Was the movie the biggest thing to happen to TFs since Beast Wars?

[kup]

I've noticed that many of the stores I've visited seem to have slowish sales of Animated. The Activators are flying off shelves, and deluxes are doing okay outside of Grace Brothers and their stupid $40 price tag. Activators _should_ do well - the smaller toys always sell too fast for Hasbro (who import too many boxed TFs every single time, and not enough of the cheaper stuff which parents _will_ buy on impulse). I've noticed those silly bumper battler things (the Cyberslammer-esque things, I think that's what they're called) aren't moving - which doesn't surprise me since they're not good value for toys aimed at 2 year olds.

At any rate, I would have thought Hasbro would want to embrace new found fans with a more realistic line to follow up the film. Yeah, we get Universe/Classics, but I mean as the main line (wich cartoon).

From what I have seen, Animated is either severely understocked with just a peg and a tiny under shelf corner (the same with Universe) while the rest is dominated by shelf warming movie toys which are largely repaints or junk like Slammers and merchandise.

Animated may seem to be moving fast because there there are so few been stocked, the same goes for Universe.

The only place where I have seen a decent amount of Animated and Universe is Target but they are all boxed toys and many of the Universe toys are the crap repaints like Blaster. A few Universe deluxes but that's all.

It seems that both Animated and Universe will suffer thanks to the stupidity of Hasbro's toy distribution when it comes to the movie repaints and merchandise. Stores will refuse to restock on newer stuff until the walls of movie toys moves and that will not happen in a hurry.