I'll certainly be asking Hasbro Australia about this, but logistically it would be unlikely, as Hasbro America want the money as soon as the reservation period ends (August 31st), which means, if Hasbro Australia were to play middle-man on these, they would need to take your money (somehow), and then be liable to Australian Consumer Laws (like refunds, which would have to come out of their pocket because the money would have been sent onto America).
Then you have the whole shipping procedure, that Hasbro Australia probably would have to outsource.
This probably should have been done through Amazon, which has branches in many countries, or can service many countries they aren't in... and they would then be the ones who would ship the items once they are produced (buuut, the price would be 30-40% more for the toy if sold through a retailer - Hasbro America are probably wanting to sell this themselves, to give this a better chance of reaching minimum numbers - a US$575 price from them would be at least US$900 if sold to a retailer first).
I think we just have to wait and hope that there are at least 8,000 seriously dedicated Transformers fans in America and Canada who have US$575 within 6 weeks, to warrant extras being made and then sold off to non-Americans (some how). (the big Transformers conventions only manage to get about 5,000 people willing and ABLE to splash out this much money to attend a dedicated event, not to mention, Unicron isn't a contemporary "iconic" character, so a toy of this price won't appeal to too many newer fans of the last decade, since TFPrime and the Live Action Movies... and there aren't a lot of us left who grew up with this character in the 1980s)
It's a bit of a catch-22 though... the non-Nth-Americans like us will only get a chance at buying this if they reach their 8,000 target in Nth America, but I'm pretty sure it would need the non-Nth-American fans to reach that goal. They would get a couple thousand in Japan and a couple thousand in the Hasbro Asia countries, a couple hundred in Australia and each of the main European countries... if they barely make it to halfway with their goal, they MUST find a way to take reservations from non-Nth-Americans, or else no one will get one. (they've certainly spent a lot of time and money already producing a prototype, as the fully coloured images are not a computer generated image - the factory tooling is the most expensive expense, but those images suggest that this is something they've already spent a lot of money on)
I love the size of it though... probably on-par with cost-to-volume of Fortress Maximus, taking into account the lower production run.
Lots of screen caps (and links to the video and images), including the two images above,
from TFW here.
Did they show the back of the robot or planet mode at all?
If not... should we be worried that it has some kibble or issues that they are hiding?
Again... it's one of those rare occasions when I wished I lived in America.
Originally Posted by griffin
I'll certainly be asking Hasbro Australia about this, but logistically it would be unlikely, as Hasbro America want the money as soon as the reservation period ends (August 31st), which means, if Hasbro Australia were to play middle-man on these, they would need to take your money (somehow), and then be liable to Australian Consumer Laws (like refunds, which would have to come out of their pocket because the money would have been sent onto America).
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