>>14451484
It's the eternal fight in this industry... Hasbro is still in the mindset of 
making shows from the toys and not the contrary, while it could work 
tremendously well, since they could gather a strong, loyal fanbase who could 
buy by-products more regularly than the volatile audience they usually target.

But I can see why corporations like Hasbro refrain from applying such strategy. 
It's hazardous, they have to invest in a show first, hype it and hope it 
doesn't flop before getting the fanbase to buy their products, and if it flops, 
there's no chance you could sell them, since they would suffer from the show's 
reputation...
Furthermore, there are problems about production planning... Basically, they 
would have to wait and have the artistic team supervise the toy production. 
Once again, the company has to invest for the long term, which can have 
consequences on the annual financial report and could not please shareholders 
who are interested in short term profits.

But if it works, you could have something as big as Star Wars in terms of sold 
by-products. It's all about taking the risk. But toy companies hate risk, it's 
far more comfortable to secure their profits by strictly conforming to the good 
ol' stereotypical marketing strategy... However, I'm still wondering... If 
Hasbro hates risk, why did they hire Lauren Faust to begin with? She worked on 
creator-driven cartoons for her whole career, the people at Hasbro who gave her 
the project knew it, they gave her relative artistic freedom to some point, 
until Faust gave up... What happened at Hasbro that changed the whole deal? 
There's still something lacking in the puzzle. Change in executive staff? It's 
often the reason why things take a whole u-turn.