MP Acid Storm and Soundwave US picutres

[Onslaught Six]

To me that's kind of a too-bad-so-sad scenario. Hasbro shouldn't have to cater to Johnny-come-latelys by releasing new toys of the same G1 characters every few years, the internet exists. I just paid 2.5 times the retail value to get MW Megaplex off eBay, and that's a toy I had actually been around to purchase, if I had wanted to. If Hasbro had reset their G1-remake schedule every three years and just kept pumping out the same dozen-or-so guys, then we'd never have gotten up to that Trailbreaker finally coming out that everyone was whining for, so who are they supposed to try to make happy?

Stop right there! Because guess what? That's the same logic that prevented us from getting Classics, ever, in the first place.


Since we're arguing about distribution and stuff, though, the 'reality' is that stores order wave 1 & 2 and you're lucky if you ever see anything past that. TF actually has decent distribution in the long and short of it--look at some of the movie toylines Hasbro puts out. Did Spiderman even 'have' a third wave?

Maybe switch things up a bit. Alternate waves between new shit and restock old shit.

They do that! It's called "revision cases." A Wave 6 revision case will contain some of the new figures from Wave 6, but also figures from, say, Wave 3 & 4. Look 'em up.

And that's another thing that annoys me about toy distribution: Shortpacking. Why the fuck do they do this? Seriously, why design a toy if you're only going to release like, ten of them?

Supposedly, the system is supposed to go like this:

Wave 1, case of 8: Bumblebee, Jazz, Starscream, Cyclonus (all x2)
Wave 1.5, case of 8: Bumblebee, Jazz, Starscream (all x2), Cyclonus, Bludgeon (all x1)
Wave 2, case of 8: Bumblebee, Starscream (all x1), Bludgeon, Prowl (all x2), Slugslinger, Red Alert (all x1)
Wave 3, case of 8: Bludgeon, Prowl, Slugslinger, Red Alert (all x2)

Or something akin to that. Shortpacked figures are 'supposed' to be shortpacked because they're going to arrive again in a later wave, in larger quantities, while the rest of the wave is filled out with older stuff. Look up there and see that, for example, Bumblebee is available for a longer amount of time than a character like Slugslinger or Bludgeon. Those guys are going to be worth "less" because they're not as popular characters as Bumblebee, and won't be as in demand.

"But O6!" you say, "The Voyager case assortment for Grimlock and Blaster's wave is 3 Grimlocks and 1 Blaster, and Blaster isn't planned for later waves!" That's the other instance of shortpacking. For us, Blaster is a wholly unique character worthy of an equal release to Grimlock. For retailers and for Hasbro? Blaster is a retool of a toy that JUST got released in an ENTIRE WAVE beforehand. The entire Wave 1 assortment is Soundwave and a repaint of Soundwave. Blaster is, essentially, the same toy, and thus he is less in demand than a character like Grimlock, who is a new mould (and also a more popular character than Blaster is). I know for a fact that I was considering not buying Blaster at all because I'd planned on getting Soundwave, and I have a thing about Soundwave and Blaster being similar. Instead, I opted to get Blaster and pass on Soundwave, since I have a G1 Soundwave reissue anyway.

Well, no, they weren't there for the last one. That's the point. Not everyone lives their entire lives online.

It's 2013. You're using the Internet wrong.

My point was that if they only release twenty toys a year, all twenty might be shit you don't want. Law of averages and all that. Then you'd have nothing cool to buy all year.

See: Prime.

And this is why I kinda can't help wondering if the franchise has gotten too big. There's so many different lines now that it isn't just one line "Transformers" like it was in the 80's.

Ah, quit bein' a geewunner!

The model doesn't work like that. It's not like Hasbro is the only company that produces toys this way--this is the way the INDUSTRY works now. To complain about it is to complain about music piracy in 2013--it just screams of "MY WAY IS BETTER, BECAUSE IT'S HOW IT USED TO BE!"

Frankly, I grew up in this system. I grew up with waves and case refreshes, and I prefer it. I like being able to walk into a store and find stuff that's different from a few months ago--and realistically, even THAT doesn't happen very often.

If you don't want to play the game, order it online. You can get stuff at BBTS or even Amazon sometimes at totally reasonable prices. If it's too much above retail for you, then go back to retail and play the game. I can actually realistically say that I got every single figure I wanted--that I could reasonably afford--in the last couple years. (In other words, unless it was a Masterpiece or a huge reissue or something, and I wanted it, I was able to find it and get it.) Shit, even figures I ordered online--to be extra safe about getting them--I ended up finding in stores later! Sometimes at a discount! (I found the entire Black Shadow/Junkheap/Wheeljack refresh wave at Ollie's for $7 each. There was a TRUCKLOAD of them. They're probably STILL there.)

