The Fate of Hasbro's "Lesser" Brands
Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2022 6:47 pm
As revealed by the last Hasbro Investors Day, Hasbro is going to place a greater focus on its "larger" and licensed brands - which probably explains why the Micronauts cartoon and several of the planned non-Transformers films are no longer in their entertainment line-up. So that leaves the question: what to do with the other, lesser known brands? How to keep them afloat, and which ones should be preserved?
We've already seen some solutions. Some brands might be reworked into a "licensed" multi-property brand, like we've seen with the Stretch Armstrong Bumblebee; something like that could work with Micronauts, focusing on interchangeable parts not unlike Hero Mashers but at a smaller scale and with more articulation. Another may be to license the brands to another company, like Renegade Studios' tabletop RPG (I've personally always figured Visionaries or Xevoz could work as good RPG settings).
Yet another possiblity would be to absorb these brand's characters and concepts into a larger brand until they can survive on their own. MASK could easily be incorporated into Transformers (as a Human Alliance-esque subfaction of humans with transformable vehicles to fight with/against the Transformers) or GI Joe (not the first time it happened); ROM Spaceknight and his universe could easily fit into Transformers (he did have a Bot Shots figure planned at one point). And as I said before, Visionaries and Xevoz would work great in an RPG setting, so they could be incorporated into D&D (much like some races from Magic: The Gathering were added to the playable roster).
So, which other brands do you think could be kept? And what other possibilities do we have to save these brands?
We've already seen some solutions. Some brands might be reworked into a "licensed" multi-property brand, like we've seen with the Stretch Armstrong Bumblebee; something like that could work with Micronauts, focusing on interchangeable parts not unlike Hero Mashers but at a smaller scale and with more articulation. Another may be to license the brands to another company, like Renegade Studios' tabletop RPG (I've personally always figured Visionaries or Xevoz could work as good RPG settings).
Yet another possiblity would be to absorb these brand's characters and concepts into a larger brand until they can survive on their own. MASK could easily be incorporated into Transformers (as a Human Alliance-esque subfaction of humans with transformable vehicles to fight with/against the Transformers) or GI Joe (not the first time it happened); ROM Spaceknight and his universe could easily fit into Transformers (he did have a Bot Shots figure planned at one point). And as I said before, Visionaries and Xevoz would work great in an RPG setting, so they could be incorporated into D&D (much like some races from Magic: The Gathering were added to the playable roster).
So, which other brands do you think could be kept? And what other possibilities do we have to save these brands?