Layoffs And A Potential Lawsuit May Be On The Horizon For Hasbro

Possibly. Even at 9%, it would amount to about 450 workers of their 5,000. I'm more curious what happens close to the end of the fiscal year, after holiday numbers start to come in. That's when real trouble could kick in for a lot of these companies.

I was gonna say, I know ML's are only a small piece of the Hasbro pie but they seem to be selling really well lately, I'd bet they sell better than a lot of the "Must-Have" Christmas toys they roll out every year.

Yeah, really does depend on how the holiday season goes. That's typically been the biggest growth time of year because of increased shopping habits around that time.

Though I think Hasbro and Playmates will do fine. It's more Mattel I'm a little worried about in that regard. Hasbro has entertainment licenses. Outside of He-Man/She-Ra, Barbie, and Hot Wheels, Mattel doesn't have much in the way of entertainment licenses, and She-Ra won't be a big push on side licensing until next year. Leaving it mostly in the Hot Wheels and Barbie area to sustain Mattel again. DC toys do okay, but they don't get the side licensing revenues from that.

Whereas Hasbro has the side licensing for Transformers, MLP, and other internally owned properties, even if they don't get the side licensing from Marvel or Star Wars. Currently both Transformers and MLP are still extremely popular though, and with the Bumblebee movie, we should see a boost in side licensing revenues because of it being a movie year alongside the new toon they've been prepping material for.

Though by retail volume, the lack of a dedicated toy store like TRU is still going to be a hit, because they are down one nationwide chain that orders product from them, but hopefully because of the lack of a retail chain outlet nationwide, we'll see a growth of material at other retail spaces needing to order more to fill the gap for increased consumers not having that outlet as an option.

It should be moderately unfazed by this. Since the Hasbro toy license doesn't take full effect until next year, and side licensing revenues don't take full effect until next year, we aren't going to see much in the way of data on it until next year.
That's one of the other "dips" we're seeing from Hasbro. The big purchase of that without returns yet is a minor impact even if they have mostly already recouped the losses from the purchase and will be making product gains starting next year. That one's more a long term investment, with likely high gains later. In 5 years, I expect it to have stronger market dominance.

Um, no. The Marvel Legends brand is probably stronger than it's been in years. The figures always move everywhere I look.

^ That. A lot of companies are bleeding red ink. My local War-Mart has already put up several aisles of Christmas junk.

The smell of desperation is in the air -- and the debt load keeps spiraling...

Welcome to why I post less and my aspirin bills went up.
How people make up the randomest crap and take it as fact or try to argue in the face of all logic and literal real statistics and data is mind-numbingly annoying. Stoners make more sense. Some days, I actively feel like my IQ is dropping from reading some of the nonsensical things people come up with, and it's seemingly getting worse each passing week.

Like this points out, without filing a WARN, this sounds like it's merely a reshuffling of employees, with potentially new branches and figuring who goes where or what, and what redundancies need to be removed.

The lawsuit I'm not worried about, as it seems completely panic driven and has no factual basis. More business ambulance chaser than anything trying to convince people of negative things than anything that actually is.

And the potential layoffs seem more like a restructuring because of how Hasbro has a lot of side subsidiaries right now and increased employee loads for the entertainment arms. Adding in some department redundancies and figuring out the new licenses and brand futures, and it's really nothing that different than any other business having growing pains and evolving in a new market climate.

Welcome to the internet of 2018. And it's only going to get worse from here on out.

Seriously, the web is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to mankind. Lots of keen stuff and limitless information are at our fingertips, but on the flipside 99.99999% of the people utilizing it are the types that only read the headline of an article and then write a nonsense response about something that has nothing to do with said article while gushing with ill-deserved narcissism. Idiocracy is slowly becoming true.

GI Joe died because of lack of retailer support after Retaliation because there was no continuing media. Adding in how costs starting skyrocketing around retaliation and the size to cost ratio simply isn't there right now for consumers, and retailers want more cost effective product that'll move. With the rising costs on GI Joe (why we saw so much non-articulated or reduced articulation material in it) it wasn't moving the volume it was. If they can bring it back at a reasonable cost though, thanks to the rest, it could do really well right now. Assuming they can match Playmates style costs at least. They go above that, and the consumer will turn to the bigger material at the same price.