I'm laughing for real right now. I may disagree with Sparky on...just about everything (okay, we've actually found common ground on a few things, but still!) but one thing I know for sure he isn't is antagonistic. I genuinely don't think I've ever seen the guy insult anyone, even with guys like Six and I ribbing the hell out of him in the most snide ways possible. The dude is remarkably unflappable.

Sparky is a gentleman and a scholar, and I hate every time he posts because I know it's to argue with something I agree with.

I mean, do we really *need* things like BotShots? I see that and I can't help thinking that that's a lot of development money that could be better spent on toys in lines like Generations or Prime

That's assuming the money for BotShots actually comes from the same budget pool--I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure there's an entirely different team (overheaded by some of the higher-up management guys, for brand consistency and things like that) that works on BotShots. I doubt that, for example, the Robot Heroes were somehow taking money away from ROTF or something like that. These lines use an entirely separate budget that doesn't come from the same place--it cycles back through on its own filter.

Think of it like this. I'm a musician, right? Let's say I offer two kinds of products: CDs, and band t-shirts. I have a separate budget for both. Let's say 25 CDs costs me $25 to produce, and 25 t-shirts costs me $50 to produce. I make 25 CDs and sell those at, say, $5 each, and sell out, so I make $100 for a net profit of $75. That $75 DOESN'T INTERACT WITH THE SHIRTS BUDGET. It's just $75, which I can use to make more of the same CDs, or I can make cooler, fancier CDs with more stuff in them (let's say a 12-page booklet with the lyrics in it). Meanwhile, the shirts aren't selling--I only sold 10 of them at $10 each. So I have $100 in extra Shirts Budget now, minus the $50 it cost to produce them, so I have a net Shirts Profit of $50. I could turn around and use that $50 to, for example, make more expensive CDs, or order more CDs, but then I run the risk of not having enough money to produce more shirts. So the two profits and budgets are kept separate.

I'm assuming that's how BotShots and other side lines like that work. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'm not given a reason to assume otherwise. Kreo, for example, is the same thing--I'm sure there's an entirely separate Kreo division and budget that is entirely unrelated to the main TF lines.

I mean seriously, I walk into TRU now and freakin BotShots seems like it takes up half the TF section. Get rid of that and give me more copies of Prime and Generations. I guess I just feel like the brand has reached a point where it's basically competing with itself. Almost to the point of cannibalism.

The reality of the situation is that if you get rid of BotShots, that space isn't going to go to more Prime and Generations. That space is going to go to Star Wars, or GI Joe, or WWE, or Power Rangers, or TMNT, or Avengers. BotShots aren't a *competing* product, because they're a Different Thing, and they largely serve a different market with their lower price points.

With Legends, I find them inoffensive. Really went crazy for the scale during DOTM, not so much now, though with Metroplex coming up I’m now quite happy I amassed such a horde of the little guys.

Given how the prices of the entire toyline have swelled up, I think it's great that there's a lower-priced alternative to the larger figures. And like you, I amassed an army of the fuckers from DOTM for some reason.

Maybe I just need to move. I seriously think there's just something wrong with Sacramento area toy stores. I mean, even when I visit my Aunt and Uncle in Yuba City, sometimes I'll go the TRU out there and I swear it's like night and day. They usually have things there that I'd never find in Sac.

Bingo. Some areas are better than others. State College (45 mins away for me) actually had 'two' Walmarts. One was usually well-stocked while the other one barely had anything new, ever. And this was entirely different than shopping at the Walmart in, say, Clearfield, 20 mins away.

[Tigermegatron]

To me that's kind of a too-bad-so-sad scenario. Hasbro shouldn't have to cater to Johnny-come-latelys by releasing new toys of the same G1 characters every few years, the internet exists. I just paid 2.5 times the retail value to get MW Megaplex off eBay, and that's a toy I had actually been around to purchase, if I had wanted to. If Hasbro had reset their G1-remake schedule every three years and just kept pumping out the same dozen-or-so guys, then we'd never have gotten up to that Trailbreaker finally coming out that everyone was whining for, so who are they supposed to try to make happy?

Stop right there! Because guess what? That's the same logic that prevented us from getting Classics, ever, in the first place.


Since we're arguing about distribution and stuff, though, the 'reality' is that stores order wave 1 & 2 and you're lucky if you ever see anything past that. TF actually has decent distribution in the long and short of it--look at some of the movie toylines Hasbro puts out. Did Spiderman even 'have' a third wave?

Maybe switch things up a bit. Alternate waves between new shit and restock old shit.

They do that! It's called "revision cases." A Wave 6 revision case will contain some of the new figures from Wave 6, but also figures from, say, Wave 3 & 4. Look 'em up.

And that's another thing that annoys me about toy distribution: Shortpacking. Why the fuck do they do this? Seriously, why design a toy if you're only going to release like, ten of them?

