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Has the Value vs. Quality Ratio of Transformers Toys Gone Up or Down?

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Zobovor

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Jun 22, 2015, 1:08:53 AM6/22/15
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I'm always of two minds when I look at my recent toy acquisitions. I look at Combiner Wars Streetwise and First Aid and Blades and part of me grouses because we used to be paying ten dollars for Deluxe-class toys. The G2 Laser Rods were arguably the first toys that can be reasonably compared to modern-day Deluxes, and they had an MSRP of $9.99. (Of course, that was in 1994, so that money arguable has the same purchasing power as $16.03 today.) The actual numerical retail remained pretty consistent all through Beast Wars and Beast Machines, though, and we didn't get the first real price hike until Armada. (Again, though, the toys from the Supercon class, as it had been renamed, also included a Mini-Con each, so in some ways it's not a viable direct comparison.)

Then I think back to the days of G1, when toys seemed to be even smaller and yet much more expensive. Either the MSRP's weren't as standardized as they are today, or retailers chose to ignore them. I tend to think of Toys "R" Us as being pretty close to standard retail (they were a much larger force in the industry in the 1980's, probably closer to what Walmart is today; my memory of pricing is that mall outlets like Kay-Bee Toys tended to have inflated pricing that probably doesn't accurately reflect Hasbro's intended pricing for the toys).

During G1, the Autobot Cars assortment is probably the most direct equivalent to today's Deluxe class. On the whole, those toys were smaller, but they also included more expensive materials (die-cast metal parts and rubber tires) and required more pieces, and more labor, to assemble (all moving parts had to be sandwiched together and screwed in place, since plastics were too brittle for today's less costly snap-together ball-and-socket joints and Lee Press-On Wheels).

So, I find myself wondering... factoring in all the myriad factors like inflation and such... is it really that bad that we're paying $15-20 for Deluxe toys when similar toys from the G1 days were going for the same prices? (I think $12.99 or $13.99 is probably close to the MSRP for the Autobot Cars, which is an astonishing $20.84 to $22.45 in today's money.) So in some ways, the pricing is actually going down.

Of course, the quality of the toys has also taken a nosedive as well, which is, surely, an attempt by Hasbro to help manage costs on the assembly end. Plastics used in recent years have been noticeably lighter; even large toys like Jetfire feel distressingly lightweight and hollow. Of course, lighter toys also bounce better during drop tests. The brittle, dense plastic of G1 toys was unforgiving in the extreme, and an unskilled child's attempt to transform it, or an unfortunate fall from a tabletop, could easily result in a piece of the toy snapping off inexorably. Even the stress from normal play caused certain infamous toys to break (Megatron, Mirage, Metroplex, and your Mom).

There's also the fact that today's toys are, on the whole, almost universally larger than their G1 counterparts. There are counter-examples of characters who have shrunk in recent years (the Generations versions of Galvatron, Cyclonus, Wreck-Gar, Perceptor, and a few others), but when it comes to Combiner Wars, just about everybody who is being revisited is getting a bigger toy than he had during G1. Considering how utterly tiny the original Scramble City mini-vehicles were, that counts for a lot!

So, are today's toys worth the price? Or are they too cheaply-made for what you get? Would you pay more for a higher-quality product? Or has the steady increase in cost already priced you out of collecting as much as you want to?


Zob (not even going to get into the uber-expensive stuff like Masterpieces)

Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats

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Jun 22, 2015, 2:49:28 AM6/22/15
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On Sunday, June 21, 2015 at 10:08:53 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> I'm always of two minds when I look at my recent toy acquisitions. I look at Combiner Wars Streetwise and First Aid and Blades and part of me grouses because we used to be paying ten dollars for Deluxe-class toys.

The largish Legends for $10 really bothers me, more than the Deluxes. I could see a Basic for $10, even $11.99 or so, but the largish Legends just don't feel worth it.


> So, I find myself wondering... factoring in all the myriad factors like inflation and such... is it really that bad that we're paying $15-20 for Deluxe toys when similar toys from the G1 days were going for the same prices?

I really don't think the toys are remotely similar. At least not the 1984-5 toys. Hot Rod doesn't seem so radically different though (and I don't have any more of the 1986 cars to compare).

Of course, the 1984-5 toys had no design costs...

