TRANSFORM THOSE SALES!

       With "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" enjoying record ticket sales in China, spin-offs of Transformer toys and other products are booing too.
       The action movie earned more than 400 million yuan (Bt2 bilion) in china in its first three weeks.
       Like earlier hit movies such as the "Star Wars" and Batman series, spin-off toys have becometop sellers.
       "Transformer toy sales increased by 70 to 80 per cent since the ovie came out," says Liu Yang, the marketing manager at the UME Huaxing International Cineplex.
       The spin-offs include key rings and other gadgets, and a stamp album with the Transformer characters on the cover is selling well despite its 500-yuan price, Liu says.
       "For people in their 20s and 30s, watching a Transformers movie is like reuniting with a lost friend," says toy-shop owner Wei Wei.
       His tiny store is rakingin 6,000 yuan a day in the wake of the new Transformers mvoie.
       "The first Transformers mvoie attracted mainly the 1970s and '80s generation," Wei says of the film based on the popular children's TV show of that era.
       "Now small children also come and buy the models to play with."
       The Transformer toys can be quickly alterned into new forms, just like the TV show and movies' colourful robots, but the current boom extends beyond toys.
       "Without any advertising, and in just about a month, we were selling thousands of our new Transformer USB flash drives," says Zeng Ni, marketing manager of Tsinghua Tongfang Co Ltd.
       "We knew that Transformers would be th etalk of the town, so last year we began to develop a series of Transformer IT products."
       The foresight paid off in massive sales for the flash drives, laptops and desktops, with sales of the Transformers-theme computers jumping 20 to 30 per cent as soon as the film came out.
       The Meters/bonwe Group formed a partnership with US-based Hasbro Inc to become the only Chinese fashion-and-accesssories firm licensed to use Transformers images, typefaces and logos.
       Among the hot summer sellers online at the firm's website Taobao.com is a Bumblee T-shirt. More than 800 shirts featuring the yellow robot character from the movi have sold recently.
       "It's delightful that we still have a double-digit year-on-year increse in sales amid a sluggish economy and the off-season," deputy general manager Xu Weidong told the Economic Observer.
       Meters/bonwe also landed a deal for "produc placement" in the new movie, which Xu called a "win-win situation", although he declined to discolse the terms of the deal.
       While US moviemakers have long know the value of film spin offs, its Cinese counterpart has yet to fully capitalise, say industry experts.
       "Most of the movie-related mrchandise for Chinese films is too low-end," Jiang Youzhi of Beijing Film Studio told Beijing Business Today.