Executive Meddling/Toys

Toys are subject to Executive Meddling sometimes.

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• The Transformers Binaltech and Alternators line were notorious for Executive Meddling in the form of the car companies whose car models they tried acquiring the rights to make figures out of; a good deal of these demanded that the guns that came with the figures were either modified or completely removed, or just flat out refused to hand over the rights period, in order to prevent them from being associated with "war toys". That doesn't mean that there wasn't plenty of in-company Meddling, though; in one memorable instance, Takara demanded that a new Dodge Ram figure Hasbro was making be turned into Optimus Prime, so they could sell it more readily in Japan. Since Takara was needed to front part of the cost, Hasbro agreed... only for Takara to market the figure as Masterforce's Ginrai, not Optimus. Then the figure was delayed for a number of months, prompting rumors that it had been canceled. The rumors turned out to be partially true; the Ginrai figure was canceled, but it got a release as Optimus Prime in the Binaltech line's Kiss Play sub-line, as well as a black repaint release as Black Convoy. The figure was ultimately released in the main BT line, as Optimus like planned, as the final figure.
  • The new Transformers Animated cartoon premiered on December 26th, 2007, with regular episodes starting in January. However, Hasbro executives decided against releasing the related toyline on the same date and instead released them in June, since the toyline of the 2007 film was still selling strong. This Shortpacked! strip (and this one too) comments on the delay.
    • The process is now repeating itself with Transformers Prime", which began in earnest in February of 2011 and didn't get a toyline until December... and only in some parts of the globe. But in all fairness, as a lot of countries received the show much later than the English-speaking ones, this great release date slip won't have as much of an impact on them.
• The original 1960s metal Thunderbirds toys had a blue Thunderbird 2 -- to Gerry Anderson's dismay -- because the marketing drones said that "children don't buy green toys". Wait, what?
  • To be fair, the original production run was green. The blue version was a much later re-issue, complete with "updated" packaging and the like. A small touch of irony comes from Derek Meddings' original concept sketch for "Rescue 2" (as TB2 was then called) specifying that the craft was blue.
• A similar meddling struck Bionicle during the 2006 line. It was concluded that the "Stone element" sets didn't sell as well because they were brown, and so every series afterward had a Yellow set instead.
  • Yellow and orange, sometimes mixed with black or gray. One wave of sets actually managed to release two brown-ish sets (tan, to be more precise), but it didn't last. The characters in-story didn't seem to mind the change after their initial surprise. The shift from gear-based mechanisms to gimmick-free but highly poseable toys and the abundance of launching weapons can also be seen as examples, but they had solid reasons behind them: kids like toys that you can quickly slap together and shoot stuff with, instead of messing around with complex gear mechanisms and other features -- some of which only detracted from the toys' better aspects anyway. Still, fans found reasons to complain.
  • An even less popular case of meddling was the Mistika figure line, the three sets out of the six that represented three of the initial Bionicle line's main characters: while rumors say the original models resembled their original forms more closely, the final sets barely looked like the characters they were supposed to be re-imaginings of. The muscle-packed hunchback Onua became a tall and lean fighter whose mask wouldn't look out of place on a villain; Gali, the female of the group received a hunched posture, long bunny-ears and a (as fans call it) "waffle" eye; while the leader of the group, Tahu... faired relatively well, though his lost his classic firesword in exchange for a spinning shield, and had something of a ninja theme going on with his mask. In-story explanations made it clear that these were just temporary forms, but the more argumentative fans could never forgive. The words Mistake-a and Fail-tika still echo on some of the forums.
• Ever wondered why the toys for Princess Celestia are pink while the character on the cartoon series is white? Yeah, this is the main reason why...
  • And, on that note, why she's a princess and not a queen?
    • That was the result of Hasbro's Executive Meddling. Lauren Faust originally wanted Celestia to be a queen but Hasbro felt that a princess would be more appealing to the young girl audience.
    • Some have said that it was actually because they thought Disney had "tainted" the term "Queen" to represent someone evil.
    • Company To The Rescue, for Spring 2012 one of the new toys from Hasbro in this series is white version of Princess Celestia!
• The Bratz line of dolls was eventually reduced to either Cloe & Yasmin (Or Clomsin) or clones of Cloe and Yasmin with the occasional different girl after every 7-9 lines because Cloe and Yasmin were the best selling dolls.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender action figure line never feature a single female character, not even the ones on the main cast. Even Jet, a male character who appeared in about five episodes before dying got an action figure. Apparently it was based on the idea that female action figures wouldn't sell. They're not gonna have any excuse for The Legend of Korra, though.