Star Wars is at slowed point right now in the market, it happens. They go through ups and downs there quite often. Similar happened back during the prequels too, and then the slow down, then a boom again. It happens. With rising costs and people having less money to spend right now isn't helping much either.

Once costs can get under control, a lot of that can be fixed. This is one of the reasons Playmates is doing mostly okay right now. For cost to what you get, their material is pretty reasonable. How TMNT has managed to stay under 10 USD has really been a great thing for them. If Hasbro can do the same for 1:18th offerings, that'll increase sales to a large extent. Cost is what's driving consumers away though is still keeping the Legends within threshold for expectancy.

Depending on what the new price marks for transformers do, we should see some decent returns there, but until 1:18th can get back closer to that 10 USD mark, it's not consumer cost efficient. We see it in how the market is still here as Jurassic World showed, but Jurassic World also had a lower price point that really pushed it forward better.

That's the hiccup on things right now overall. Cost to quantity in a market that's getting more cautious about the money they spend. Play value has to be there, or if it's a higher marked purchase the consumer wants more from their money, which is why Legends 6" is doing okay, and other bigger lines, as well as Transformers that's essentially a 2+ in 1 toy. As people get more cautious what they spend and on what, higher prices outside of select markets is a line death sentence.

The other problem is smaller figures are prone to shoplifters. So protected packaging is a must as well, and finding a way to better prevent that. It's a whole mixed bag of issues to juggle.

The old phrase goes that a consumer walks into a store with an extra 20USD to spend. Now it's more like an extra 10USD or 5USD that's allotted for impulse purchases.

Well to be fair once it was revealed he was just a half faced, eggheaded prune in a gold lemay bathrobe that doesnt exactly scream super evil. Flamboyant musician sure but not evil.

Kids were able to bring 3.75 figures wherever they go in their tiny pockets. And they can play with 3.75 with other kids almost anywhere they go. Today kids just can't "pocket" many of these Legends figures; physically nor financially. Forget larger than life (BaF) film characters. You gotta buy a whopping $100 wave of 6 inch figures just to get it, kid.

We're losing losing losing an entire generation of kids who just can't "pocket" such figures. This scale oversight is occurring when comic movies are so popular with kids + parents alike (many of the latter raised on 3.75 figures).

Hasbro proudly showed almost 100 figures for 6 inch scale this year. Yet nothing new for 3.75 inch at Comic Con or NYCC. And yet even more 6 inch figures to be announced at Fan Expo, Italy, and Paris? Hasbro you can try churning 600 different 6 inch figures annually; and still most kids won't fit most of these in their little kid pockets.

Well said every company goes through periods like this once it hits the maturity stage of the business life cycle. To ensure long term growths companies have to look at what is working and what is not and how to adjust what is not working in order see if that division, product, idea can be made profitable or if it needs to be discarded and replaced by anothe that is more profitable. I know we all joke and fake complain that Hasbro doesnt do this for us hates this scale or what ever and they like these fans better than these fans, but the reality is at the end of the day the only people that the Hasbro leadership are accountable Toni�s it�s board and it�s stockholders who expect a profitable return on the money that they have invested in the company.

Yup. At the end of the day, it's a business. But it's not helped with heaps of false information paraded around as fact. All that does is cloud the truth from being understood and perpetuates ignorance.

While some fans make "jokes" others aren't. Therein is another issue entirely.

That's one of the problems to that kind of humor. It validates others that mean it even though others mean it in jest and aren't serious.

Plus, jokes are supposed to be funny. The way some areas act, it's not only not funny, it's straight up ignorant. As we've learned time and time again, don't assume areas are smart enough to get you're being satirical with remarks when they try to jump in with their own.

It's that same kind of mentality and affirmation of any line of jokes, if you aren't careful, what you're actually doing is endorsing such behaviors and validating it. Never assume with fandoms that they're smart enough to understand satire. Some are and do, but sadly more do not. And as we've seen with the fan made up 'fake narratives' there is heaps of ignorance that blind them from understanding why different factors are the way they are.

Sadly with fandoms it's like a game of telephone. One joke turns into a rumor turns into a new rumor and then way down the chain it somehow becomes fan accepted "fact" that was never true to begin with.

The uninspired designs probably didn't help any. An effete Gollum doesnt really make for a cool and exciting action figure.

Was gonna make a joke about Hasbro now lowering the POA on ML but evidently anything anyone says is taken as fact and confuses people so scrap that.