Chapter 412: Toys Are the Big Ones

Among the peripheral products of "Transformers", animation is simply not worth mentioning.

Before Paramount's first "Transformers" was released in 2007, the biggest and most lucrative income of "Transformers" was its toy sales.

Transformers toys have been popular for generations.

Around 2020, those old versions with few sales can sell for 3000-5000 US dollars on EBAY!

And what were those old Transformers made of?

The main body is plastic!

Even the "body" technology responsible for shrinking and folding is made of plastic, and the average manufacturing cost is less than $5!

But how much do they sell for?

At least 50, or even two or three hundred dollars!

Of course, there is not only one type of Transformers. The same robot, such as Megatron, can be made of different materials and colors. After new materials are available, new versions can be produced...etc.

Basically, Hasbro and TAKARA will give you a new style every year, and changing the color of the clothes can be considered a new style.

But there are still so many people willing to buy it, especially the limited edition, a Transformer with 300 or 500 pieces, which can sell for 10,000 to 20,000 RMB!

It can be seen from this that how strong the gold-absorbing power of Transformers toys is!

There are only a few toys that can be compared with it, such as Rubik's Cube, Barbie dolls, and Lego toys.

Among them, the value of the Rubik's Cube is too low, and it is impossible to play too many tricks, so the profit is tens of millions, one or two hundred million US dollars throughout the year.

Barbie dolls are very popular, and even after 2014, it is the only pillar of Mattel, fighting against Hasbro's Transformers, Marvel Heroes, Frozen, Disney animation characters, etc. They attacked in turn, but it was obvious that the Barbie doll was unable to support herself, and she still looked a lot thinner.

In terms of price and profit alone, Barbie dolls are much lower than Transformers. After all, Barbie dolls don’t cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of super expensive toys.

Lego toys are simpler than the above three, that is, plastic toys that can be pieced together into various shapes you like, but they are still the fastest growing, and their sales are not inferior to Barbie dolls and Transformers.

In 2016, Mattel and Hasbro were thinking about merging to resist the increasingly powerful Lego company, which shows how powerful they are.

Yin Jun would like to thank Europe and the United States for their copyright protection. No one made the design of "Transformers" before Yin Jun, so this transformable robot doll can only be made by him.

In addition to paying taxes and giving Hasbro some patent fees, such a huge market is earned by the family.

If it is done well, there will be a net profit of 100 to 200 million U.S. dollars a year.

Don't underestimate the profit of 200 million US dollars. This was in the 1980s. How many rich people in Hong Kong with a net worth of more than 100 million US dollars were there? How many people can earn 200 million U.S. dollars a year, or 920 million Hong Kong dollars?

If the money is used well, Yin Jun will be able to earn billions or tens of billions of dollars in profits in the future!

There is nothing difficult about making Transformers toys, basically just like other plastic toys.

There is a slight difference, the first is the structure of the body - generally understood, that is, the flexibility of simple joint twisting and rotation.

Since there are plastic products with excellent extensibility and elasticity, the body structure is very simple.

The second is the design of changing the shape of the toy from a robot to a car.

This will look more professional and requires professional toy developers to design.

As long as these two aspects are done well, the rest is just patchwork. Putting the parts together on the Transformer becomes a whole.

In terms of design, Yin Jun had already entrusted Le Yiling to find a capable toy design company.

Xiangjiang in the 1970s was not after 2000. They only knew about the backwaters of buying and selling real estate. They had the world's second largest watch export industry, the world's largest plastic flower products, and the world's top five toy production The manufacturing plant has the world's top small household appliances... and so on.

And just like the mainland decades later, people in Xiangjiang began to do it by themselves, regardless of entrusted companies, when they were engaged in the processing industry.

Toy manufacturing is one aspect of this.

Whether it's plastic toys or metal toys, there are twenty or thirty toy companies in Xiangjiang. The products they sell are exported to Southeast Asia, and the sales and profits are not bad.

Also because of this, they have a lot of toy design experts in their hands, no matter whether they design it by themselves or transform the products of foreign toy companies into their own, at least they can be regarded as professionals.

The difficulty of transforming Transformers from a robot form to a car form is actually not that great. As long as some key points are thoroughly considered, it will be solved naturally.

What's more, the cheapest Transformers are models that can't move, either in the form of a car or in the form of a robot—only high-end products that cost hundreds of dollars can be transformed.

Looking at the sales of Transformers toys over the past few decades by Yin Jun, more than 70% of the income of Transformers toys comes from non-deformable toys. The really expensive high-end products that can transform, European and American fans also think Very expensive!