> Of course, the quality of the toys has also taken a nosedive as well, which is, surely, an attempt by Hasbro to help manage costs on the assembly end.

I feel like the highpoint of Transformers was TF:Cybertron through Generations Black Shadow. There was a huge drop in quality with the Fall Of Cybertron toys, and while there was some improvement, I don't think they are back.

> Plastics used in recent years have been noticeably lighter; even large toys like Jetfire feel distressingly lightweight and hollow. Of course, lighter toys also bounce better during drop tests. The brittle, dense plastic of G1 toys was unforgiving in the extreme, and an unskilled child's attempt to transform it, or an unfortunate fall from a tabletop, could easily result in a piece of the toy snapping off inexorably. Even the stress from normal play caused certain infamous toys to break (Megatron, Mirage, Metroplex, and your Mom).

I think you are making the wrong comparisons. G1 was a generation ago, and a lot of the materials are simply completely inappropriate now. There hasn't been a huge shift in available materials in the past five years though, and there has been a huge shift in the materials used.


> So, are today's toys worth the price? Or are they too cheaply-made for what you get? Would you pay more for a higher-quality product? Or has the steady increase in cost already priced you out of collecting as much as you want to?

I'm not very price conscious -- not really anyway. I'll get a little bit of a shock when I see how much a few Transformers add up to these days, but it doesn't really change what I buy.

What I get seems substantially lower quality than what I used to get, completely ignoring the price. Lower quality materials, fewer paint operations, and lower complexity.

Interestingly, the PrimeRID Warriors seem to be made of higher quality materials than the Generations Deluxes. Firmer plastics, at least, but simpler designs. If they would change the styling to match Generations toys of the past, I would probably find them a better compromise of complexity and quality than the Generations toys.

> Zob (not even going to get into the uber-expensive stuff like Masterpieces)

I am far, far more likely to fiddle with PrimeRID Jazz or Generations Fireflight than I am to fiddle with Generations Prowl.

Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.

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Jun 22, 2015, 10:30:58 AM6/22/15
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On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 12:08:53 AM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> I'm always of two minds when I look at my recent toy acquisitions. I look at Combiner Wars Streetwise and First Aid and Blades and part of me grouses because we used to be paying ten dollars for Deluxe-class toys. The G2 Laser Rods were arguably the first toys that can be reasonably compared to modern-day Deluxes, and they had an MSRP of $9.99. (Of course, that was in 1994, so that money arguable has the same purchasing power as $16.03 today.) The actual numerical retail remained pretty consistent all through Beast Wars and Beast Machines, though, and we didn't get the first real price hike until Armada. (Again, though, the toys from the Supercon class, as it had been renamed, also included a Mini-Con each, so in some ways it's not a viable direct comparison.)
>

Armada bots were $10.99 here.

> Then I think back to the days of G1, when toys seemed to be even smaller and yet much more expensive. Either the MSRP's weren't as standardized as they are today, or retailers chose to ignore them. I tend to think of Toys "R" Us as being pretty close to standard retail (they were a much larger force in the industry in the 1980's, probably closer to what Walmart is today; my memory of pricing is that mall outlets like Kay-Bee Toys tended to have inflated pricing that probably doesn't accurately reflect Hasbro's intended pricing for the toys).
>

KB used to be the most expensive, but with the lowest clearance prices. Of course here they had to pay very high rent for being in a mall.

> During G1, the Autobot Cars assortment is probably the most direct equivalent to today's Deluxe class. On the whole, those toys were smaller, but they also included more expensive materials (die-cast metal parts and rubber tires) and required more pieces, and more labor, to assemble (all moving parts had to be sandwiched together and screwed in place, since plastics were too brittle for today's less costly snap-together ball-and-socket joints and Lee Press-On Wheels).
>

There were also many more accessories in general, almost every toy had a missile and launcher, and may have had to pay licensing for real vehicle modes.
> So, I find myself wondering... factoring in all the myriad factors like inflation and such... is it really that bad that we're paying $15-20 for Deluxe toys when similar toys from the G1 days were going for the same prices? (I think $12.99 or $13.99 is probably close to the MSRP for the Autobot Cars, which is an astonishing $20.84 to $22.45 in today's money.) So in some ways, the pricing is actually going down.
>

The problem is you are using inflation as a metric, which is an artificial scale used to prop-up stock numbers for the top companies. The problem is income hasn't paced with the inflation or the stock market. The consumer buying this is only affected negatively with this stock market trending.

