Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
Generations is a tough line to push onto retailers, here and in other countries, as it doesn't have a movie or cartoon series (on TV) to "advertise" it for the benefit of retailers, who don't spend their own money to move someone else's brand.
Also, there is no "launch date" to send all the stock out to retailers for them to put on shelf at the same time... it is just more "Transformers Branded" products to order in next time the store or retail chain has the space for it (by selling enough of existing Transformers toys to buy up the new stuff).

The Hasbro warehouse in Sydney probably got all the first (and obviously some second) wave product at the same time from China, but are now just waiting for retailers and franchise stores (like Toyworld and Toymate) to want it.
Toyfair in March would have had Hasbro pre-sell a fair bit of the Titans Return toys to Retailers, but the Retailers are probably not requesting delivery of that pre-ordered stock until they have cleared out their old (Generations) product first.

Next year will be completely different with the Movie toyline, as there will be a release date, and Retailers will be competing with each other to have all of the first waves in store first or on the embargo date if there is one.
(but Generations will still be the secondary toyline that Retailers will only order next year if they have enough space around the Movie toys, and enough demand for the entire Brand by regular customers... IF the Movie toyline isn't too big to shelfwarm with hundreds of trashy gimmick toys again )
Any tips for approaching retailers (I'm thinking toy world and smaller stores) to actually get them to stock something you want?
I mean if I'm like I want to buy 8-10 toys of a range they may or may not get, how big a case box do they have to get in minimum?

I remember asking at a store is they could get in tr fort max, and said I would happy to prepay for the item if they could get it in. And they were like "we don't know if we can get that" I asked multiple times over two months, don't know if they ever got it, I bought it online and now I don't go to shop there anymore . And this was a store where the staff are super friendly and helpful, but they had no interest in my money apparently.
Or it was "up to the distributor" - so my q is were they talking shit and just could not be bothered to find out, any tips on encouraging retailers to actually get toys in and take my money would be appreciated.

And then you tell me stuff just sits there in Sydney, that is frustrating.
Is it just the low selling total units of tf compared to tmnt and star wars, marvel etc that makes them so random to track down? I swear I have to swim through a sea of star wars product in stores to find a few transformer crumbs here and there.