TFW2005.com have coverage of the UBS Best Of Americas 2012 Conference. The main thing to come out of this was the quote This is why Transformers 4 will have a new cast of [robot] characters and it will be a story revolving around these new characters
Brian Goldner; President and Chief Executive Officer and Deborah Thomas represented Hasbro at the UBS Best Of Americas 2012 Conference.
Mr. Goldner started off with a video showcasing Hasbro brands including The Hub. Explains Hasbro brands and moved on straight to Transformers.
He stated that they planned to reinvent Transformers after year 2000. Around that time they created a brand blueprint around Transformers; Movies, TV, Games and Licensing.
Brian went onto Financial Stuff. But the Transformers 4 talk was yet to come.
Botshots and Kre-O, both were mentioned under Gamification of Hasbro brands; wanted to take Hasbro games away from being just Board Games.
Merchandising related to Transformers: Prime and Rescue Bots will grow.
Transformers 4 is set to release in 2014. Also, Stretch Armstrong will have a movie series as well as a TV series in 2014. Brian said people are asking about Transformers 4 and Hasbro plans for 2013.
Q&A session started with Brian and Deborah Thomas answering.
Ooh, someone asked why US sales are down? Brian said International sales are good but is trying their best to market Hasbro products in US and Canada.
About Hub? Hasbro owns the rights but Hasbro Studios is creating the content and sending to Hub and other TV Stations to other countries. Other stations pay licensing fees.
Transformers 3 didn’t meet expectations. What about Transformers 4?
Brian says TF3 did well in boxoffice. Regarding toy sales... it’s because of same characters in all three movies. This is why Transformers 4 will have a new cast of [robot] characters and it will be a story revolving around these new characters. Brian said Transformers will branch out to more categories. For example; during Transformers 3, they had an idea to expand the Transformers brand on Little Kids segment. This was the origin of Rescuebots said Mr. Goldner. Soon the idea took a separate life and evolved to a separate toyline. He said it’s normal for any brand to experience the situation (what happened to Transformers 3 toyline) and stated that brands need re-imagining, reinvent and hinted that the same is to happen with Transformers 4.