Hasbro team at Paris Comic Con : exclusive interview

Patrick Schneider is Senior Brand Manager for Star Wars (Global), Ran Sung is Associate Brand Manager for Transformers et Ryan Ting is Bran Manager for Marvel Legends.

FulguroPop : How long ahead of a movie do you start designing a figure ?

Patrick Schneider : For Star Wars, our development process is usually 12 to 18 monthes depending on the complexity. Some of the times we get things in advance of the movie. Some things we litteraly don’t see until it’s on the screen with anyone else. For example, in Black Series we didn’t come out with a Luke Skywalker in the new trilogy until 2017 and that’s because we did not see Luke Skywalker until he was on the screen in December 2015. That’s why some products we are able to come out with ahead of time and for some it takes a little longer.

Ran Sun : It’s similar for Transformers : our development time is anywhere between 12 to 18 monthes. Anything that’s Generations related, sometimes it takes a little longer 20+ weeks because we work directly with Takara Tomy on designing our products. And in Studio Series, we get car files from Paramount, the company which creates the movies for us. We usually get the character cards, we don’t get to see the films until the end and then we say : “oh that’s the scene from which the character is !”. But a lot of things are similar with Star Wars.

Ryan Ting : Same for Marvel in terms of timeline. In addition to character costumes changing a lot of time, with the computer generated graphics and special effects, the film makers don’t even know what the final product is gonna look like so we work hand in hand with them and get updated references all the time and try to impact these changes into the actual toys.