Supposedly, the system is supposed to go like this:

Wave 1, case of 8: Bumblebee, Jazz, Starscream, Cyclonus (all x2)
Wave 1.5, case of 8: Bumblebee, Jazz, Starscream (all x2), Cyclonus, Bludgeon (all x1)
Wave 2, case of 8: Bumblebee, Starscream (all x1), Bludgeon, Prowl (all x2), Slugslinger, Red Alert (all x1)
Wave 3, case of 8: Bludgeon, Prowl, Slugslinger, Red Alert (all x2)

Or something akin to that. Shortpacked figures are 'supposed' to be shortpacked because they're going to arrive again in a later wave, in larger quantities, while the rest of the wave is filled out with older stuff. Look up there and see that, for example, Bumblebee is available for a longer amount of time than a character like Slugslinger or Bludgeon. Those guys are going to be worth "less" because they're not as popular characters as Bumblebee, and won't be as in demand.

"But O6!" you say, "The Voyager case assortment for Grimlock and Blaster's wave is 3 Grimlocks and 1 Blaster, and Blaster isn't planned for later waves!" That's the other instance of shortpacking. For us, Blaster is a wholly unique character worthy of an equal release to Grimlock. For retailers and for Hasbro? Blaster is a retool of a toy that JUST got released in an ENTIRE WAVE beforehand. The entire Wave 1 assortment is Soundwave and a repaint of Soundwave. Blaster is, essentially, the same toy, and thus he is less in demand than a character like Grimlock, who is a new mould (and also a more popular character than Blaster is). I know for a fact that I was considering not buying Blaster at all because I'd planned on getting Soundwave, and I have a thing about Soundwave and Blaster being similar. Instead, I opted to get Blaster and pass on Soundwave, since I have a G1 Soundwave reissue anyway.

Well, no, they weren't there for the last one. That's the point. Not everyone lives their entire lives online.

It's 2013. You're using the Internet wrong.

My point was that if they only release twenty toys a year, all twenty might be shit you don't want. Law of averages and all that. Then you'd have nothing cool to buy all year.

See: Prime.

And this is why I kinda can't help wondering if the franchise has gotten too big. There's so many different lines now that it isn't just one line "Transformers" like it was in the 80's.

Ah, quit bein' a geewunner!

The model doesn't work like that. It's not like Hasbro is the only company that produces toys this way--this is the way the INDUSTRY works now. To complain about it is to complain about music piracy in 2013--it just screams of "MY WAY IS BETTER, BECAUSE IT'S HOW IT USED TO BE!"

Frankly, I grew up in this system. I grew up with waves and case refreshes, and I prefer it. I like being able to walk into a store and find stuff that's different from a few months ago--and realistically, even THAT doesn't happen very often.

If you don't want to play the game, order it online. You can get stuff at BBTS or even Amazon sometimes at totally reasonable prices. If it's too much above retail for you, then go back to retail and play the game. I can actually realistically say that I got every single figure I wanted--that I could reasonably afford--in the last couple years. (In other words, unless it was a Masterpiece or a huge reissue or something, and I wanted it, I was able to find it and get it.) Shit, even figures I ordered online--to be extra safe about getting them--I ended up finding in stores later! Sometimes at a discount! (I found the entire Black Shadow/Junkheap/Wheeljack refresh wave at Ollie's for $7 each. There was a TRUCKLOAD of them. They're probably STILL there.)

I'm laughing for real right now. I may disagree with Sparky on...just about everything (okay, we've actually found common ground on a few things, but still!) but one thing I know for sure he isn't is antagonistic. I genuinely don't think I've ever seen the guy insult anyone, even with guys like Six and I ribbing the hell out of him in the most snide ways possible. The dude is remarkably unflappable.

Sparky is a gentleman and a scholar, and I hate every time he posts because I know it's to argue with something I agree with.

I mean, do we really *need* things like BotShots? I see that and I can't help thinking that that's a lot of development money that could be better spent on toys in lines like Generations or Prime

That's assuming the money for BotShots actually comes from the same budget pool--I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure there's an entirely different team (overheaded by some of the higher-up management guys, for brand consistency and things like that) that works on BotShots. I doubt that, for example, the Robot Heroes were somehow taking money away from ROTF or something like that. These lines use an entirely separate budget that doesn't come from the same place--it cycles back through on its own filter.

Think of it like this. I'm a musician, right? Let's say I offer two kinds of products: CDs, and band t-shirts. I have a separate budget for both. Let's say 25 CDs costs me $25 to produce, and 25 t-shirts costs me $50 to produce. I make 25 CDs and sell those at, say, $5 each, and sell out, so I make $100 for a net profit of $75. That $75 DOESN'T INTERACT WITH THE SHIRTS BUDGET. It's just $75, which I can use to make more of the same CDs, or I can make cooler, fancier CDs with more stuff in them (let's say a 12-page booklet with the lyrics in it). Meanwhile, the shirts aren't selling--I only sold 10 of them at $10 each. So I have $100 in extra Shirts Budget now, minus the $50 it cost to produce them, so I have a net Shirts Profit of $50. I could turn around and use that $50 to, for example, make more expensive CDs, or order more CDs, but then I run the risk of not having enough money to produce more shirts. So the two profits and budgets are kept separate.

