Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

[Melomeca]

https://www.reuters.com/business/ret...sj-2023-12-11/


The company ain't doing well.

[Collectingtoys]

That is awful news, literally 2 weeks before Christmas at a toy company.

I hope those folks are able to land news jobs soon.

[canprime]

Not surprising after reading an article last week about how the toy industry is expecting sales to be down by at least a quarter this year.

Also considering Hasbro seems to be licensing out more and more of their IP I think it was kind of expected.

[herooftheday316]

I'm sad for the employees but I am not sure what Hasbro expected. You can blame the "everchanging toy landscape" as much as you want but when you start driving up prices to nearly double in a relatively short amount of time, what can you expect? I have a room full of transformers and they priced me out the hobby (mostly). It went from a really easy impulse purchase to a full on decision. Going to Walmart and adding a 30$ voyager to my basket is VERY different from adding a 48$ voyager.

[UsernamePrime]

Agreed about the price hike issues.

I also imagine that the many people who jumped into the collecting game during lock downs are now bailing on collecting due to combination of price and economy.

[UsernamePrime]

ill also note that you can see the stock price rise and fall drastically over the past 4 years.

April 2019 saw a record climb in stocks which corresponded with End Game theatrical release.

April 2020 saw a massive drop due to lock downs.

Then you see a big rise from people buying up whatever during the lock downs.

Then you see a continuous drop in sales again as mask mandates and regulations started to lift in NA/EU starting around March 2022.

Small spike in Q3 2023 only for it all to drop very low now.

[RansakWORK]

Lets not forget the D&D open license debacle.

Was it last years share holders meeting where they promised all these profits then released the new open license basically saying they can steal other peoples work for free and it went over like a lead balloon?

D&D didnt recover and most of their products can now be found at discount stores like Ross's in states.

When it comes to transformers they seem to work really hard avoiding giving consumers what they want. Dancing around it or taking forever to produce.

[UsernamePrime]

Originally Posted by RansakWORK

When it comes to transformers they seem to work really hard avoiding giving consumers what they want. Dancing around it or taking forever to produce.

Good point on the D&D

I can also relate to the TF dancing. Start of 2022 I decided to cut the TF to only season 1-3 sunbow and even then I decided to not update anything I have other than insecticons, dinobots, sandstorm, and octane.

Now I'm a Swoop, Octane, Sandstorm and Sureshot away from being done with my TF days. If these were to release in 2024 then I would pick them up and basically retire TF in it's entirety.

Skipping on tape army as people will snatch those up quick and skipping on throttlebots cause..... it's throttlebots and who cares.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

They're also so wasteful when it comes to Transformers. I mean, look at Rise of the Beasts. They released three separate Optimus Prime toys in roughly the same scale and quality level for that movie; the Battle Changers "long truck" version, the Weaponizer version with Chainclaw and the Beast Combiner version with Lionblade. The Weaponizer and Beast Combiner versions are nearly identical and the Combiner version could easily have been used for all three, but they're completely separate moulds. Given how producing the moulds is one of the most expensive parts of the toy-making process, that's just throwing money down the drain.


They keep telling us that they have to raise prices and cut corners to stay in the black, but then they do shit like that.

[Northerncrowe]

Originally Posted by UsernamePrime

Good point on the D&D

I can also relate to the TF dancing. Start of 2022 I decided to cut the TF to only season 1-3 sunbow and even then I decided to not update anything I have other than insecticons, dinobots, sandstorm, and octane.

Now I'm a Swoop, Octane, Sandstorm and Sureshot away from being done with my TF days. If these were to release in 2024 then I would pick them up and basically retire TF in it's entirety.

Skipping on tape army as people will snatch those up quick and skipping on throttlebots cause..... it's throttlebots and who cares.

2 out of 4 aint bad for 2024