Building the licensing channel: Hasbro and Disney (2000)

Renting the world’s characters to steady its own

The point of this decision was to put a second engine beside the company’s own franchises. A toy maker that lives on the toys it invents is fully exposed to the miss; an exclusive domestic channel for characters other people have already made famous is a hedge against it. Across 1998 and 2000 Tomy secured exactly that — sole Japanese rights to Hasbro’s toy lines, Transformers included, and a comprehensive licence to Disney’s toy category — so that in a season when its own hits thinned, it could still sell the world’s proven characters on terms no domestic rival could match.

The hedge carries its own dependency. The value here is rented, not owned: the terms sit with Hasbro and Disney, and a licence can be renegotiated or lost. Takara Tomy has nonetheless kept the mix deliberately — renewing the Hasbro alliance, holding Pokémon and Disney toy rights — precisely because pairing licensed characters with owned IP such as Tomica, Beyblade and Zoids is what dampens the toy cycle it can never fully escape. Owning the invention captures the upside of a hit; renting proven characters smooths the gaps between hits. The company has chosen, consistently, to do both.