Watching Legion class toys go from $2.49 to $6.99 in the last ten years is not equivalent to the increase in the average median household.

> Of course, the quality of the toys has also taken a nosedive as well, which is, surely, an attempt by Hasbro to help manage costs on the assembly end. Plastics used in recent years have been noticeably lighter; even large toys like Jetfire feel distressingly lightweight and hollow. Of course, lighter toys also bounce better during drop tests. The brittle, dense plastic of G1 toys was unforgiving in the extreme, and an unskilled child's attempt to transform it, or an unfortunate fall from a tabletop, could easily result in a piece of the toy snapping off inexorably. Even the stress from normal play caused certain infamous toys to break (Megatron, Mirage, Metroplex, and your Mom).
>

I think as compared to G1, the toys have a higher build quality as far as durability, because new materials and new techniques are available to make production easier. In the last three years the material quality seems to be descending.

> There's also the fact that today's toys are, on the whole, almost universally larger than their G1 counterparts. There are counter-examples of characters who have shrunk in recent years (the Generations versions of Galvatron, Cyclonus, Wreck-Gar, Perceptor, and a few others), but when it comes to Combiner Wars, just about everybody who is being revisited is getting a bigger toy than he had during G1. Considering how utterly tiny the original Scramble City mini-vehicles were, that counts for a lot!
>
> So, are today's toys worth the price? Or are they too cheaply-made for what you get? Would you pay more for a higher-quality product? Or has the steady increase in cost already priced you out of collecting as much as you want to?
>
>
> Zob (not even going to get into the uber-expensive stuff like Masterpieces)

I'm limiting my Combiner Wars to 1 or 2 teams, despite the fact that I do want them all. It's not that I can't really afford it, I just cannot justify the outrageous costs.

Zobovor

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Jun 24, 2015, 7:34:22 PM6/24/15
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On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 8:30:58 AM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People. wrote:

> The problem is you are using inflation as a metric, which is an artificial
> scale used to prop-up stock numbers for the top companies.

Granted, but I think it's still a factor that needs to be taken into account. Ten dollars in 1984 didn't mean the same thing that ten dollars in 2015 means.

> I'm limiting my Combiner Wars to 1 or 2 teams, despite the fact that I do
> want them all. It's not that I can't really afford it, I just cannot justify
> the outrageous costs.

I know that I will consider purchases like the Aerialbots and Stunticons to be worthwhile over the long haul. I will not regret getting them. If I venture down this road and buy all these weird combiner versions of Sunstreaker, Wheeljack, etc. I'm probably going to look back after a few years have gone by and ask myself why I got them. (Mirage will probably remain a worthwhile purchase, regardless, just because I hate the Classics toy so hard. As for the others... sigh. Hasbro knows I'm a total G1 whore and I can't do anything about it!)


Zob

Zobovor

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Jun 24, 2015, 8:01:22 PM6/24/15
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On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 12:49:28 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> The largish Legends for $10 really bothers me, more than the Deluxes.

I used to justify it in my mind by reasoning that you were really getting two toys (Skrapnel with Reflector, Swerve with What's-His-Face, etc.) but now they don't even do that. I guess the Legends are comparable in size to the Star Wars Black figures, and those are ten bucks.

> I really don't think the toys are remotely similar. At least not the 1984-5
> toys. Hot Rod doesn't seem so radically different though (and I don't have
> any more of the 1986 cars to compare).

It's obviously not viable as a direct comparison, but it helps me to keep the sticker shock in check sometimes. It's hard for me to continue to say, "Wow, $20 is a lot for a Deluxe" when I was paying that price all the time for Deluxe-sized toys like G1 Cyclonus or Rampage. And, arguably, $20 was a lot more money back then for toys that did less.

> Of course, the 1984-5 toys had no design costs...

I think there were still some development costs associated with the toys. Some of them had to be remolded or have their launchers neutered, some of them that didn't get Diaclone artwork needed box art... not as much as developing the toys from the ground up, obviously, but still.

> I think you are making the wrong comparisons. G1 was a generation ago, and a
> lot of the materials are simply completely inappropriate now.

Are you saying they shouldn't go back to making Transformers toys out of wooden parts and lead-based paint?

