Things you never realised about Transformers (toys etc)

[Sky Shadow]

However he explained to me that Hasbro Australia actually orders virtually every Transformer that Hasbro USA releases, with the exception of limited exclusives (e.g. TFCC, BotCon etc.), but the problem is that retailers aren't ordering the new stock from them!

For example, Hasbro Australia actually did receive First Edition toys which they pitched to retailers, but none of the retailers submitted an order of sufficient size (apparently one retailer only wanted to order 500 for their stores, which is too small an order to make it worthwhile for Hasbro AU to import and distribute), so the FE toys just ended up sitting at Hasbro AU (not sure if they've kept them or sent them back).

This is why Hasbro AU should offer a mail-order service. Not only would they get back those of us who buy our toys online, but they'd endear themselves to the collectors' community and be able to sell their toys without dealing with all the middlemen, thus getting themselves a greater profit. (And not a loss if they end up shipping the toys to Australia and back/trashing them.)

[Decepticon]

Trouble is, Hasbro AU probably have a backlog of older stock (DOTM Bumblebees) sitting in their warehouse to use first. A good example is older DOTM deluxes (BB, Laserbeak) which are currently flooding every Target and the new batch of Ultimate Ops and Commettor/Ops flooding Kmart that I saw today.