Hasbro product and ratio release issues

[Demonac]

Which goes to show that both Hasbro and the retailers were asleep at the wheel. However I'm inclined to apportion more of the blame for that to Hasbro reps who should have been done a better job of pointing out how the line had done. The buyers might have been skittish, but the Japanese market research data combined with the fact that deluxes should have shelf-warmed should have been enough factors to push them over the line.

This makes no sense. What does Japanese market research have to do with us here in Australia? And what do Deluxe's have to do with Mega's?

Actually our problem has always been more that we typically miss out on, say, waves 2 and 3, we'll get wave 4, then miss out of 5 and 6 and then get wave 7 and miss wave 8.

Just looking at deluxe toys on the TF wiki, but it seems that we didn't miss much at all until the tail-end of a line. This is going back through to Armada. While some waves were harder to find, I bought pretty much everything locally at some point.

The only reason that the lack of toys is lower than it probably should be is that wave when the next order goes through, the wave that comes in is one which is comprised entirely of the figures in the gaps- meaning that generally the only gap missed is the last one.

That said, if it wasn't for BigW buying an entire wave of Voyagers, then we would have missed out on Soundwave in Cybertron, and that was a mid-line wave.

A major retailer did release it here. So what's the problem?

[bowspearer]

This makes no sense. What does Japanese market research have to do with us here in Australia? And what do Deluxe's have to do with Mega's?

Japanese Market research data (and I imagine US market research would have been done also) would have indicated the line worked where BM didn't. In fact when I first saw RiD toys in this country at TRU Chatswood, I distinctly remember a parent commenting excitedly on how they were actually cars again. Market research data would have shown that that was going to be the general response.

Furthermore are you saying that parents and people buying for kids aren't going to be the main toy market and that therefore far more deluxes and basics are going to be sold than Megas due to cost (people might spend $30 on a child's friend for a birthday party, but they're not about to spend $50 on them). Bundling basics up as Deluxes or Megas pushes them into a higher price point and makes purchases of them less frequent.

Just looking at deluxe toys on the TF wiki, but it seems that we didn't miss much at all until the tail-end of a line. This is going back through to Armada. While some waves were harder to find, I bought pretty much everything locally at some point.

Which raises a couple of interesting points which goes back to what I was saying. You said you looked at deluxes only, but most of the 2nd sereis of BM toys were basics and almost all the villains in RiD were Megas or Supers. You bring up going back to Armada, which is interesting because RiD and Beast Machines had shocking omissions in what was available here (to the point where RiD had the practically the same bad guy availability as the Skeleton Warriors toyline did).

A major retailer did release it here. So what's the problem?

A major retailer picking it up as an exclusive in a bulk lot and selling it off at clearance prices in bundles is something you class as a near miss. It's a situation where something is avoided in spite of an endemic problem. We got lucky with Soundwave, but as nothing has changed, when will it happen again? Or will we be saddled with another situation like G1 colour scheme Movie Jazz, where people have to pay $50 to get a deluxe figure locally?

Why is it so "inconvenient" to say that Hasbro has become a victim of its own success through suffering from the apathy that comes from markets where there is a lack of competition.

This has been a long term problem and now it's starting to clearly make itself visible once more. Why shouldn't this be something Hasbro is criticised over (with an eye to them possibly re-evaluating their approach to case assortment arangements, be it through sitting down with retail buyers, different case assortments for foreign markets,etc)?

[griffin]

(moved discussion posts that didn't directly relate to the Soundwave news topic)

[Hursticon]

Wow, 3 whole pages already!