I'm assuming that's how BotShots and other side lines like that work. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'm not given a reason to assume otherwise. Kreo, for example, is the same thing--I'm sure there's an entirely separate Kreo division and budget that is entirely unrelated to the main TF lines.

I mean seriously, I walk into TRU now and freakin BotShots seems like it takes up half the TF section. Get rid of that and give me more copies of Prime and Generations. I guess I just feel like the brand has reached a point where it's basically competing with itself. Almost to the point of cannibalism.

The reality of the situation is that if you get rid of BotShots, that space isn't going to go to more Prime and Generations. That space is going to go to Star Wars, or GI Joe, or WWE, or Power Rangers, or TMNT, or Avengers. BotShots aren't a *competing* product, because they're a Different Thing, and they largely serve a different market with their lower price points.

With Legends, I find them inoffensive. Really went crazy for the scale during DOTM, not so much now, though with Metroplex coming up I’m now quite happy I amassed such a horde of the little guys.

Given how the prices of the entire toyline have swelled up, I think it's great that there's a lower-priced alternative to the larger figures. And like you, I amassed an army of the fuckers from DOTM for some reason.

Maybe I just need to move. I seriously think there's just something wrong with Sacramento area toy stores. I mean, even when I visit my Aunt and Uncle in Yuba City, sometimes I'll go the TRU out there and I swear it's like night and day. They usually have things there that I'd never find in Sac.

Bingo. Some areas are better than others. State College (45 mins away for me) actually had 'two' Walmarts. One was usually well-stocked while the other one barely had anything new, ever. And this was entirely different than shopping at the Walmart in, say, Clearfield, 20 mins away.

I noticed the 2013 BH assortment waves cases are better put together than the 2012 TFP assortment wave cases. The 2013 BH assortment waves cases don't have the over loading of bumblebee's in each case. waves 2 & 3 of the BH deluxes feature more newer characters & less wave one characters compared to the TFP 2012 assortment deluxe cases. the 2013 BH toy line doesn't seem to be overly dominated by smalls like the 2012 TFP & 2011 DOTM toy lines were. 2013 BH toy line will have bigger scale toys in it like ultimates.

Generations for 2013 seems to have more bigger toys than 2012 had.

Thus far Walmart around America is doing a bad job at bouncing back after the Christmas season ended a few months ago. Walmart seems to not want to fill up any of the empty pegs/shelves in the toy section. Some claim walmart is doing resets or inventory & the shelves will be fully stocked soon----

Right now the main store in my areas that had decent BH newer toys is Target. kmart has nothing,kohls has nothing. I don't think it's worth the gasoline to travel 50+ miles back & forth checking my nearest local TRU store.

[Shockwave]

I mean, do we really *need* things like BotShots? I see that and I can't help thinking that that's a lot of development money that could be better spent on toys in lines like Generations or Prime

That's assuming the money for BotShots actually comes from the same budget pool--I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure there's an entirely different team (overheaded by some of the higher-up management guys, for brand consistency and things like that) that works on BotShots. I doubt that, for example, the Robot Heroes were somehow taking money away from ROTF or something like that. These lines use an entirely separate budget that doesn't come from the same place--it cycles back through on its own filter.

Think of it like this. I'm a musician, right? Let's say I offer two kinds of products: CDs, and band t-shirts. I have a separate budget for both. Let's say 25 CDs costs me $25 to produce, and 25 t-shirts costs me $50 to produce. I make 25 CDs and sell those at, say, $5 each, and sell out, so I make $100 for a net profit of $75. That $75 DOESN'T INTERACT WITH THE SHIRTS BUDGET. It's just $75, which I can use to make more of the same CDs, or I can make cooler, fancier CDs with more stuff in them (let's say a 12-page booklet with the lyrics in it). Meanwhile, the shirts aren't selling--I only sold 10 of them at $10 each. So I have $100 in extra Shirts Budget now, minus the $50 it cost to produce them, so I have a net Shirts Profit of $50. I could turn around and use that $50 to, for example, make more expensive CDs, or order more CDs, but then I run the risk of not having enough money to produce more shirts. So the two profits and budgets are kept separate.

I'm assuming that's how BotShots and other side lines like that work. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'm not given a reason to assume otherwise. Kreo, for example, is the same thing--I'm sure there's an entirely separate Kreo division and budget that is entirely unrelated to the main TF lines.

