What is going on in Australia????

[Paulbot]

AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW-MOULD TRANSFORMERS MAINLINE ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)
OCTOBER 4TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS TOY AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (ROLEPLAY DART GUN)
AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)

Although it's been a long time since new figures repaints or not, it's not like there's scores of transforming figures from DOTM that have been released overseas that haven't arrived yet.

It is frustrating for sure, but there's a lot of repaints in those waves too which aren't that great a loss (Armor Topspin for instance) among the ones worth hunting for (Darksteel).

It doesn't seem like many of those new waves are filling shelves in the US either.

As discussed elsewhere on the board, most Australian stores are overstocked with early wave toys, and it's not really that surprising. Within the last five years how many toys (and repaints) of movie Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Starscream, Ironhide, (and even Skids and Mudflap!) been on the shelf?

Fair enough that interest is dropping off from casual to die-hard fans in the toy side of things.

Hopefully some of the sales will clear out stock before Christmas (Ultimate Prime's seem to have vanished from Kmart in the recent sale) and in the new year the later DOTM toys and the new Prime toys will appear with some more regularity.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I am kind of hoping that it's realised that just because they are Transformers mean they won't always sell. I think that has been the case in the past couple of series.

I assume that the TF3 figures are slow overseas as well? My guess would be that its the same case with similar looking figures etc. So hopefully we can will see a change in distribution at the very least that relies less on buying up masses fo the first wave and more on speading the line out a bit.

Keeping this in mind, it makes me wonder about Hasbro's plans to have Prime as a long series. Between the interviews with High moon and what I can remmeber was said about Prime, it sounded to me that Habro wanted to move away from the 'rebooting the series' evry year or so and towards a longer similar line. If that's the case, we will have the same issue again later on with more similra looking Primes/bbs/Megatrons if we are unlucky.

in that case I prefer the reboot option TBH.

[Doubledealer]

[Bartrim]

LOL

[LordCyrusOmega]

It's all well and good to say stores have orderred on past trends. But I need to wonder at the wisdom of when there are so many toys already shelfwarming ordering in so many of the new gift packs that are only repaints of toys that are still on the shelf.

[Paulbot]

Still shelf warming at Myer but. (so is ROTF Combiner Class Devastator - saw both of them there dust-gathering at my local Myer earlier this week)

Ultimate Prime was an example of where Kmart put it on sale at a very cheap price ($65) two months before Xmas and it seemed to sell well because it looked like great value. [Myer hasn't discounted it that much and we wouldn't expect that. I saw a ROTF Devastator at Myer a few weeks ago too still selling for $250.]

It's all well and good to say stores have orderred on past trends. But I need to wonder at the wisdom of when there are so many toys already shelfwarming ordering in so many of the new gift packs that are only repaints of toys that are still on the shelf.

I can understand the gift packs. Price them well and they make an attractive preset buy. Buy a kid five Transformers or one big one? In the lead up to Xmas it seems the perfect time to stock those in over say Deluxe figures where they have plenty of old ones still to sell.

[griffin]

I assume that the TF3 figures are slow overseas as well? My guess would be that its the same case with similar looking figures etc. So hopefully we can will see a change in distribution at the very least that relies less on buying up masses fo the first wave and more on speading the line out a bit.

In America they seem to be having enough turnover of stock for stores to keep restocking, but I think Hasbro's endless promotions and freebies are the catalyst in their country. Something we could do with here just to move all this dead stock that's been sitting in the stores since May (I think the last time we had a promotion run directly by Hasbro AUS, would have been the Mailaway offer in 1987, when I got me my STARS base).

Recent promotions and freebies in America by Hasbro (in addition to store sales/promos, which is all we get here) that have helped generate sales in that country...

7th November - 25% off all non-exclusive items at the US Hasbro online store, PLUS free shipping (means $8 Deluxes posted free to your door in America)

21st October - $5 off coupons for Americans joining up to Hasbro's Facebook page (means $7 Deluxes, $5 HA Basics or $3 Cmdr figures).

1st October - $5 off coupons given out by Hasbro reps in US stores (again, giving Americans $7 Deluxes, $5 HA Basics or $3 Cmdr figures).

22nd September - Facebook competition for Americans to win prizes up to $5000.

