>>11273136"GoBots marketing couldn't compete with the marketing Transformers had" is a statement that covers pretty much every aspect of the brand. End of the day, it didn't matter how good the designs Popy or Bandai made, Tonka just didn't have the money to throw at the choices Hasbro made, nor the knowhow since it was still a wild west sort of era for how you could market toys like that. They just looked at what was making bank and did that.
>Names are punny or hyphenated, like He-Man>toys are good and bad, but factions aren't even named early on, with characters merely labeled as "Friendly" or "Enemy">no bios on the back of the box because why would any toy need those?>no comic book to hang out at the grocery store newstand>but we got a cartoon, let's use a big reliable name iconic for animation: Hanna Barbera. They're the best for the job for drawing our toy robots. Japanese studios? Why use them, Taiwan is where we send our animation.and so on and so on. Heck, Hasbro having Marvel in their pocket to produce the cartoon, comics, personalities, and even names of the characters really helped cement that "higher quality" aspect even before any kid could look at the toys in the first place. And that counts for a whole lot, as the Transformers marketing was so good it convinced kids the G1 seeker was a toy that wasn't complete garbage, never mind "better" than other jet robos on the market.
