Quote Originally Posted by bowspearer View Post
Because it makes no sense for TT financially. Hasbro's bread and butter are kids; Takara's bread and butter are adult collectors. Takara would be well aware, by way of how much HLJ and other exporters buy from them, how a significant portion of Hasbro's adult collector's market would rather import than buy local because of things like new moulds and extra paint apps which Takara does and Hasbro doesn't.

Anyone applying even an ounce of common sense will know that that market will be lost if there is no point of difference, which simply isn't smart business sense.
Um, not exactly...TT in Japan still sell mostly to kids, especially mainline stuff. Their adult/'collector' domestic market is a bigger proportion/percentage, sure, but - disappointingly - TFs are still a pretty niche hobby for adults - far from TTs 'bread and butter'. It's partially why there tend to be more 'kids-line'-type TFs in stores, eg. plenty of 'Adventure' (that monster-y/awful 3-member combiner toyline they did instead of Beast Hunters) over the Legends stuff, etc etc. AFAIK even with gaijin like us ordering Japanese TFs it's still a pretty small part of their market share.

If I had to guess, I'd put it down to a cost-cutting measure from the overall TF brand - TT and hasbro TFs are apparently made in the same factories, so by using the same toys (barring the high-end stuff like MP) they can make it all a lot more streamlined, and thus cheaper. Especially since TT does tend to do the more expensive versions, i.e. extra paint apps etc. IIRC toy sales in general in Japan have been slowing down a bit in recent years, especially those targeted at 'older' kids like TFs. Trading cards are still pretty popular, model-building/assemble-your-own type toys still have decent sales (eg. Gundam), and young kids toys still sell pretty well, but the portable gaming market - and especially smartphone/tablet games - have hit most other 'traditional' toy sales pretty hard IIRC.

Anyway, my Japanese reading/writing was never all that great to begin with (bloody kanji ), so...do we have any confirmation from the latest Figure King scans about whether this is a 'new normal', and/or how widespread it's likely to be @Nihongo-Jouzu peeps?
I'm sort of interested to know if that new Titan Class Predaking will get special treatment or not...though it's probably too early for news of that one to be out.