> I'm not very price conscious -- not really anyway. I'll get a little bit of a
> shock when I see how much a few Transformers add up to these days, but it
> doesn't really change what I buy.

A complete team of Combiner Wars Stunticons runs about $110 before tax and shipping! Whoo!


Zob (and that's only if you can find Brake-Neck at close to retail)

Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.

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Jun 25, 2015, 9:47:22 AM6/25/15
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On Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 7:01:22 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> A complete team of Combiner Wars Stunticons runs about $110 before tax and shipping! Whoo!
>
>
> Zob (and that's only if you can find Brake-Neck at close to retail)

$15 each for the limbs = $60,
$25 for motormaster = $25
$10 for Blackjack = $10
SubTotal = $95
Tax $7~$8
Total = $102 before the cost difference and shipping for Brake-Neck.

Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.

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Jun 25, 2015, 9:59:26 AM6/25/15
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4 teams then equals $440+ if you just use the replacement bots and dont seek out the original teammembers online.

A little disappointed that Blades has missiles. All they needed was new forearms to make it some kind of rescue-rafts.

Marshall

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Jul 15, 2015, 10:43:54 AM7/15/15
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All I know is the quality of the designs has skyrocketed since the last set of movie toys... enough so that I've actually bought some toys again after having to cover my eyes while passing thru that section of the store...

Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats

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Jul 20, 2015, 2:59:41 AM7/20/15
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Looking at Protectobots First Aid and Hot Spot, I see cost savings galore across the toys, some of which really hurt the toy itself.

First Aid:
- unpainted rear window
- no effort to fold up the feet, so they risk dragging in vehicle mode.
- precisions required for transformation that aren't realized with the plastics (really tricky to snap his backend in place)
- poorly done paint operations at transformation panels

I don't mind the snap on wheels, but would like painted hubcaps/rims. And the terrible paint matching has been pretty much par for the course for the last decade (unless Fox Kids Rhinox was secretly a First Aid homage with his mixture of red and burgandy...)

And, I don't mind that he is the same basic toy as New Stunticon Guy, with a bit of remolding. I think we are getting remolds and reshells rather than entirely new molds sometimes, but they are pretty extensive.

And, a lot of combiner wars toys have a lot of similar parts already. I would say that First Aid is the same basic toy as Fireflight, and only marginally different from Blades. But that doesn't make any of them bad toys.

Hot Spot:
- many areas that are struts instead of solid surfaces
- gaps in the vehicle mode where the legs only connect at the feet.
- softer plastic doesn't latch into place.

And with all of this, they cost more.

I think that TF:Cybertron was the high point of Transformers, in terms of quality, and honestly, I'd rather add another 25% to the price to get back to that. Even if they killed the gimmicks.

Have the prices of the Japanese transformers been rising as much as the US ones? They were always marketed more as collectables than as toys, with roughly $25 deluxes.

banzait...@gmail.com

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Jul 20, 2015, 9:23:31 PM7/20/15
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I actually take great pride in being the world renowned expert in Transformer Economic Inflationary Modeling. I am so knowledgeable in this area, I actually wrote the thread on the topic. On this very newsgroup (published on 5/24/2011), I published my derivation of the "ARTI" (or the Annual Rate of Transformer Inflation for those who are not active researchers in the field.) My derivation of the ARTI has advanced mankind's knowledge of more than merely the price of plastic toys, but also has been applied to various other fields, including the cost of plastic surgery, and of course Porn. I was narrowly beat out for the nobel prize in Math and science (Please, how has the higgs-boson discovery effected ANYONE?)

With that out of the way, I think there are multiple factors at play here. Some have a positive effect on price (lowering the cost or "-") and others a negative effect (increasing the cost or "+").

Some factors of transformer inflationary pressures
@ manufacturing techniques / technology (-)
@ Safety regulations (+)
@ material sciences (-)
@ human capital (+)
@ raw materials (+)
@ transportation of goods (+)
@ US Economic health (+)
@ Health Care for Hasbro Employees / Suppliers(+++)
@ Wall Street's relentless pursuit of profits (+)

Some of these could certainly be debatable, others are certainly not. However, I don't think anyone would argue that the vector is not in the (+) or more expensive direction, but only the magnitude of the vector. My ARTI calculation from 2011 came out to 1.57%, which is very low. This tells me that Hasbro has done some VERY smart things to manage cost growth. For the most part, I think we on ATT notice their cost cutting approaches, which are sometimes quite brilliant. Sadly, we are the minority. The large percentage of their customer base (Timmy's mom) don't notice, and don't care. I expect the trend to either continue at current pace, or accelerate. (Has anyone noticed that Devastator's figures don't with guns?????) Sadly, it's what smart companies do.

