, and a lot of the upper level dudes (like Stranglehold and Pretender Starscream) are things I'm either only slightly interested in or not really at all. Still, I am pledging, so that's something.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by JediTricks »

Hmm, the swappable parts thing makes this much too close to stepping on the Hero Mashers IP that Hasbro has been developing with multiple brands, including TF. Either I forgot about that aspect, or didn't know about it.

Looking at the Kickstarter, I suspect this will barely fund and the cost of the rewards will require them to do another round of funding, assuming that all the money doesn't just go to legal once Hasbro gets wound up enough. A year out isn't that crazy if they've already started the process and are using their existing contacts, but that assumes there will be NO further hiccups.

Were I them, I would have offered lower-priced unpainted figures for the first 100 early backers, $30 gets you the main guy in gray in a white mailer box the way that Super7 sold their SDCC-exclusive ReAction Alien figures.

Also, how does one aim at collectors then talk in the same sentence about being highly focused on play?

And good lord they are overdoing it with stretch goals. "Spend more to reach your favorite IP cleverly 'borrowed' here!" The $310,000 Thundercracker and Skywarp stretch goal unlocks are especially egregious, note the secondary Starscream-inspired head.


If Hasbro didn't have non-compete clauses before, after this they surely will. The "Meet the Band" aspect of their sites has the word "Hasbro" in 15 places and "Transformers" in 35.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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