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According to the Wall Street Journal’s business article (which published a few days ago), Hasbro Inc is expectantly to earn huge sales margins with its frontlines toys of Transformers, thanks to the success of the Transformers sequel, “Transformers 2″. Turned out to be a such a huge crowd of many people of all ages and races, that the movie succeeded making USD $607 million so far, up till 6th July 2009. Market analysts said this would be biggest drawcard for Hasbro in a long while since the heydays of merchandising on Transformers: The Movie 25 years ago. They also predicted this movie will surpass their previous score of $482 in the previous Transformers prequel greater. Ultimately, this in turn makes excellent progress for the toymaker to continue making strong sales growth over its frontline of Transformers without much fail. According to the marketwatchers, they confidently believe Hasbro sales would exceed $500 million.

With the lastest box office rankings (along with their revenue potential)  shown here, it’s hard to see the reason why Hasbro couldn’t reach their goals smoothly.

North American top 10, 3-5 July 2009

1. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, $42.5m. Total: $67.5m
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, $42.5m. Total: $293.5m
3. Public Enemies, $26.2m. Total: $41m
4. The Proposal, $12.8m. Total: $94.2m
5. The Hangover, $10.4m. Total: $204.2m
6. Up, $6.6m. Total: $264.9m
7. My Sister’s Keeper, $5.3m. Total: $25.9m
8. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, $2.5m. Total: $58.5m
9. Year One, $2.1m. Total: $38.1m
10. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, $2.1m. Total: $167.8m

Source: Guardian.co.uk, FilmBlog

Though that may be case for many children of all ages enjoying these toylines Hasbro promised, I personally couldn’t like them. Because they are actually more difficult to transform into robot mode or vice versa. The steps involved in transforming were way too confusing. Seriously, I got myself a Transformer Bumble Bee from the movie and it took me at least 30 minutes to get the Camero into a fully working functional robot without having to break it apart (and rejoin them).  That sure was considerable stress to me! I never recall any Hasbro Transformers toy to be this complex to fold and unfold the arms and legs into 8 different directions, whereas in the good ole days, toys only needed one way to transform things.

Ah… The good ole days.  Just like this Youtube footage where this chap has this massive collection of all the 80’s Transformers G1 collection over the years in his bedroom.  When I mean all, I do mean all.  Check it out.

Really super impressive. I would love to have the same desires and passion as the guy does when it comes to toy collection. Which sadly at this point of my life, I couldn’t afford them due to priorities in life like work, career, travel etc. Maybe not now. Perhaps someday.

Nevertheless, it’s good to find passionate people out there who’s into this as much as I am. Also, be sure to check out Robot-Japan.com, where a father of two also keeps a collection on all his robot toys that spans over the last three decades of mecha anime boom and he’s selling them online through e-bay selling.

Source: WallStJournal.com, MarketWatch.com

Related posts:

1. Transformers – Origins
2. Awesome!! Got myself some cool Transformers goodies :)
3. New Microman Film about to debut…
4. Transformers: Revenge of the fallen – Out now on DVD/Blue Ray
5. Online Stores to buy Transformers G1 DVD