Variety reported earlier on Hasbro’s new merchandising strategies, and there are a few facts I need to parrot on to you, so that they’re out of the way and I can get to the point of this article.
So:
Hasbro was with CAA for a while, and is now berthing in William Morris’ harbor. That’s where Michael Bay calls home, and it was evidently the process of making Transformers that helped Hasbro make the move. WMA will be spearheading efforts with several Hasrbo licenses: Clue, monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Candy Land, Ouija (hahaha!) all of which could be movies, TV shows, video games, whatever.
One of the first acts undertaken by WMA under the new deal was to renew the agreement Lorenzo diBonaventura had to make GI Joe, which had recently expired. So if you thought that might not happen, think again. (Or, more specifically, wait until the weekend after Transformers opens, like everyone else in Hollywood.)
Now, the point. This sentence was actually in the Variety article: WMA reps director Michael Bay, producer Tom DeSanto and General Motors,
whose vehicles portray many of the film’s shape-shifting robots. Maybe I’m well behind the times, but am I the only one struck completely dumb by the fact that cars supposedly ‘portray’ some of the Transformers? I know that movie and product licensing is one big gang bang, and that a trade pub like Variety is utterly indentured to the whole system. But reading that sentence I actually had to take a moment, because I wanted to cash it all in and go write for a website that covers flipbooks or daguerrotypes or anything that doesn’t involve turning a blind, dead eye to the fact that we’re being sold one big fucking commercial after another.