Collaborative J Balvin Soundwave

[griffin]

Something rather bizarre has popped up in the world of Transformers, and is packaged as part of the Transformers Collaboration series.
It is a bright yellow redeco of the original 1984 Soundwave toy, with two cassettes (orange Ravage and white Buzzsaw).

The toy was officially announced on instagram, but was taken down shortly afterwards... which is also strange.

The Soundwave toy is called J. Balvintron (named after a Columbian singer, J. Balvin), while the Ravage toy is called Vibras Stripes, and the Buzzsaw toy is called Energia Buzzaw. As an another strange element, this pack has included 2 blast effects from Siege, and one of Siege Jetfire's guns, instead of any of the original Soundwave's weapons.

According to TFW, which copied the information before it was taken down... This figure will be available only via the on the NTWRK app on Friday, July 2, at 7PM ET / 4PM Pacific time.... which is only about a day away.

That sounds very exclusive and limited, particularly if you need to have a specific app to buy one... if you trust sending money through an unknown app.
For those who were planning to collect all of the Collaboration toys, this one could be difficult to secure, and very expensive. (I'm getting a flashback to the Thrilling 30 gimmick around 2014, which started out very exciting, but resulted in several very obscure toys released in random countries)
In other words, this is NOT expected to be released domestically here in Australia.

[Autocon]

Gay flag across the crown. That may not go down well in certain parts of America

Whats the yellow face symbol about?

[1AZRAEL1]

As much as I love Soundwaves, this gonna be one of those way too expensive to even try own if it's that exclusive.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

if I stumbleed across this, I would happily take it. It's bright, fun and a little bit nuts. Would get, but not going to go out of my way.

[griffin]

The proper official announcement has now been made, letting us know that this pack will be us$70, for pre-order from July 13th... and still sounds like it will only be sold through a specific app.

[reillyd]

The app is called ntwrk and looks like the Home Shopping Network but as an app. Full of ridiculously overpriced goods. But it is on the Australian App Store, and if you have an American reshipper?.. that us$70 preorder is going to look pretty small compared to the eBay price weeks later. Just got to be prepared to set your timers for the release date

[griffin]

I'd be keen to try if I knew that it would work for us here... or if it isn't a limited quota of one per person, to piggyback onto another local planning on trying it.

[Deonasis]

I’m thinking a lot about this one. may try and get it.

No sign of Soundwaves batteries..

[DELTAprime]

I love Soundwave, but I think I'll pass as I'm really trying to narrow my collector focus.

[Paulbot]

Take some of those stickers away, replace with reprolabels of the G2 Decepticon logo and I think you get what a G2 Soundwave release would have looked like in 1993.