22nd September - Roadshow travelling around America promoting Transformers DotM, Prime, The Ride and the MMOG... plus freebies.

17th August - Americans can receive $20 of free stuff with any purchase of $20 of toys, with up to 5 packs available to each address. (cost to Hasbro of each pack with shipping would be about $25, compared to the $4 profit to Hasbro of that $20 toy purchase)
PLUS, a chance to win an additional prize worth $1000.

11th August - Free Kreon Optimus with most Transformers Purchases on the Hasbro US website (still going until Nov 11th).

March 2011 - 16 prize draws for American fans, including free toy packs & movie premier tickets.

(not to forget the FREE Mailaway Ravage toy in 2009 for American fans, that we had to pay for in Australia, at TRU).


So even though we pay 2-3 times the price as Americans at the current exchange rate, and they get all the rewards from Hasbro... plus its been 89 days since we had a new mainline figure released in Australia... is there any wonder why fan sentiment is at an all-time low here.


I guess it just means that I will have to work harder at making sure this place/community stays interesting and active enough to compensate... to make sure that the dedicated and loyal fans stay keen on the Transformers brand, no matter how bad things get for us in this country.

[Paulbot]

Do you think that all those promotions in the US (which are a bit unusual) are another sign that the DOTM toyline has gone nowhere? Or should that be: has been not the big seller they'd hoped for?

I've started looking at the lists for the awards and if I'm looking correctly, across the regular releases we are behind by 10 new figures and 11 repaints. Is that a lot or not that many? It doesn't seem like that many really when it's across 7 different size classes.

Legion class
Wave 3 - 4 new toys (2 new, 2 repaints)

Commander class
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)

Action Sets
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (2 new)

Deluxe
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (2 repaints)
Wave 5 - 3 new toys (1 new, 2 repaints)

Voyager
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)
Wave 4 - 1 new toy (1 repaint)

Human Alliance basics
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint

Human Alliance
Wave 2 - 1 new toy (1 new)

I also like to keep in mind that earlier this year most of us though we'd never see the Warpath, Wheeljack & Thundercracker wave here, but they are still sitting on shelves in Kmart now, so I don't think it's a lost cause yet.

Except for the large Human Alliance toys. (Yeah I've given up on those personally.)

[Zippo]

I do have to laugh that a New Zealander found:
AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)

Similar or worse situation over here in New Zealand for Transformers.
Wave 1 over and over and over.

[bowspearer]

I do have to laugh that a New Zealander found:
AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)

Similar or worse situation over here in New Zealand for Transformers.
Wave 1 over and over and over.

That we're in this state doesn't surprise me at all. Hasbro's buying agreements with retailers have been leading to this for years in terms of early wave oversaturation. Actually what amazes me is that they actually managed to make it work this long without running into a problem. I'm not just talking about movie lines but series lines as well.

Movie lines you tend to be able to get away with flooding the market with core characters. Most of the line has no screen time and therefore isn't a personified icon of a celluloid mythological figure- yet even then you can only do so many versions of characters before even completists have enough.

However the moment you get into series territory and therefore ensemble territory, you run into the tyranny of the toy cartoon. As Flint Dille said, their mandate even back as far as G1, was to portray the toys in the best possible light.

The upshot of that is that because the kids are individuals, the characters they're drawn to as their favorites will vary from child to child.

The moment you're in that territory and you're shooting yourself in the foot in a market that say, might favour Bulkhead over Prime. The thing is that when you start going into voyager territory or larger, you're talking about parents and children's favorite characters, and so it can backfire- especially when characters like Bulkhead have been written on the screen to be the big brother every kid would love to have.

At some point, Hasbro needs to understand how effective the toy cartoon is and start marketing based on characterisation in media, or visa-verse.

Also Hasbro Aust needs to recognise where things went to hell in a hand-basket since they separated from Hasbro UK and re-institute approaches which worked back then.

This will make me sound old, but I remember calling up the product manager for Hasbro in Rydalmere as a kid to ask about upcoming lines (man that was awesome looking back) and that was one of the things which went out the window early on when things changed over.

Things haven't been quite right with Hasbro for a while now, including gutting their customer service dept, and this is where it finally starts to bite them in the butt.

I only hope that they take this as a wakeup call and start addressing issues which should have been adressed a long time ago.