Hasbro Cancels Hascon 2019

Seems that when it comes to Hasbro marketing itself, it just cannot get it right. The toy company has announced that it has "postponed". You really can't "postpone" a convention. There are too many moving parts so the only way to take this is as an outright lie from Hasbro to its fans. Their PR department basically went overboard in trying to soften the news, probably more out of habit then evaluating whether they needed to or not.

This doesn't seem like much but keep in mind the history if you are a convention going Transformers fan. From 1994 to 2016 there was the successful Botcon which Hasbro purposely killed for Hascon which was held in 2017. They then skipped 2018 and now have cancelled the 2019 convention. It makes the ending of Botcon seem even more idiotic with time. Toys R Us closing did more damage to the company then they care to admit and this is one of those indicators of that.

Transformers 6 Dropped From Schedule For A "Reset"

Today Hasbro provided a little peak into their future plans for the Transformers movie franchise. This weekend is the start of Toy Fair 2018 in New York and the toy company hosted their Investor Preview Day that shows off their upcoming plans for their various toy properties (such as getting hold of the Power Rangers license) and of course Transformers. Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner said "We’re actively developing live action and animated films, and have dated several under this new agreement. We’re excited about this year’s Transformers: Bumblebee, as we work with the new Paramount team to reset the future direction of Transformers. We’ll be partially financing the production of these films, and Bumblebee is the first under the new agreement."

In the long term what that means was not revealed but in the short term it means that Transformers 6 is no longer in the works for what was going to be a 2019 release. In the short term Hasbro is planning a China exclusive animated series in 2019 called "Nesha and the Transformers" while western countries will get "Transformers: Cyberverse" cartoon and toy line that will likely replace the "Transformer: Generations" line that was represented by the Prime Trilogy of toys.

On to the speculating. I am going to go ahead and take "reset" to essentially mean "reboot." In short, the "Bay-verse" will end with Bumblebee: The Movie. The Transformers Writers Room of scripts have probably been trash canned too since they were mostly devised with the Bay-verse in mind. While not saying it, likely the next Transformers movie will not come until 2021 at the earliest to provide breathing room for that "reset" in consumer minds. Any new movies will likely ignore the Bay-verse. For reference, see the various Spider-Man reboots. When the deal between Hasbro and Paramount was renewed, it apparently gave the toy company greater control and say over the movies but since we have not yet seen a movie with Hasbro in greater control of the creative process, we have little to go on for what the result will look like in movie form. All we really have is the various cartoons and IDW comic books from the last decade or so to go by. Those results vary wildly depending on franchise and target audience but the Transformers cartoons over the last few years have hit the "all ages" note fairly well.