Considering the current US government is actively trying to kill the toy industry, I think even 5 years is blindingly optimistic.
Transformers: EarthSpark
- Thread starter Paladin
- Start date
Yeah, hi there. There are fans and markets outside the US. Even you guys get cut out; the franchise will continue. We're enduring just fine out here.
I don't think anyone's trying to kill anything. We're just in the blast zone of some idiotic policy choices.
Regardless, I'm just about over people in this franchise predicting death at every turn.
Well, between Starscream, Optimus Prime, and Rattrap. . .
Hmm, I think you might have just found a good candidate for a new addition to the wiki's "Ruined FOREVER" page.
People have been predicting the toypocalypse since the 80s. Toy Fair 1996 was expected to be a dud. Hasbro didn't get that memo.
I was too young to remember any hubbub about Beasties but I remember the internet deriding Armada. I remember people being sure Energon would kill the brand. I remember people thinking Bayformers would be the end.
And you all know the rest.
Fact is the franchise goes through phases. Sometimes it's bold, sometimes it's safe, sometimes it plays on nostalgia sometimes it does a new thing. Why it does any of this is down to market forces- no one took a chance on a radical new direction for Beast Wars for the sake of creativity and the AAARRRTTTT
They did it because G2 wasn't working. If G2 had been a smash hit they'd have happily run with it into the late 90s.
If you want to bemoan that the franchise isn't creating enough "new ideas" or being "creative" enough blame the people who are buying enough of the product to convince Hasbro that the G1 direction is the right way to go. We can complain about Combiner frames and ludicrous compromises made to appeal to 40 year old animation model accuracy... every new combiner since Legacy has sold out multiple times over in just the preorder phase.
John Hasbro hasn't been afraid to radically change the brand up when the last thing wasn't working. If the current direction was bombing they'd change it up again, but the fact is it is working.
Regardless, whether the brand be in a safe position or an inventive and creative position, there are people who won't like it. Nature of the beast.
And people who don't like whatever the Current Thing is have been saying Current Thing will kill the brand since at least the 90s.
Hasn't happened yet.
Just saying.
*shrug*
Nothing lasts forever, unfortunately I think the challenges facing the franchise, the toy industry at large and even the world in which we live don't exactly fill me with long-term optimism.
Except 1986.