[Crazy Jetty]

Snow's post deserves to be saved and archived.

One little thing though:

Quote:

Would I love to see factories stateside or in other areas though? Heck yes to that. You also have to consider theft though and corporate secrets too. Fans working at them while many would love to also leads to leaks, as we already see with ebay and other sites too. It'd also potentially raise the cost. While this isn't an excuse as there are other ways to reconcile that, it is some of the many factors that have to be taken into account too.

Actually leaks could be contained far more easily. Employees would probably be required to sign confidentiality contracts, which means the lisensor and factory could seek legal action against the leaker.
The stuff happening in china, stolen prototypes, people popping onto boards to say what they saw while working on the line... there's not much american companies can really do about that, if the factory won't stop it.
And sometimes, as we've learned, some companies like Hasbro, have to go through other companies to deal with the factories.
In reguards to Transformers, Hasbro does not deal directly with the factories. They have to talk to Takara as a middle man, who then deals with the factory.
We learned this through the TFCC, and Botcon. Because some of the biggest problems Fun Publications faces is the fact that Takara is the middle man, and Takara doesn't like doing small number runs for anyone but themselves.