Will we be getting HA mudflap?

[Seraphim Prime]

I know that at Toyfair, Kmart had pledged to release the full set with 3 mid-year and 3 year-end. Although most of the Kmarts I've gone to recently have still had plenty of Bumblebees, Sideswipes, and Skids figures so that it may have them rethinking whether they release Mudflap, Barricade, and Jazz at the end of the year.

[griffin]

They only just released them for the July sale, so give them a few weeks at least. And I'd rather see toys available for a few months than a few weeks (or days in some cases), so we can get to them when we can afford them, or after we've heard about how good they are from others.
Hasbro or the retailers just don't seem to recognise that element of the consumer - especially kids or their parents, who may not buy something until a birthday or other event, and the characters/toys were only around for like 2 weeks. At least that was one good thing about Gen1, all the way through to Beast Wars - the toy companies released more of a smaller range over a longer period of time, and we could still get a lot of the things we wanted for birthday and christmas.

[Seraphim Prime]

They only just released them for the July sale, so give them a few weeks at least. And I'd rather see toys available for a few months than a few weeks (or days in some cases), so we can get to them when we can afford them, or after we've heard about how good they are from others.

I don't think I meant to sound as harsh as it did in the end. I wasn't judging them for not selling out within a few days. Having been involved in three toy sales already, and getting ready for my fourth, trust me when I say people are not happy when they get there on a Saturday to find the toy in the catalogue that they wanted has already sold out! Bad for customer service and brand reputation.

The HA however was a big-ticket item in their catalogue, and is going for quite a good special (30% off) that I would have expected there to atleast be some kind of dent within the stock levels which I personally haven't seen yet. Although the last time I looked was Saturday, and apparently Sunday was quite a busy day for the shops, so who knows?

Hasbro or the retailers just don't seem to recognise that element of the consumer - especially kids or their parents, who may not buy something until a birthday or other event, and the characters/toys were only around for like 2 weeks.

At least that was one good thing about Gen1, all the way through to Beast Wars - the toy companies released more of a smaller range over a longer period of time, and we could still get a lot of the things we wanted for birthday and christmas.

I would put more of the blame for this at the retailers' feet rather than Hasbro's. I think a lot of this is the fault of the retailers pressuring Hasbro to have new stocks to fill their pegs or risk losing shelf space. Hasbro has since been trying to meet the demands of both the retailers and the parents by offering new versions of popular mainline characters (Deluxe Ironhide, Tuner Skids, Electrostatic Jolt, etc) so that a version of the character will still be on the shelf for a parent to buy for their child come birthday/christmas.