Originally Posted by
Bladestorm
My son will buy every Optimus on the shelf, but has no interest in Bumblebee (he liked him for the first few months he was in to Transformers Prime but that's it) and my son IS the target audience. My daughter adores Optimus so she is probably bias but she won't even look at Bumblebee figures.
Similarly, when you look at shelves here in HK, of the 2 "main" characters they fill the shelves with, Optimus always sells eventually but Bumblebee shelf-warms... so to be honest as both a fan of the franchise AND a parent I do scratch my head at the choice of Bumblebee as a stand alone movie. It always warms my heart when I see a kid (not even my own) lovingly grab an Optimus off the shelf and cuddle it to bits (never seen a kid do that with a Bumblebee). Bumblebee costumes had to be given away as freebies from AoE because no one would buy them (meanwhile the equivalent Optimus costumes sold out (and my son STILL plays with his AoE Optimus stuff while he has never worn the free Bumblebee one we were reluctantly given)).
So unless the opposite is true in the US and their Bumblebees fly off the shelves in kids hands it really doesn't make sense to keep saturating the market with a character people and kids seem to be sick of. *shrugs*