Okay... I got good news and I got bad news.
The good news is, I finally managed to get through to TakaraTOMY's customer call centre (I couldn't call yesterday as it was the Emperor's Birthday public holiday). I was actually on hold for over 7 minutes -- longest time I've ever had to wait for service from TakTOM!

The other good news is, I found out I and reportedly others have been unable to access TakaraTOMY's
online survey site. And this leads me to the bad news.
The bad news: I've been told that because TakaraTOMY is a
domestic service company, their online survey site is now geo-blocking users from outside Japan.

I did explain to them that I do purchase my Japanese Transformers from stores in Japan (as opposed to overseas sellers) and that I've frequently been able to access and use the online survey in the past, and that I am keen to continue giving my feedback to TakaraTOMY. The operator thanked me for my continued patronage and said that she would pass on my concerns to her superiors. I also asked if she could ask her higher ups to please consider restoring the web site so that it could provide access to overseas customers again.
So anyway, beyond this there's not much I can do. This seems to be in line with what Takara have told me before about their contractual obligations with Hasbro in terms of only being able to service their own domestic market and not "cross contaminating" Hasbro's markets. I hope that TakaraTOMY will reconsider their stance on the geoblocking, but until/unless they do, it means that those of us outside of Japan are unable to access the online survey for ourselves.

Alternatively we could post our opinions on
TakaraTOMY's Facebook page... but I don't know if they pay attention to posts there. I posted my concerns about the online survey site's lack of accessibility 12 days ago but never got any reply.
This is a real shame. I've been continuously using Takara(TOMY)'s feedback since 1997; initially with those self-addressed cards (which I would actually take the effort to post, paying for the international postage myself), then later with the online site. So it does feel like an end of an era for me. (T_T)