"Your father is the one who discovered the Transformers!" Boss Jia's eyes lit up.

This is a story that has been talked about in the history of Transformers, and although the first "Transformers" anime premiered in the United States, this industrial wonder is really a foreign product from Japan, and it is also something that Fuso's Toyama toys will regret for a lifetime.

The Tokyo Toy Fair is one of the most famous toy fairs in the world.

At the 1983 Tokyo Toy Fair, when a Hasbro agent was wandering around boredly, he was suddenly caught by two small toys: the Toyama Toy Company's booth was displaying their company's newly developed MSI Superman and Diaclone series of toys.

The shrewd agent instantly spotted the business opportunity in these two horses, so he immediately called Hasbro's headquarters, and after obtaining permission from the headquarters, he talked with Toyama Toys for more than half a year, and finally bought all the copyrights and design patents of the two games for $500,000.

Immediately afterwards, Hasbro registered the toy trademark of Transformers, and then cooperated with Marvel to jointly launch the comics related to the transformation robot toy: Transformers, and later specially produced a three-episode Transformers series of cartoons.

But just three episodes of cartoons, but in an instant, the entire market in the United States detonated, and then three episodes became thirty episodes, then 60 episodes, and 95 episodes.

This animation also became the most-watched TV animation in the United States before the birth of the Simpsons, reaching 28 million viewers at its peak.

In 1984, Transformers set a terrifying record of more than $100 million in 15-day orders, setting a new record for toy sales in the United States.

And about Transformers and Huaxia, there is also a very interesting story.

It was in 1988 that Hasbro established the Huaxia branch, and they thought that as a country with a population of 1 billion, Huaxia must have a very open toy market, so they sent sales specialists to try to open up this market.

After careful analysis, they believed that Transformers was the most suitable stepping stone to open the Huaxia market, so they sent two marketing specialists to Huaxia.

After analysis, these two marketing commissioners believe that it is impossible to succeed in blindly promoting a product without any fame in Huaxia, and the best way is to play the Transformers cartoon first, so that the cartoon has brought huge popularity, and it is a good time to promote Transformers toys.

I have to admit that these two marketing commissioners have very vicious visions, and they are almost exactly the same as Boss Jia's vision, they have long understood that cartoons are the best tool to drive toy sales.

Like Boss Jia, he directly used cartoons as a stepping stone to open the market, if Boss Jia hadn't spent a huge amount of money, vomited blood to buy the dynasty, and produced a series of TV animations, Daqian is probably still limited to a small toy company in Xijiang Province.

Like Boss Jia, these two marketing commissioners directly set their sights on the largest and only TV station in China that can cover the whole country: CCTV.

Three years ago, when Boss Jia went to CCTV for the first time, if it wasn't for Chen Liren to guide him and meet Director He, it would have been impossible for "The Legend of Water Margin Heroes" to log in to CCTV smoothly.

And the most important thing is that Boss Jia fought the group of people during the review, refuted those experts one by one, and put big hats on their heads, I am afraid that "The Legend of the Water Margin Heroes" will not be able to be released on CCTV.

This was the case in '90, let alone in '88, when two foreigners came to sell animation.

At that time, after taking a look at the Transformers animation, the review department of CCTV said lightly, "This animation is too violent, which is not conducive to establishing a correct screen culture", so they directly rejected the two foreigners.

But these two foreigners were unwilling, and they found the most open magic capital TV station in China at that time.

And the leaders of Modu TV looked a little worried after learning that they had been rejected by CCTV once, and they were not willing to take the risk of approving them.

These two foreigners were suddenly anxious, they couldn't return in vain, so without directly asking the head office, they directly expressed their willingness to broadcast the animation to Modu TV for free, without charging a penny.

Modu TV agreed to try to broadcast it, and then Transformers successfully appeared on all TV screens in China in 1988.

The next plot is like 90 years of fighting, just one month later, almost all the topics of conversation among the children on the streets have become Transformers, and they begin to collect a whole set of pirated Transformers cards, boasting about who is the strongest "Optimus Prime" or "Megatron". There will always be a few boys sitting in the Transformers area in the toy counter in the department store and refusing to leave, and in that era when the basic salary is only a few dozen yuan a month, it has become every boy's dream to have their own set of Transformers.

[PS: Some of the above text is plagiarized from Baidu Encyclopedia]

This is quite classic animation marketing, and if you think about it carefully, you will find that Boss Jia's starting path is almost a copy of Hasbro's method of selling Transformers back then.

Unexpectedly, one of these two marketing commissioners who did not leave their names in history was actually the father of the young man in front of him, and to some extent, this father can be regarded as Boss Jia's teacher.

"Your father has made such a great contribution to Hasbro, why is he still the marketing commissioner of Huaxia?" Boss Jia asked a little strangely, not to mention anything else, just by discovering the Transformers set of toys, Henry Orlens made at least more than two billion dollars in profits for Hasbro, which is enough to promote the company's top management in any company, why is he still only a marketing commissioner in Huaxia?

"Hehe......" Jack Orlens smiled a little embarrassedly, "Originally, my father had been promoted to president of the Asia-Pacific region, but because of his failure in Huaxia, he was beaten back to his original shape by the company."

"What does this mean? Transformers are not quite successful in Huaxia? When I was in school, all my classmates were proud to be able to buy a Transformers toy! Boss Jia asked puzzled.

"Then your classmate definitely didn't buy a genuine Transformer!" Jack Orlens said with a wry smile, "My father said that his actions were indeed very successful in Huaxia back then, but he didn't expect the strength of Huaxia copycat enterprises to be too powerful. ”

"Our Hasbro set of genuine Transformers toys will be sold for more than 150 yuan a set in Huaxia, which is too expensive for Huaxia, and only a few thousand sets have been sold in a year."

"But in two months, there have been various copycat versions of Transformers in Huaxia, the price is only about 10 yuan, and our genuine products can't compete with them at all. My father went to court to sue them, but in the end, it didn't work, and the company spent more on marketing in Huaxia than all the sales, and my father was removed from his job and turned back into a marketing specialist in the Asia-Pacific region! ”

"Guy ......" Boss Jia was a little embarrassed, the situation in Huaxia was indeed the case at that time, if it weren't for Boss Jia's little raccoon card suitable for instant noodles to be sold together, and later fought a lawsuit of the century with pirate manufacturers, which completely shocked all the companies that tried to pirate the little raccoon, which barely maintained the sales of genuine copies.

The later four-wheel drive vehicles directly used dimensionality reduction to reduce the price of the genuine version to a degree lower than the cost of piracy, and naturally there was no piracy that could compete with Boss Jia.

Therefore, Henry Orlens still didn't understand Huaxia back then, so he could only sink into the sand.