Yeah see that's not what I was talking about though. That's what Tigermegs was talking about in his Astrotrain thread. I'm referring to the whole brand. I'm assuming that there's a budget for "Transformers" each year that then gets subdivided into the various lines. What I'm saying is if there were fewer lines there'd be more budget for those fewer lines. And subsequently, there'd be more shelf space for them as well. Because, yes, Bot Shots IS taking up shelf space that was used previously by bigger assortments of previous lines. I've seen this transition in the stores myself. "Transformers" takes up about a half an aisle and has for the last ~8-10 years. The difference now is that there's less space for the main lines because so much of it is now taken up with other subsidiary lines (like Legends, BotShots, Cyberverse, etc...) It's the same shelf space but now the different lines are essentially competing with each other. Back when Classics was out, it was pretty much just that and Bayformers. Sure, we had slight encroachment from the smaller titaniums and Robot Heroes and Legends but it was minimal. Now the TF section just seems to be overly dominated by all of the other crap that takes away from the main figure assortments. The lines with, as I think of them, the "normal" figures, you know the basic, deluxe, voyager, etc.... It seems like the "main" line have sort of been pushed to the side for all of this other crap.

As for buying at retail, yeah I live in a shitty area for that. But, my main point is that it shouldn't be a game in the first place. All that's really happened here is that consumers live in a world of frustration with trying to get what they want if they don't want to pay outrageous scalper prices. On a side note: I have to ask where you find good deals on stuff on Amazon. Because everytime I look on there shit is crazy expensive. Like 10 times ebay crazy.

[Onslaught Six]

I'm assuming that there's a budget for "Transformers" each year that then gets subdivided into the various lines. What I'm saying is if there were fewer lines there'd be more budget for those fewer lines.

I don't have proof, but I'd assume differently. For example, the Titaniums weren't coming from the main TF budget--they were coming from the Titaniums budget.

[Shockwave]

I'm assuming that there's a budget for "Transformers" each year that then gets subdivided into the various lines. What I'm saying is if there were fewer lines there'd be more budget for those fewer lines.

I don't have proof, but I'd assume differently. For example, the Titaniums weren't coming from the main TF budget--they were coming from the Titaniums budget.

Ok, fair enough for Titaniums and, like you, I would also assume the same for Kreo. But Bot Shots and Cyberverse and Legends... that's all TF. I'm only really singling out Bot Shots because last time I was TRU it literally took up like 2/3 of the TF section. It's freakin crazy. And, I see that and can't help thinking that if there weren't so much of that, that maybe I'd be seeing or at least have a chance at Hot Spot. And what's up with shortpacking him? I mean it's not like that mold was released in a recent wave, certainly not as recent as that Megabludgeontron we got. Oh sure, had no problem finding THAT at retail. Geez, this is why I fucking hate "the game"....

[BWprowl]

Ok, fair enough for Titaniums and, like you, I would also assume the same for Kreo. But Bot Shots and Cyberverse and Legends... that's all TF. I'm only really singling out Bot Shots because last time I was TRU it literally took up like 2/3 of the TF section. It's freakin crazy.

Maybe they're really popular? I don't have any sales figures to go on, but if Bot Shots are doing well and making bank for Hasbro and retailers, it makes sense that they'd be keeping a lot of them on the shelves.

And, I see that and can't help thinking that if there weren't so much of that, that maybe I'd be seeing or at least have a chance at Hot Spot.

Definitely unlikely that one was affected by the other. Bot Shots doesn't even take up the same *kind* of shelf space as Voyagers, hanging on pegs while Voyagers sit on those shelves below them. The GDO stuff was its own assortment that was ordered by TRU independently of Bot Shots. The amount of Bot Shots on the pegs didn't affect the amount of GDO figures on the shelves any more than, say Avengers toys affected the amount of Marvel Legends figures that stores got.

And what's up with shortpacking him? I mean it's not like that mold was released in a recent wave, certainly not as recent as that Megabludgeontron we got. Oh sure, had no problem finding THAT at retail. Geez, this is why I fucking hate "the game"....

Again, sales expectations man. Hot Spot is a dull blue, boxy robot that doesn't stand out on the shelves, a character kids have never heard of. Megatron is a loud green toy with big swords and is one of THE main characters of Transformers. Of course Hasbro expects to sell more Megatrons than Hot Spots.

This is why you need to let us know what you're looking for when you're looking for it, I had a big blue sea of Hot Spots at my TRU for a little while, I could have nabbed one and sent it to you. Or at least let you know when TRU's website had it in stock (when I ordered my Powerdive). PS: TRU's website has a service that'll e-mail you as soon as something comes back in stock. You should check it out, it's a godsend for stuff like this.

[Tigermegatron]

Ok, fair enough for Titaniums and, like you, I would also assume the same for Kreo. But Bot Shots and Cyberverse and Legends... that's all TF. I'm only really singling out Bot Shots because last time I was TRU it literally took up like 2/3 of the TF section. It's freakin crazy.

Maybe they're really popular? I don't have any sales figures to go on, but if Bot Shots are doing well and making bank for Hasbro and retailers, it makes sense that they'd be keeping a lot of them on the shelves.

And, I see that and can't help thinking that if there weren't so much of that, that maybe I'd be seeing or at least have a chance at Hot Spot.

