>>10262460>Likely too many employees>The company blamed its sagging profits on softening demand>demandWere retailers demanding Hasbro employees? Why would they shift to prioritizing their own IPs? Yes, there's an intrinsic advantage, but the whole point of licenses is that the cost of them is offset by the property. Why would they think this would address the problem if employment just needed a haircut?
>That bar was set super fucking high and what do stockholders always want year after year? GROWTH. Yes. But almost any report will address expected decreases in measured mundanity. They don't talk about committing to large shifts in strategy that are referenced in reports three years later that were devised to address (relative) failures. They didn't need the Kenner offices to do Star Wars anymore, but they also never handled Star Wars that way again. A CBS News article even brings up TPM pegwarming. It made them a shitload of money, but there were consequences. Even the DK TPM book famously flopped. Hasbro were pretty satisfied with how TFA did too, pegwarmers and all. But then TLJ fell "significantly" short of expectations. Gee, how did it happen?
No doubt the prequels performed much better than the sequels, expectations and all.