According to Yin Jun's needs, Le Yiling inspected five toy companies of similar size and conducted a series of negotiations with them.

With Sister Le's negotiating ability, the bosses of these toy companies really couldn't resist.

Finally, after a series of comprehensive comparisons, Le Yiling chose a company named "Guanming Toys".

The boss of this company is not from Xiangjiang, but an Italian, but he has lived in Xiangjiang for 20 years, and his Cantonese is no worse than that of Xiangjiang people.

Who said that Europeans and Americans will not pirate copies?

This guy chose to start the business of pirated toys. Whether it is Barbie dolls, Lego toys or other toys, as long as they are popular in the market, he will secretly produce them and ship them to some places where supervision is not strict. Go, for example, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, southern Europe and other places.

It is definitely not just plagiarism, he also has a lot of innovations, at least some designs, even Le Yiling thinks they are good, and they are more innovative than the original ones.

This is thanks to the three designers hired by Guanming Toys from Denmark and Japan, as well as the two designers trained in Hong Kong.

These five talented "plagiarism transformation experts" are what Le Yiling values ​​Guanming toys the most.

Originally the cheapest toy company plus the factory cost more than 12 million Hong Kong dollars, but Guanming Toys offered 18 million Hong Kong dollars. The five-person designer team is also the boss' confidence.

The Italian owner is over 50 years old. With around 4 million US dollars, he went back to his hometown to buy a small manor, raised lambs, planted vines, and lived a comfortable retirement life, but it was also what he wanted.

18 million Hong Kong dollars is also his reserve price, and he refuses to lower it.

Le Yiling hasn't agreed to the final deal yet, just because she wants Yin Jun to inspect the designer team of these five people. If they really meet Yin Jun's wishes, then the price is worth it.

Yin Jun also attached great importance to this conversation, and he directly arranged the place of the conversation at the animation studio.

In fact, the Italian boss was looking for more than these five designers before, but in the end there were only five of them left, because they all like to live a stable life and are unwilling to change jobs everywhere. What you like the most is enough.

"Please sit down!"

Taking these designers with big bags and small bags on their backs, they walked around the animation studio. After introducing the work of the artists and screenwriters, Yin Juncai led them to the office on the first floor.

The chairman's office that belongs to him is actually not as big as Le Yiling's, but it's okay to set up a round table for impromptu meetings.

The girl at the front desk brought coffee and drinks and put them on the table.

Yin Jun already knew some of their information before.

Danish Rupp, 37 years old, used to be a small designer of Lego Company, but he was fired because he failed to hand over a good design for three years. He came to Dongfang Travel in anger, looking for inspiration, As a result, he ran out of travel expenses, so he worked part-time at Guanming Toys Company. As a result, he worked part-time for thirteen years. Now he is married to a Malaysian woman and has five children. The family lives happily in Xiangjiang.

Of course, it would be even better if the salary conditions could be higher.

Yin Jun also took a look at his wife's photo, and after seeing it, he could only shake his head. The appreciative eyes of this European and American ghost are really different from ours.

Japanese Toda Kunisa, 33 years old, loves all kinds of toys since he was a child. He has lived in Xiangjiang since his parents came to work. After graduating from university, he found Guanming Toys to work for 8 years. He has married and had children in Xiangjiang.

Satoshi Kanmoto, a 28-year-old Japanese, was originally an employee of the R&D department of Nintendo in Japan, but was poached by Guanming Toys three years ago and came to Xiangjiang to work. He is still single now.

Cen Zhipeng from Xiangjiang, 29 years old this year, graduated from university for two years and changed two jobs before joining Guanming Toys Company. He has worked for 4 years.

Xie Wei from Xiangjiang, 27 years old this year, has never read a book. He was a workshop worker in Guanming Toys Company at first, but because he did several designs in his spare time, he was appreciated by his boss and entered the design department two years ago. .

Among the five people, Xie Wei, who has never read any books, is the most spiritual, but the Danish Rupp is the most stable, and the two Japanese are the most rigorous in setting standards such as size. Cen Zhipeng is best at plagiarism. And it is the kind of plagiarism that can be faked.

They each have their own strengths, and Yin Jun likes it when he looks at it.

It would be terrible if the design department of a toy company was filled with the same talent.

Without innovation, there is no life.

Not every company can be like Tencent, relying on that chat tool to conquer the world.

Transformers toys can't be the same, one Optimus Prime can make hundreds of styles, how many forms can hundreds of Autobots have?

Not to mention that there are several Autobots combined to form a difficult toy of a big Autobot. Such toys require different imaginations, which cannot be made just by reading comic books.