Definitely unlikely that one was affected by the other. Bot Shots doesn't even take up the same *kind* of shelf space as Voyagers, hanging on pegs while Voyagers sit on those shelves below them. The GDO stuff was its own assortment that was ordered by TRU independently of Bot Shots. The amount of Bot Shots on the pegs didn't affect the amount of GDO figures on the shelves any more than, say Avengers toys affected the amount of Marvel Legends figures that stores got.

And what's up with shortpacking him? I mean it's not like that mold was released in a recent wave, certainly not as recent as that Megabludgeontron we got. Oh sure, had no problem finding THAT at retail. Geez, this is why I fucking hate "the game"....

Again, sales expectations man. Hot Spot is a dull blue, boxy robot that doesn't stand out on the shelves, a character kids have never heard of. Megatron is a loud green toy with big swords and is one of THE main characters of Transformers. Of course Hasbro expects to sell more Megatrons than Hot Spots.

This is why you need to let us know what you're looking for when you're looking for it, I had a big blue sea of Hot Spots at my TRU for a little while, I could have nabbed one and sent it to you. Or at least let you know when TRU's website had it in stock (when I ordered my Powerdive). PS: TRU's website has a service that'll e-mail you as soon as something comes back in stock. You should check it out, it's a godsend for stuff like this.

I seriously doubt Bot Shots are flying off shelves or selling decent. I suspect the main reasons why store pegs are over loaded with bot shots is due to them not selling that great & at a much slower selling pace.

I seriously doubt that stores in america are contantly restocking the pegs full of Bot Shots toys. the pegs are full because they aren't selling.

[138 Scourge]

Just wondering now, is there one of those little game-type toy things of the Protectobot leader, or have they not got a Bot Shot for Hot Spot?

[BWprowl]

Just wondering now, is there one of those little game-type toy things of the Protectobot leader, or have they not got a Bot Shot for Hot Spot?

I'd be more interested in knowing if the kid-appeal character from Armada had one, so we could have a Bot Shot of Hot Shot. A Hot Bot Shot.

Also, the theoretical MP AM Thundercracker is to be henceforth referred to as ActionMasterPiece Thundercracker.

[JediTricks]

Believe me, I don't spend my whole life on the internet either. I don't even visit any of Tigermegadeth's 'Top 10 Transformers fan-sites', just here and regular browsing of /toy/ is all. You just gotta pay attention to what people are talking about when you are on (I know we had at least two threads about those GDO toys back when they were first revealed), and it's not like threads here move quickly enough that you could 'miss' them. See, at least you always feel like you're a part of everything that happens here!

Honestly it doesn't take hours upon hours each day to get all the TF news being released that day. The top 5 fan TF news sites have everything all neatly organized on the front home pages. It literally takes under Two minutes to zip thru all the top 5 TF news sites searching for the days current new TF news reveals.

Then their are also sites like TFsource & BBTS that have all the newer TF toys Pre-orders & new arrivials neatly organized on their front home pages. I normally look at these sites for under one minute three times a week looking for newer TF toys info.

To insult others for getting more TF news info by suggesting they have no lives & have more spare time is kinda rude & insulting. I only spend one hour each day on the internet. BWProwl,please don't mention my name when replying to Shockwave nor sparky in fans comparsions replies. I have shockwave & Sparky on my foe/ignore list for a valid reason,because all they do is overly repeat themselves & look to start trouble via pushing one's button's via clever under-handled flame baits.

Seriously, shut up about your thing with those guys, you're the only one bringing it up in this conversation and it needs to stop, if you don't want them to talk about you publicly you can't do the exact same thing. Also, nobody insulted you or said you have no life, you are misreading what was said.

Wow, that's a new one to me, how is Jazz in any way similar to Prowl on those molds? What is their crazyperson argument, that they use similar transformations?

Pretty much. They think there's no reason for the two to have robot modes so similarly constructed, and assume that Jazz was just based off the Universe Prowl mold (this was especially common when the first pics of RTS Jazz had surfaced). Then I'll post a pic of a side-by-side comparison of the G1 Prowl and Jazz toys pointing out "Yeah, that's just the Diaclone Car transformation, they've always just kinda looked similar" and these people'll be all "Oh, I wasn't aware", like they've never even seen the G1 toys before.

Christ, sounds like you're running on some wrongass circles if they don't recognize that simple truth. "What, the back end turns into legs and feet, and the front end turns into a torso? NO FUCKIN' WAY!" It must be nice to be constantly surprised by the same things week in and week out. <-- that guy knows what I'm talkin' about!

As for doing it with gusto, I'm not buying it, the euro designers made everything they could get their hands on fugly, I challenge the notion that this was an attempt to be bad on purpose but that they simply had awful aesthetics for the purpose of being different.

