Let’s just call this the greatest rumor of the day, shall we?
Thanks to a new trademark filed November 7th by Hasbro at the United States Patent & Trademark Office we know that there maybe an attempt to bring back the “Rom: The Spaceknight” toyline.
In many ways, a revival of Rom would cement Hasbro’s move from purely a toy company to a transmedia IP machine; after all, the Rom toy flopped dramatically upon release in the late 1970s, but the character lived a surprisingly successful life as a comic book character thanks to Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema (and later, Steve Ditko)’s Marvel Comic. That book lasted 75 issues, and added the “Spaceknight” mythology to the Marvel Universe which is still being used today (Jim Starlin’s Spaceknights mini is being reprinted as we speak).
This isn’t the first time that Hasbro has tried to revive Rom; in addition to the November 7 filing (There’s also a filing from a day earlier, also by Hasbro), it looks like there were multiple filings made by the company regarding the character in 2008 that went nowhere. As someone who adored the old Marvel series, I can only hope that things go differently this time around.
November 14th, 2012 at 9:56 am
If you actually look at the current filings, though (or maybe read them more carefully) they’re for the term “ROM,” rather than “ROM Spaceknight,” so while it could mean that Hasbro actually have plans to do something with the older property, it could be for an entirely different product. (Or even just a filing made for behind-the-scenes reasons.)
November 14th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
They already own Rom, this is just a renewal filing. They actually lose the rights to names if they don’t do this. They lost Bumblebee for a decade and damn near lost the rights to the name Megatron after Konami tried to sneak in a filing for Yugioh. The fact that Megatron was still under active use was literally the only reason they got to keep the name.