The other thing to consider is the mental factor that plays into this. I remember when the DOW hit 10,000. It was this magical milestone number, but it was no less or more significant than 9,999 or 10,001. Yet it mattered. (so much for efficient markets). We expect a certain size of bot to cost $10, another size $15, etc.

I miss the days of one and done molds. Can you imagine Hasbro creating anything like the monsterbots, triple changers, or any of the G1 gestaults? Now days, if the mold is only reused three times, we spike the football and declare victory.

-Banzaitron

Zobovor

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Jul 20, 2015, 11:48:15 PM7/20/15
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On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 7:23:31 PM UTC-6, banzait...@gmail.com wrote:

> I actually take great pride in being the world renowned expert in Transformer
> Economic Inflationary Modeling. I am so knowledgeable in this area, I
> actually wrote the thread on the topic.

I remember that! I think perhaps I might have been distantly recalling your research somewhere in the back of my mind.

> (Please, how has the higgs-boson discovery effected ANYONE?)

Are you kidding? I think about the higgs-bosom every day!

...What do you mean that's not what you said?

> My ARTI calculation from 2011 came out to 1.57%, which is very low. This
> tells me that Hasbro has done some VERY smart things to manage cost growth.

Okay, so what is it that we're not seeing? I mean, we as consumers are noticing things like molds getting recycled endlessly, lack of paint operations, cheap-feeling, lightweight plastic, Lee Press-On Wheels, etc. We're clearly never going to see the end result of other factors you mention, like how Hasbro transports their shipments, or health care for the Hasbro employees (and I noticed that since you added a "+++" after it; does that mean you think this is the single highest factor of rising costs?).

I'm fascinated by stuff like this, but I admit that I don't have the background in economics necessary to fully appreciate all the factors involved.

> For the most part, I think we on ATT notice their cost cutting approaches,
> which are sometimes quite brilliant.

You're right that we're probably far more likely to notice when pennies are pinched than your average consumer. I'm curious to know which measures you consider brilliant, though. I don't mean that in an argumentative way; I'm geniously curious to know.

> The other thing to consider is the mental factor that plays into this. I
> remember when the DOW hit 10,000. It was this magical milestone number, but
> it was no less or more significant than 9,999 or 10,001. Yet it mattered.
> (so much for efficient markets). We expect a certain size of bot to cost
> $10, another size $15, etc.

And yet, some toy companies are able to maintain these pricing expecations. Mattel is still cranking out Hot Wheels cars that sell for about a dollar, which has been their retail price for at least the last 20 years that I'm sure of. They tend to reuse the same car designs over and over, refreshing them with different paint jobs and such, not unlike what Hasbro does with Transformers. Barbie, another Mattel property, is the same way. Barbie doll parts get reused endlessly, which I think is the only reason why they're able sell a basic, bare-bones doll for five dollars. LEGO, of course, reuses old brick designs constantly, while introducing new designs into the works when necessary. (I'm not a student of LEGO economics but my perception is that they're much more expensive than they used to be. Somebody else correct me if I'm way off base here...?)

> I miss the days of one and done molds. Can you imagine Hasbro creating
> anything like the monsterbots, triple changers, or any of the G1 gestaults?
> Now days, if the mold is only reused three times, we spike the football and
> declare victory.

Too true! I think what we're seeing is two issues. The first is that kids have a shorter attention span these days. It used to be that Hasbro was able to recoup costs by keeping a product in stores for a long time. The entire 1984 product line continued to be available in 1985. Many of the 1985 products were still available in 1986. A great many of the 1986 toys continued to ship in 1987. I don't think retailers would tolerate that now. Instead of shipping Grimlock to stores for two straight years, we'd get regular redeco versions, and perhaps representing different characters, every six months or so. One of the reasons there are so many mold variations on the G1 toys is because we're really looking at the original Diaclone mold design, then the first Hasbro mold changes, then another batch of Hasbro mold changes six months later, then the first Takara pressing of the mold for the Transformers line, etc. It's all in the same color scheme and all represents the same character, though, so we aren't able to go "well, Grimlock had the tab on his dino head, but G1 Cruellock lost the tab and got connector pegs for his dino halves."