Well I have no idea what the original guy in charge of AMTC's deco in the 80's was thinking, but I'll admit that he likely wasn't shooting for bad on purpose at the time. However, the reason most people these days enjoy the color scheme, and surely the thinking behind finally releasing it on the Classics Seeker mold through BotCon was "Holy crap this look is so insanely awful it loops back around to awesome!"

Were I a betting man, I'd say that the designer was using the then-popular "younger kids are buying more, younger kids are attracted to bright colors" toy design philosophy that infected the industry in the early '90s. I'm not hip enough to enjoy "so bad it's good"... fuck, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I own FOC G2 Bruticus. I just liked the love that went into the packaging.

I think part of it is, for me at least, the first thing I did when I actually started getting 'in' to TF was to jump on the internet and look through every single Transformers toy ever made. I *wanted* to know all this stuff so I would know which stuff I wanted to get. And here you have someone who, I dunno, never glanced at Onslaught's TFwiki page and saw that a big, kickass toy of him had come out a few years ago? Get on the ball!

Yeah, seriously, gotta know about a line's past if you jump into it, and now the tools to do so are everywhere.

In three years, Classics toys will be a decade old. That will have been long enough that they'll have to start the whole cycle over again.

No they won't, because most of those toys (bar maybe the Seeker mold) are still just fine. We already get too many new Optimuses and Bumblebees and Megatrons and Grimlocks, if Hasbro actually sees fit to waste time throwing out new Classics-style toys for guys like Hot Rod, Astrotrain, or Mirage, I fuckin' quit.

Seems a tad extreme. Sure, they do a ton of Optimus and Bumblebee, but I could go for a better Megatron and Astrotrain and Starscream, and Mirage is a great mold but it's not really a modern F1 race car and there's a lot of backpack up over his head so if they went a different route I'd consider it. For me, it has to be good product, it has to move the brand forward to justify itself when they redo popular characters - otherwise we end up scraping the bottom of the character barrel and becoming an unrecognizable brand while the recognizable guys remain unavailable to newcomers.

I'd actually like to see the distribution system go back to the way it was back in the 80's. You had a specific set of toys that were out for that year and when retailers sold out, they got more copies of those characters. Now if we have new characters on the shelves for even a few months we're lucky and it gives parents, kids and collectors all a lot shorter time frame to try to get the toys they want.

The market is too different for that system now, the retailer shelf space is too hotly contested, there are too many brands vying for consumer attention, and toy lines are like fashion with high turnover of tastes. Also, most of those '80s lines fizzled after about 3 years of that slow pattern of seeing the same product on shelves for long stretches, retailers want to avoid that. The intent is for a product to have a shelf life of 3 to 6 months, but in planning there's a lot of rubber-banding where Hasbro will expect to play catch-up, over-produce and clog shelves, have hot product merely because orders are down, then return to the same problem again - they're trying to overthink and manage trending, which has led us to a bad state of imbalance for the past few years.

And this is why I kinda can't help wondering if the franchise has gotten too big. There's so many different lines now that it isn't just one line "Transformers" like it was in the 80's. If it was they could continue to do the once a year thing and there'd be no complaining. People would either collect TFs or they wouldn't.

Who would this actually benefit? Rescue Bots and Bot Shots are for entry level younger kids to bring them into the brand, get them involved with the characters; Kreo and Construct Bots are for the middle kid age that is into creative toys; Prime is for middle kid age and is the main line; and Generations is for the older kid and collector set. If you collapse all that, you limit your scope and your creativity. Plus, there'd be no solid way to order exclusives, the exclusives division couldn't bring to life ideas that would otherwise not happen because retailers couldn't know up front how much to order so they wouldn't pay up front for product.

Yeah, I don't go onto very many sites either (in fact I can't even think of 10 different TF sites). I pretty much go here and tfw and that's it. I also check BBTS every day. I think what happened with the GDO figures is that they came out and I just forgot about them. Or maybe it was last year when I wasn't really buying TFs or even going to stores or anything.

You check BBTS every day??? Why? For my TF needs I hit TFW2k5 and Tformers for product news (they generally aggrigate news from other sources anyway like Seibertron and Unicron.com) and BWTF and DvD for reviews.

Oh there'd be complaining. These are Transfans we're talking about, there will always be complaining.

This is the internet, if something has 3 fans, 2 of them will be arguing.

Anyway, I still don't see how "One set of a couple-dozen figures per year" would be preferable to what we have now. I don't know about you, but I *like* getting new Transformers. Would you really just want to have only a few figures, from a single line/style/aesthetic, to choose from for an entire year? The franchise would be even more stagnant than (I think) it already is.

So true!

Of course they're gonna let them do that. This nice guy comes over, helps you do your job, then buys ~$500 worth of merchandise at once, right there? That kind of customer is a dream come true for those guys!

And it's funny you should mention that, because you remember what happened after that? Masterpiece Skywarp. Wal-Mart, remembering the hue and cry over how hard it was to get a hold of MP Starscream, ordered a metric shit-ton of MP Skywarps. And they hung around forever. They dropped the price to twenty bucks and STILL couldn't get rid of them! That scenario should perfectly illustrate the fine line between under-ordering and over-ordering I was describing.