"I think you already know how many of you are here? We, Qilin Culture, are planning to acquire the company you are currently working in." Yin Jun said to them in a harmonious voice, "General Manager Le and I value you the most. I don't know what you think. No? Now you can say whatever you want without any scruples."

"Mr. Yin, did you acquire our company to produce your company's dolls?" Lupu asked directly, "For example...Transformers?"

He speaks standard Cantonese, and it seems that he has become a real Xiangjiang native.

Yin Jun smiled, "Yes, what do you think of this idea?"

The five people didn't answer at first, but looked at each other and laughed.

Cen Zhipeng lifted his backpack from under the table, and then took out two dolls about the height of a book from it.

Yin Jun was dumbfounded.

This, isn't this Optimus Prime and Megatron?

Although these two dolls are made of plastic plates, at least the appearance is still similar, and even the color is similar to the image on the color page of the booklet.

"'Transformers' is really suitable for making toys, we have already considered it before, so let's try it first." When Yin Jun was playing with the Transformers toy, Cen Zhipeng said, "But because of the cost There is no way to make it better. If better materials are used and body technology is added, the cost of the two models will reach more than 2,000 yuan. The boss did not give us more funds, so for the time being it's the only way."

He said it very cryptically, but what he actually meant was that we have already made counterfeit samples, and if given some time, we will be able to sell the Transformers dolls!

It seems that the minds of pirates are always faster than those rigid-minded company bosses.

Yin Jun is already very fast. "Transformers" has only been published for more than two months, and he started to prepare the animation version, and then prepared the toys at the same time as the animation version.

If it is replaced by the previous TAKARA and Hasbro, the whole process will take at least a year to make the toy project and start selling it.

It’s still the same sentence as before, thanks to Europe, America, Japan and South Korea’s emphasis on intellectual property rights, otherwise it would have been stolen and forced to go bankrupt!

There are still some differences between the Transformers in front of him and the rough version in Yin Jun's impression, but this is definitely not the mass-produced version they are preparing.

That is to say, they have no intellectual property rights, so they can't do better and sell them in Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea, so they are destined to make only low-end toys that cost less than $50.

Putting down the Transformers, Yin Jun stretched out his hand: "Welcome to join the Kirin culture."

Several people were stunned when they heard it.

Toda Kunomasa, who had been silent all this time, asked: "Mr. Yin, you...you haven't tested our design ability yet!"

"Just relying on these two Transformers toys and your keen sense of the market, I think you are already competent!" Yin Jun said with a smile, "Tomorrow I will sign an acquisition agreement with your company. Looking forward to making more Transformers toys for you!"

"Our salary terms..." Rupp asked directly.

"Don't worry, it's definitely better than your previous ones." Yin Jun said, "I like to use grades to bundle bonuses. As long as you do well and have high sales, then you will definitely get rich rewards! I, Yin Jun, are people in this area. Can you believe it, too?"

Smiles immediately appeared on the faces of several people.

How generous and willing Yin Jun is to his subordinates, and several of them technical geeks have also inquired about it before they came.

Not to mention the first time he gave out red envelopes in the crew of "Wulin Biography", after "Kirin Weekly" became popular, everyone from artists and screenwriters to workers in the Kylin Printing Factory received red envelopes every month. It was almost from ear to ear.

If you meet such a generous boss, and you have promised them in advance, why hesitate?

"Where you work, I hope you will arrange it in the animation studio here." Yin Jun said: "There are still some vacant rooms on the third floor. I will arrange an office of about 1,000 square feet for you first. What needs to be done in it? Everything is up to you. As long as you can complete the task on time, I will not interfere with what you want to do in the rest of the time."

"Is it okay to read "Kirin Weekly"?" Guan Bencong asked in surprise.

"No problem." Yin Jun said, "eating, sleeping, chatting with the artists and screenwriters below, going out for a walk...all are fine. What I need is your creativity, what I want is your inspiration and more efficient Work efficiency, the kind of work that sits on shift, is the most unsuitable for people like us who work with their brains."

"Young Master Jun, you really know us so well! You are indeed a boy genius!" Xie Wei couldn't help but admire.

He was not born in a major, relying on his talent and continuous hard work to improve.

He is the most unrestrained, and it is uncomfortable to stay in the company for the past two years.

Now Yin Jun suddenly proposed such a working environment concept, which really made him overjoyed.

Not only Xie Wei, but also the other four were all smiling.

Yin Jun is not only treating them favorably, but also showing a very serious attitude.

In this way, they will become their own group in the Kirin culture, and they don't have to worry about being excluded after entering!

Being able to create freely and only spend one's mind on creation is undoubtedly a very comfortable thing for technical old nerds like them!