Are there too many Exclusives in the Siege Toyline?

[griffin]

My thinking is that if the brand has been dropping off a little with the retailers lately (too much to choose from in a very competitive product area), and they decide to cut back to the three main lines that have cartoon/movie media support (Rescue Bots, Cyberverse, Movie Universe), then Generations as a whole could become the online exclusive toyline like Mattel did with the 2000's MOTU toys. It would also be one of the first toylines they could implement their "all-green" packaging, to see if it can work. Amazon have been doing it for a while with their Transformers exclusives, and I guess young kids don't care what the toy is packaged in.... most will just rip open the packaging and throw it away these days, making artwork and viewing windows a wasted effort.

[Paulbot]

This is what I was suggesting in another thread. I think Generations will become an online-only toyline with the basic (no need to be store friendly) Select packaging.

It could do away with "short-packed" figures (good) or it could lead to more cases where toys are priced based on popularity (as most of the online retailers seem to do already). I'd imagine if Hasbro could remove the middle men and sell them straight from their online stores they'd do that too. (Where is the Hasbrotoyshop.com.au site anyway...?)

[Tranceblade]

I'm surprised Transformers aren't already available in the Direct Market, I'm sure the demand is there if hobby/comic shops do it right.

[UltraMarginal]

I don't mind online if the prices are reasonable but when theres US Only Store Exclusives making up a large portion of the product, importing them here is a ridiculous expectation for most.

[BigTransformerTrev]

My thinking is that if the brand has been dropping off a little with the retailers lately (too much to choose from in a very competitive product area), and they decide to cut back to the three main lines that have cartoon/movie media support (Rescue Bots, Cyberverse, Movie Universe), then Generations as a whole could become the online exclusive toyline like Mattel did with the 2000's MOTU toys. It would also be one of the first toylines they could implement their "all-green" packaging, to see if it can work. Amazon have been doing it for a while with their Transformers exclusives, and I guess young kids don't care what the toy is packaged in.... most will just rip open the packaging and throw it away these days, making artwork and viewing windows a wasted effort.

This is what I was suggesting in another thread. I think Generations will become an online-only toyline with the basic (no need to be store friendly) Select packaging.

It could do away with "short-packed" figures (good) or it could lead to more cases where toys are priced based on popularity (as most of the online retailers seem to do already). I'd imagine if Hasbro could remove the middle men and sell them straight from their online stores they'd do that too. (Where is the Hasbrotoyshop.com.au site anyway...?)

Siege is the first line where I really got famous-character fatigue and skipped a lot of characters like Megatron, Optimus, Thundercracker etc. If the Generations line became all online I would hope that at least it would be made easy to obtain in all countries, unlike many of the Siege exclusives. But with the added cost of postage attached to every figure, I might dial my collecting back to only characters I don't have a Classicsverse version of yet.

I think it would depend on how many other TF lines they had going at the time, because Hasbro would want to make sure that kids are still getting a visual reminder that Transformers toys exist when they go to a toy store. At the moment besides Siege there are BotBots and Cyberverse, the new RBA toys are starting to show, nearly a year later there are still ad's for Bumblebee movie toys and those Evergreen figures - whatever that line is called - have been cropping up here and there. So yeah, there would still be TF toys on shelves. But if it was in the middle of a big gap between movies and there was one of those short lulls between cartoons, they might still want to make sure there is some Generations toys out there, even if simply to ensure that stores are earmarking and maintaining shelf space dedicated to TF toys.

[Bidoofdude]

Siege is the first line where I really got famous-character fatigue and skipped a lot of characters like Megatron, Optimus, Thundercracker etc. If the Generations line became all online I would hope that at least it would be made easy to obtain in all countries, unlike many of the Siege exclusives. But with the added cost of postage attached to every figure, I might dial my collecting back to only characters I don't have a Classicsverse version of yet.

I think it would depend on how many other TF lines they had going at the time, because Hasbro would want to make sure that kids are still getting a visual reminder that Transformers toys exist when they go to a toy store. At the moment besides Siege there are BotBots and Cyberverse, the new RBA toys are starting to show, nearly a year later there are still ad's for Bumblebee movie toys and those Evergreen figures - whatever that line is called - have been cropping up here and there. So yeah, there would still be TF toys on shelves. But if it was in the middle of a big gap between movies and there was one of those short lulls between cartoons, they might still want to make sure there is some Generations toys out there, even if simply to ensure that stores are earmarking and maintaining shelf space dedicated to TF toys.

I want to get Thundercracker and Skywarp, as their Tetrajets were in the actual pilot, but I'm just so swamped with Omega Supreme, Springer, Astrotrain, Smokescreen, Ratchet and the like that I just might not be able to. The new Earthrise Starscream amongst all the other new guys like Hoist and Grapple make it even harder to justify.