Ironically, the MP Skywarp example is WHY they shouldn't be letting scalpers snatch all the good stuff, throws off their expectations so they order too much of the next thing, it tanks and they don't order enough of the 3rd thing, scalpers come back and buy up all the 3rd thing, lather rinse repeat.

Scalpers are also horrible for business, none of these stores see much profit off toys, they generally have 'em to get parents in so they'll buy a toy AND groceries or tires or whatever. But if little Jimmy can't get his Optimus Prime there, why not just buy groceries at the local store instead and save the trouble? But employees aren't global-thinkers usually, that's why they are working the floor and aren't running the company.

I dunno, I just think that there's too many lines of TFs out there. I mean, do we really *need* things like BotShots? I see that and I can't help thinking that that's a lot of development money that could be better spent on toys in lines like Generations or Prime. And, as much as I love the Legends scale, again, do we really need it? Again, those toys are basically taking the place of other, larger figures that we could have in more quantities. I mean seriously, I walk into TRU now and freakin BotShots seems like it takes up half the TF section. Get rid of that and give me more copies of Prime and Generations. I guess I just feel like the brand has reached a point where it's basically competing with itself. Almost to the point of cannibalism.

I don't need things like Bot Shots, but Dave van Domelen and Ben Yee both seem quite taken by them, and I love me some Bakugan spring-loaded little figure guys so on that level I'm almost tempted, so there clearly is some room for them to exist just because we don't buy them. They're fairly cheap and they are exploiting a market that wouldn't otherwise be exploited by Transformers, so they grow the brand without taking away from it.

I'm still not seeing Starscream or Kickback. I never saw the combaticons except for one copy of Swindle. I have seen Ultra Magnus though. But I've passed based on disliking the Optimus version to the point I actually traded it for something else.

FOC Starscream I've started seeing on shelves now, Kickback not yet. The Combaticons clearly were popular, I've never seen them all on pegs, the reason you didn't see them is they sold through - if you saw a single Swindle, what happened to the other Swindle and the 2x of each of the other 4 characters from that case? Something. It seems right now like Transformers is past the unpopularity of the post-DOTM market malaise and so it's going through shrinking and growing pains.


BTW, shortpacked figures are sometimes shortpacked because Hasbro has maxxed out manufacturing throughput on that item and they want to get it to shelves as quickly as possible so they start it off at 1 per case while manufacturing ramps up, then they either revise the wave's assortment or they carry the figure forward into the subsequent wave.

That's assuming the money for BotShots actually comes from the same budget pool--I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure there's an entirely different team (overheaded by some of the higher-up management guys, for brand consistency and things like that) that works on BotShots.

Actually, it is handled by the main TF team, unlike Kreo and Transformers Crossovers, but it's budgeted and directed with its own money, basically the brand's budget is added to so as to make room for Bot Shots. Also, the person heading up that segment of the brand doesn't do the main TF designing, she's part of the team but not a key member.

The reality of the situation is that if you get rid of BotShots, that space isn't going to go to more Prime and Generations. That space is going to go to Star Wars, or GI Joe, or WWE, or Power Rangers, or TMNT, or Avengers. BotShots aren't a *competing* product, because they're a Different Thing, and they largely serve a different market with their lower price points.

This is true in that Hasbro convinced retailers to add space for Bot Shots, but there's also some question of whether it cannibalizes sales from the mainline of the brand. I'd argue it doesn't because it's such a different expression, and that it's trying to cannibalize sales from Bakugan.

Thus far Walmart around America is doing a bad job at bouncing back after the Christmas season ended a few months ago. Walmart seems to not want to fill up any of the empty pegs/shelves in the toy section. Some claim walmart is doing resets or inventory & the shelves will be fully stocked soon----

Walmart has for the past few years been wanting to get out of the toy business except for the holiday season, I think they're dialing down first and second quarter ordering to try that out. My WM is a shithole anyway though so it's always out of everything.

Right now the main store in my areas that had decent BH newer toys is Target. kmart has nothing,kohls has nothing. I don't think it's worth the gasoline to travel 50+ miles back & forth checking my nearest local TRU store.

Here too, Target and TRU are the strongest pushers of both Transformers and LEGO new product while the rest lag.

I seriously doubt Bot Shots are flying off shelves or selling decent. I suspect the main reasons why store pegs are over loaded with bot shots is due to them not selling that great & at a much slower selling pace.

I seriously doubt that stores in america are contantly restocking the pegs full of Bot Shots toys. the pegs are full because they aren't selling.

Year 1 botshots didn't hit heavy clearance around here at Target, and they are usually lightning fast at clearancing product. The line sold well, not amazingly but solidly. What seems to you like product selling at a slow pace is actually product being replenished from new orders, just because you don't see them restocking doesn't mean it's not happening.