{"id":1375,"date":"2012-07-18T19:59:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T03:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/?p=1375"},"modified":"2012-07-18T19:59:47","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T03:59:47","slug":"san-diego-comic-con-interview-with-hasbro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/main\/hasbro-q-and-a\/1375","title":{"rendered":"San Diego Comic-Con Interview with Hasbro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Hasbro was gracious enough to give us here at TFviews.com an official interview with the Transformers brand management team shortly after what could arguably be called their best panel presentation ever – thanks largely to a angrily-passionate crowd, a responsive panel, and technical difficulties with the slideshow (you wouldn’t think that’d be a recipe for success, but it was more fun and more informative than any this reporter has ever seen before). TFv got to sit down with Aaron Archer and Jerry Jivoin (alliteration at Comic-Con is a must!) and ask them the following questions culled from our readers.<\/p>\n

Hasbro’s time was limited, so we jumped right into the questions…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> So, as you know, Masterforce was recently released on DVD. My guys would love to know, especially with some of those characters being in IDW, if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be seeing some more of those characters coming out in Generations or something like that. Something like Bomb Burst, Metalhawk, Waverider, Overlord, Joyride.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Some of them we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing… I would say Masterforce coming out isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t activating any Japanese products in our market. So not likely. Doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t some day, but we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put Masterforce out to promote products.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Sure, I understand. Speaking of things that come out and then you release them, IDW and Marvel, a rich library of characters that people are starting to respond to in a more mainstream way like Drift and Straxus, will we be seeing more like that?<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Well my role creatively is to make use of all of it. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do us any good to have one off guy over here; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re assets to the company. So if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a big deal in some of these comics, or in a video game, or a movie, or whatever, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to find a way to use them when the time is right.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Is that mostly looking-forward stuff, like new comics, new games, or Marvel as well?<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Well Marvel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little bit of a different deal, there are characters that are Marvel characters that are in the Transformer comics back in the day, but they belong to them: Matrix, characters like that…<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Circuit Breaker?<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Yeah. So we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not actively trying to get those to put in the line either.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Onslaught (the latest one, from Fall of Cybertron Bruticus) was developed before Generations had a Voyager line so he had to be a deluxe. Is there any chance of seeing him done again as a Voyager for the core of Bruticus?<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> No plans as of right now. I admit the decision there was to do them all on the deluxe scale because the Voyager scale wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be out at the same time.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Because of those price differences you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect that the numbers would all match up. Deluxe moves faster than Voyager, so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have another problem where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be talking about “well why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I find the center guy? I have all four legs and arms.”<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Well you have done a little better at making these standalone toys than in the past. So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just trying to do anything I can to make that happen because you know, bigger Onslaught means bigger Bruticus.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> We definitely recognize that the center piece is generating on, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say a Voyager scale. It definitely opens up that opportunity.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> So you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done Bruticus, your first really big combiner in quite a while. What about some of the more unorthodox combiners like Rail Racer, Magnaboss, DuoCons? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen a real decrease since the Unicon trilogy in combiners and has that been a conscious decision to just get away from that except for Power Core, or is it something that just naturally happened and now is coming back?<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a lot to communicate with a combiner, and those toys, at times, you have to make adjustments for the third mode that you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t on another one that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a third mode. They present different challenges so they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not always top-of-mind, plus then Jerry has to communicate how they go together and all that. I will say for the creative side, for the publishing or anything else, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really intrigued that some of these guys are coming back, and whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kre-O line or whatever. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been part of G1 guys being reinvented, we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done Superion, we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done the monster guys, Protectobots, on and on. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to bring more light to those other combiner teams.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> So you want to go back to the original first, not do the Rail Racer and the…<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Probably not, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do fringe first, I would see the Rail Racer as a fringe combiner – although it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cool and has its fans.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Oh yeah, big time. Especially because it was hard to get when it came out.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> Yeah. But certainly Superion and some of the other guys.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> If you look at the last five years, if you look at the movies, there was only one combiner: Devastator.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> And it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even like the classic concept, because they were individuals.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> Right. Prime currently… there are no combiners in Prime, so I think when you look at some of the major entertainment out there for Transformers, there hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been that. However, now you get to where Fall of Cybertron has Bruticus in it, now the comic books are having combiners. It gives us a way bring some of these characters back.<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> With cancelled products, although I know you guys have worked really hard to get some of these canceled products back out in our hands, some stuff like the Animated, some of that stuff just isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t coming back right now, as you said (in the panel). Those are tools that your money just is not coming back on obviously because you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not running them. Would there be a way to bring something like that back in a collector-focused way, perhaps internet exclusive, perhaps even beyond Hasbro Toy Shop.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> We look at those things all the time, and the reality is that they were made a few years ago, so the standards have changed, the mix has changed, and the focus has changed. It just started airing again on the Hub, Animated, so if we had put it out a year ago no one would even know what they were looking at, except…<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Well I mean collector focused, not on the mainstream, not on pegs.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> It comes up, but we find other things are probably more in tune with what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re moving more of.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> We definitely recognize that there were unreleased Animated figures, so much like the last wave of movie product out there, or Prime First Edition….<\/p>\n

TFviews.com:<\/strong> Reveal the Shield…<\/p>\n

Hasbro (JJ):<\/strong> Right, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of those things, and if we see an opportunity we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll definitely re-release them.<\/p>\n

Hasbro (AA):<\/strong> What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to say just so people know, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve brought this up a couple different times, there have always been products that have dropped off and last waves canceled, and things. Just today, people know about it in a way that they never did before. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to navigate that when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking business plans, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough to make everybody happy. We certainly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work hard to make these things to not put them out, so clearly something has changed when we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

– – –<\/p>\n

And that’s it for our interview with Hasbro’s Transformers brand at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International. We’d like to thank Mr. Archer, Mr. Jivoin, and everybody at Team Hasbro who made this possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Hasbro was gracious enough to give us here at TFviews.com an official interview with the Transformers brand management team shortly after what could arguably be called their best panel presentation ever – thanks largely to a angrily-passionate crowd, a responsive panel, and technical difficulties with the slideshow … Continue reading San Diego Comic-Con Interview with Hasbro<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hasbro-q-and-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1380,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/1380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tfviews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}