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Originally Posted by Sun Swipe Prime
This doesn't surprise me. Constant price hikes. Supply chain issues. No real cohesive plan in terms of how to move their IPs forward. Over reliance on nostalgia.
Even when I wanted to spend the money, I couldn't reliably find what I wanted. So, that broke me out of the habit. Now, even when I do find stuff, I look at the price, and put it back down.
I can't even remember the last time I was excited for a piece of TF fiction. The Netfilx show had me for a hot minute, and then, it shit in my mouth.
It seems like they're starting to license out their IPs to other companies to make. Are they just going become the company that holds on to the IP and licenses it out for other companies to actually do something with them?
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Wouldn't surprise me if they did become more of a licensing company. They could cut their overhead massively and all the risk would be on other companies. Plus they would still have Hasbro branding on all products made.
Let's be realistic as well. Toys are a dying category. Or more specifically Action Figures. The target age group is old enough to be sucked into devices (Tablet, phone, etc) before getting hooked onto toys. My two boys (9 & 4) both would rather be on their devices than play with their toys. The only solid area for toys is preschool. Those kids are too young to be solidly addicted to devices (so far).
So much like the newspaper/magazine industry, the writing is on the wall. There will always be a market, but it certainly isn't growing. Plus I believe one day there will be cheap enough, and stable enough, home printing technology that it will just be easier to sell the files (schematics) to print your own toys. At that point most of the companies will probably be completely out of manufacturing toys.
As for the layoffs, I don't know why some people are so up in arms about the situation. I see some Toy Tubers (I know, I know) ranting and all I can think is "which major corporation hasn't done layoffs at least once in the last decade?" Yes it isn't great, and even more so due to the time of the year but, unfortunately, it is how these companies work. If things turn around again they'll rehire people, and when things go south again, they'll layoff people again. Round and round it goes.