The second issue is that the older toys didn't cost as much to manufacture, which is how they were able to do the "one and done" molds, as you called them. Toys like Rippersnapper or Backstreet or Cindersaur had a minimum of moving parts and didn't require a lot of engineering. A lot of the one-and-done toys were blocks with a few moving parts. Even the toys that we tend to think of as only having been used once probably enjoyed multiple production runs. For example, Japan didn't get the toys branded as Transformers until 1985 so they were a year behind Hasbro. They got their own production runs on the early toys. Also, there were Classics versions of several Autobot Cars and Scramble City teams for the European market in 1991. So even a toy like Sunstreaker probably got his molds used four or five times (Diaclone red, Diaclone police car, yellow Hasbro, yellow Takara, yellow Euro Classics).

I really think the recycling of the Combiner Wars molds has gotten outrageous, though. It's out of control. The Victorion femmebots and the Club exclusives put it completely over the top.


Zob

banzait...@gmail.com

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Jul 21, 2015, 10:54:20 PM7/21/15
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> > My ARTI calculation from 2011 came out to 1.57%, which is very low. This
> > tells me that Hasbro has done some VERY smart things to manage cost growth.
>
> Okay, so what is it that we're not seeing? I mean, we as consumers are noticing things like molds getting recycled endlessly, lack of paint operations, cheap-feeling, lightweight plastic, Lee Press-On Wheels, etc. We're clearly never going to see the end result of other factors you mention, like how Hasbro transports their shipments, or health care for the Hasbro employees (and I noticed that since you added a "+++" after it; does that mean you think this is the single highest factor of rising costs?).

Lee press on wheels... hilarious, but not funny at the same time. So, I don't think anything has really escaped us (if it has, we wouldn't know - right?), who are their most discriminating customer by FAR. But I would be willing to bet that 95% of their customers would have no idea what a Lee-Press on wheel is (I love it!), or care if you pointed it out to them. From a purely business perspective, this makes a ton of sense. I'll give you an example from the automotive industry. My wife used to drive a Ford Expedition. The car had leather interior. On the front seats, side facing the middle console, the sides of the seats were not made of leather, but carpet fabric. When I noticed it, I was instantly furious (cheap American bastards!!!) But then, I sat back and realized, how many Ford Expeditions are on the road.... This little short cut that most people (including my wife) wouldn't notice saved them MILLIONS in leather material costs.
Don't get me wrong, I am not endorsing it, but it does make good business sense.

> I'm fascinated by stuff like this, but I admit that I don't have the background in economics necessary to fully appreciate all the factors involved.

I would highly encourage you to spend some time reading through Hasbro's 10-K SEC filing, which is their annual report. If you can muscle through the dry parts, you will find some truly fascinating information. Here are some excerpts to wet your appetite:

-Hasbro made $415,000,000 in 2014, and paid $127,000,000 in taxes.

-"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Toys "R" Us, Inc. and Target Corporation represented 16%, 9% and 8%, respectively, of consolidated global net revenues, and sales to our top five customers, including Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Inc. and Target, accounted for approximately 38% of our consolidated global net revenues. In the U.S. and Canada segment, approximately 59% of our net revenues were derived from these top three customers. "

-"At December 28, 2014, we employed approximately 5,200 persons worldwide, approximately 2,700 of whom were located in the United States. "

-"a few of our products, such as the food mixes for our EASY-BAKE ovens, are also subject to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. "

- "The challenge of continuously developing and offering products that are sought after by children is compounded by the sophistication of today's children and the increasing array of technology and entertainment offerings available to them. "

- "During 2013, the Company was involved in a dispute with an inventor related to the contractual interpretation of which products are subject to payment of royalties under a license agreement between the inventor and the Company which was adjudicated in binding arbitration. The arbitrator ultimately issued a ruling which awarded $70,046, including damages, interest, fees and expenses to the inventor. In February 2014, the Company and the inventor settled claims arising from or relating to this license agreement related to the NERF product line and a license agreement between the parties relating to the Company's SUPER SOAKER product "

- page 33 has a breakdown of their cost structure. "Cost of Sales" is far and away their biggest cost driver. This is primarily the cost of their people (including the health insurance I got so excited about, Hasbro also has a sizeable pension liability) Their Cost of Sales is Four times their costs for advertising, and EIGHT times their cost of product development. It looks like redesigning toys maybe isn't that expensive?



