Bandai
From Transformers Wiki
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Bandai Co., Ltd. (株式会社バンダイ Kabushiki-gaisha Bandai) is Japan's largest toy company, founded on July 5, 1950, headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo, and Takara's biggest rival. Currently, Bandai is a subsidiary under Bandai Namco Holdings after the main company bought/merged with Namco in September 29, 2005, and later formed its video game division, Bandai Namco Entertainment.
During the 1980s, when Bandai had very little direct presence in the North American market, they not only licensed their Machine Robo toyline to Tonka as GoBots, but also licensed several other molds to Hasbro for the Transformers line that they obtained when they bought out another Japanese company, Takatoku Toys.
Since the Transformers cartoon would air in Japan, these toys were dropped from the animated lineup to avoid giving Takara's rival free publicity... with the exception of Jetfire, who instead got a name-tweak and extensively-changed animation model, probably due to Hasbro wanting some form of advertising for a very expensive item.
Notes
- Former Hasbro Chief Executive Officer Brian Goldner was an executive at Bandai's American division before joining Hasbro in 2000.
- Japanese Voice Actor Volcano Ōta was also a former production manager at Bandai's Japanese division before he retired in 2015 to pursue a voice acting career.
- Bandai in general, partnered with Toei to create the Super Sentai toyline in Japan, whilst in America and other countries, Bandai had partnered with Saban to produce the Power Rangers toyline since its inception in 1993. After twenty-five years of producing Power Rangers toys, Saban and Bandai parted ways in early 2018, making way for news at Toy Fair 2018 that Hasbro would be producing Power Rangers toys starting in 2019. Power Rangers would later be acquired from Saban by Hasbro for a whopping estimate of $522 million on May 1, 2018.[1] The deal was finalized a month later on June 12, 2018, making Power Rangers a fully-owned property of Hasbro.[2] The Super Sentai toyline is not affected and will continue to be produced through Bandai.
