Saturday, November 18, 2017

Transformers Accidentally Goes Political

Hasbro accidentally brought some US politics to their latest release from Transformers: Power of the Prime line. It has been discovered that Jazz has a tiny art under the Autobot logo that spells "MAGA" in Cybertronian. The assumption is that MAGA is the shorthand for "Make America Great Again" from the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign. i09 breaks down the details including a handy chart of the Cybertronian language but more importantly they got in touch with Hasbro who apologized for the unwanted insertion of politics.
It was brought to our attention that a graphic appears on one of our Transformers figures that, when translated from Cybertonian letters to English, spells out MAGA. We investigated the issue, and discovered that one of our vendors inserted this as part of the design without authorization. We are addressing this with the vendor.

We do not intend for our products to carry political messages, and apologize to anyone who was offended by this message.
Considering the toy line is mostly manufactured in China who are unlikely to give two craps about "MAGA", I can't help but wonder what vendor they are referring to. There could even be a none political explanation but nothing Transformers related comes to mind. My guess its whoever finalizes the designs before they reach China for manufacturing or programs the machines that paint the toy are going to have a job-less holiday season.

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad Hasbro at least reached out and responded. Transformers don't need any political ties

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  2. What if it was just a mistake?
    The person(s) responsible for the design randomly picked up a bunch of cybertronian caracters that looked good together?

    (Its funny that I have to check the [I'M NOT A ROBOT] box on a Transformers blog :-D )

    ReplyDelete

 
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