>
> > For the most part, I think we on ATT notice their cost cutting approaches,
> > which are sometimes quite brilliant.
>
> You're right that we're probably far more likely to notice when pennies are pinched than your average consumer. I'm curious to know which measures you consider brilliant, though. I don't mean that in an argumentative way; I'm geniously curious to know.

Sure. So, see my lee press on wheels example, which from a purely engineering standpoint is very smart. Cheap to manufacture AND assembly time is reduced. Also, I find it interesting how they are constantly fiddling with packaging. I imagine this is a sizeable cost that can be controlled up to a point. Buried in their 10-K, I also found this little gem, which probably explains a lot of what we have been seeing in the past few years. They put this stuff in to get shareholders excited. $100M is a HUGE amount for a relatively small company such as Hasbro.

"To improve our profitability and competitiveness, in the fourth quarter of 2012 we implemented a global cost savings initiative. The objective of this initiative is to reduce our underlying operating costs by an annual gross amount of $100 million by the end of 2015. " (Top of page 22)

Check it out and let me know if you see anything interesting:

http://investor.hasbro.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-15-64946&CIK=46080

-Banzaitron

Zobovor

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Jul 23, 2015, 12:54:53 AM7/23/15
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On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 8:54:20 PM UTC-6, banzait...@gmail.com wrote:

> Lee press on wheels... hilarious, but not funny at the same time.

I keep making that joke and I just assumed people weren't getting the reference!

> This little short cut that most people (including my wife) wouldn't notice
> saved them MILLIONS in leather material costs. Don't get me wrong, I am not
> endorsing it, but it does make good business sense.

To take this back 'round to the toy industry, it bugs me when they show off a new product, at Toy Fair or on a web site or in an upcoming product catalog, but by the time the toy is released, it's substantially different. Missing gimmicks or paint applications or somesuch. The missing paint applications perhaps bug me the most, because you'd think the deco artist who came up with the paint scheme would know how many factory paint applications would be required and how to come in under budget.

Playmates Toys does this with Ninja Turtles a lot, and have done so for years. I remember in 1992 there was this huge assortment of new figures out... King Lionheart, Halfcourt the giraffe, Sergeant Bananas the gorilla... lots of animals they'd never done before. One of them was named Doctor El, an elephant witch doctor. The cross-sell on the back of the packaging showed him with this beautiful tribal headdress with feathers that were red and yellow and green and blue. I found him eminently desirable (I am afflicted with "color gravity" where sometimes I have to own things based solely on what color they are). When the actual toy was released, though, those colors were completely absent. The entire headdress was unpainted orange plastic. Such a let-down. To this day, I do not own a Doctor El, though I suspect that if I ever got one on eBay, I would do so with the express purpose of painting him up to match the catalog photos.

> -"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Toys "R" Us, Inc. and Target Corporation represented
> 16%, 9% and 8%, respectively, of consolidated global net revenues

This ties in with the management training course I went to today. Walmart's pet department competes with specialty shops like PetCo and Petsmart, and yet Walmart does more sales. They compete with grocery stores like Smith's and Albertson's, and yet they sell more groceries. My toy department is in direct competition with Target and Toys "R" Us and yet I sell more toys. I just think that's funny.

> -"a few of our products, such as the food mixes for our EASY-BAKE ovens, are
> also subject to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. "

Makes sense. I wonder if they print expiration dates on the Easy-Bake food mix packaging? (I'm all about expiration dates now. I recently took over the Celebrations department at Walmart, and it includes lots of consumable stuff like cake icing, fondant, novelty mints, etc. Apparently there is no FDA regulation about expiration dates at all, except for infant formula and baby food. Everything else is voluntary. There is also no standardized way of printing expiration dates. On "normal" food like groceries, sell-by dates are pretty easy to read. On the wedding mints and such, they use these complex Julian date codes that you literally need a secret decoder ring to figure out.

Compounding the problem is that the date on the package, if you can decipher it, doesn't necessarily mean "this is when you need to throw this away." Some products are good for 18 months past that date. Some are good for 36 months. Some are good for 60 months. It just depends on that specific product. I strongly suspect that we have a lot of expired stuff in the department, but nobody can figure out just when the stuff goes bad. (I was actually over the Celebrations department once before, years ago, before I was in Toys. I did the whole sell-by date investigation once before, researching it online because nobody at work knew how to do it. I threw away hundreds of dollars' worth of expired stuff. It's been over three years since I did it last, though. My prediction is that I'm going to have to do it all over again!)

> - page 33 has a breakdown of their cost structure. "Cost of Sales" is far
> and away their biggest cost driver. This is primarily the cost of their
> people (including the health insurance I got so excited about, Hasbro also
> has a sizeable pension liability) Their Cost of Sales is Four times their
> costs for advertising, and EIGHT times their cost of product development. It
> looks like redesigning toys maybe isn't that expensive?

It's interesting to me that Hasbro shares so much of this information, and yet they make it a policy never to tell us, for example, how much Transformers makes as a brand, or their numbers on production runs, or how much it costs to make a mold for a new toy.

If redesigning toys isn't costly, then I feel strongly that they wouldn't recycle the same toys endlessly. I think it's not so much a matter of it not being expensive, but rather that it is expensive, but this "cost of sales" is significantly moreso.

> Check it out and let me know if you see anything interesting:
>
> http://investor.hasbro.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-15-64946&CIK=46080

Wow. This is fascinating from an industry perspective, but ermahgerd, so much reading. I don't know if I could digest all of it in one sitting. I wonder if they make it that way on purpose? They could hide anything in there and people would never see it.


Zob (The decrease in operating profit in 2013 compared to 2012 is primarily due to losses that were partially offset by the favorable profit impact from murdering small children and digital gaming net revenues)

Steve L.K. Macrocranios

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Jul 24, 2015, 10:53:05 AM7/24/15
to
banzaitron wrote:
>
> Some factors of transformer inflationary pressures
> @ manufacturing techniques / technology (-)
> @ Safety regulations (+)
> @ material sciences (-)
> @ human capital (+)
> @ raw materials (+)
> @ transportation of goods (+)
> @ US Economic health (+)
> @ Health Care for Hasbro Employees / Suppliers(+++)
> @ Wall Street's relentless pursuit of profits (+)

Quality has always been a nebulous concept for me to quantify because we don't see all the constraints Hasbro has to work with, but this is a good list. I would also include size classes and price points being compared. It's not a fair comparison to judge the quality of '84 minicar Bumblebee versus that of Leader RotF Megatron, for example. Bumblebee doesn't win just because he has metal and rubber tires.

I also think size of the market and/or what it is willing to bear comes into play. Japan is like the size of Texas but the 're getting better engineered CW Constructicons.

Zobovor

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Jun 22, 2016, 8:37:02 PM6/22/16
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On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 10:54:53 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> To this day, I do not own a Doctor El, though I suspect that if I ever got one
> on eBay, I would do so with the express purpose of painting him up to match the
> catalog photos.

Finally got one! Now, let's see how long it takes for me to actually paint him...


Zob (must be something about the summertime that brings out the elephant-lover in me)

Travoltron

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Jun 22, 2016, 11:11:02 PM6/22/16
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On 6/22/2016 5:37 PM, Zobovor wrote:
> Doctor El

I've got him. I think the only original character figure I'm missing is
Scratch the Cat, which I've accepted that I'm never going to get.

I also purposely never bought all the various Turtles dressed as ____
figures because I thought they were extremely stupid, and it saddens me
that Playmates chose to reissue several of these figures instead of
characters that the fans would have actually wanted.

Is there a book that covers the Ninja Turtle toyline? There seem to be a
bazillion books about the Transformers toyline; but my quick searches on
Amazon haven't turned up anything, which seems odd.

itsjes...@gmail.com

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Jun 26, 2016, 10:58:15 PM6/26/16
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On Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 8:11:02 PM UTC-7, Travoltron wrote:
>
> Is there a book that covers the Ninja Turtle toyline? There seem to be a
> bazillion books about the Transformers toyline; but my quick searches on
> Amazon haven't turned up anything, which seems odd


http://www.collector-actionfigures.com/dash/universe/catalog_items/?category=146




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