What is going on in Australia????

[griffin]

I assume that the TF3 figures are slow overseas as well? My guess would be that its the same case with similar looking figures etc. So hopefully we can will see a change in distribution at the very least that relies less on buying up masses fo the first wave and more on speading the line out a bit.

In America they seem to be having enough turnover of stock for stores to keep restocking, but I think Hasbro's endless promotions and freebies are the catalyst in their country. Something we could do with here just to move all this dead stock that's been sitting in the stores since May (I think the last time we had a promotion run directly by Hasbro AUS, would have been the Mailaway offer in 1987, when I got me my STARS base).

Recent promotions and freebies in America by Hasbro (in addition to store sales/promos, which is all we get here) that have helped generate sales in that country...

7th November - 25% off all non-exclusive items at the US Hasbro online store, PLUS free shipping (means $8 Deluxes posted free to your door in America)

21st October - $5 off coupons for Americans joining up to Hasbro's Facebook page (means $7 Deluxes, $5 HA Basics or $3 Cmdr figures).

1st October - $5 off coupons given out by Hasbro reps in US stores (again, giving Americans $7 Deluxes, $5 HA Basics or $3 Cmdr figures).

22nd September - Facebook competition for Americans to win prizes up to $5000.

22nd September - Roadshow travelling around America promoting Transformers DotM, Prime, The Ride and the MMOG... plus freebies.

17th August - Americans can receive $20 of free stuff with any purchase of $20 of toys, with up to 5 packs available to each address. (cost to Hasbro of each pack with shipping would be about $25, compared to the $4 profit to Hasbro of that $20 toy purchase)
PLUS, a chance to win an additional prize worth $1000.

11th August - Free Kreon Optimus with most Transformers Purchases on the Hasbro US website (still going until Nov 11th).

March 2011 - 16 prize draws for American fans, including free toy packs & movie premier tickets.

(not to forget the FREE Mailaway Ravage toy in 2009 for American fans, that we had to pay for in Australia, at TRU).


So even though we pay 2-3 times the price as Americans at the current exchange rate, and they get all the rewards from Hasbro... plus its been 89 days since we had a new mainline figure released in Australia... is there any wonder why fan sentiment is at an all-time low here.


I guess it just means that I will have to work harder at making sure this place/community stays interesting and active enough to compensate... to make sure that the dedicated and loyal fans stay keen on the Transformers brand, no matter how bad things get for us in this country.

[Paulbot]

Do you think that all those promotions in the US (which are a bit unusual) are another sign that the DOTM toyline has gone nowhere? Or should that be: has been not the big seller they'd hoped for?

I've started looking at the lists for the awards and if I'm looking correctly, across the regular releases we are behind by 10 new figures and 11 repaints. Is that a lot or not that many? It doesn't seem like that many really when it's across 7 different size classes.

Legion class
Wave 3 - 4 new toys (2 new, 2 repaints)

Commander class
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)

Action Sets
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (2 new)

Deluxe
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (2 repaints)
Wave 5 - 3 new toys (1 new, 2 repaints)

Voyager
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)
Wave 4 - 1 new toy (1 repaint)

Human Alliance basics
Wave 3 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint)
Wave 4 - 2 new toys (1 new, 1 repaint

Human Alliance
Wave 2 - 1 new toy (1 new)

I also like to keep in mind that earlier this year most of us though we'd never see the Warpath, Wheeljack & Thundercracker wave here, but they are still sitting on shelves in Kmart now, so I don't think it's a lost cause yet.

Except for the large Human Alliance toys. (Yeah I've given up on those personally.)

[Zippo]

I do have to laugh that a New Zealander found:
AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)

Similar or worse situation over here in New Zealand for Transformers.
Wave 1 over and over and over.

[bowspearer]

I do have to laugh that a New Zealander found:
AUGUST 13TH - LAST NEW (non-exclusive) TRANSFORMERS ACTION FIGURE AT MAJOR RETAIL IN AUSTRALIA (DOTM HATCHET)

Similar or worse situation over here in New Zealand for Transformers.
Wave 1 over and over and over.

That we're in this state doesn't surprise me at all. Hasbro's buying agreements with retailers have been leading to this for years in terms of early wave oversaturation. Actually what amazes me is that they actually managed to make it work this long without running into a problem. I'm not just talking about movie lines but series lines as well.

Movie lines you tend to be able to get away with flooding the market with core characters. Most of the line has no screen time and therefore isn't a personified icon of a celluloid mythological figure- yet even then you can only do so many versions of characters before even completists have enough.

However the moment you get into series territory and therefore ensemble territory, you run into the tyranny of the toy cartoon. As Flint Dille said, their mandate even back as far as G1, was to portray the toys in the best possible light.

The upshot of that is that because the kids are individuals, the characters they're drawn to as their favorites will vary from child to child.

The moment you're in that territory and you're shooting yourself in the foot in a market that say, might favour Bulkhead over Prime. The thing is that when you start going into voyager territory or larger, you're talking about parents and children's favorite characters, and so it can backfire- especially when characters like Bulkhead have been written on the screen to be the big brother every kid would love to have.

At some point, Hasbro needs to understand how effective the toy cartoon is and start marketing based on characterisation in media, or visa-verse.

Also Hasbro Aust needs to recognise where things went to hell in a hand-basket since they separated from Hasbro UK and re-institute approaches which worked back then.

This will make me sound old, but I remember calling up the product manager for Hasbro in Rydalmere as a kid to ask about upcoming lines (man that was awesome looking back) and that was one of the things which went out the window early on when things changed over.

Things haven't been quite right with Hasbro for a while now, including gutting their customer service dept, and this is where it finally starts to bite them in the butt.

I only hope that they take this as a wakeup call and start addressing issues which should have been adressed a long time ago.

[griffin]

Thanks to the recent sighting of Voyager Sentinel Prime at two TRU stores, the countdown stopped at 87 days.
I think 3 months between the release of new action figure moulds (of non-exclusive mainline figures) is a record that I hope we don't break.
(if it weren't for Kre-O, Rescue Bots, gimmick toys and TRU exclusives, we wouldn't have had anything new here)

[kaiden]

wow voyager sentinel prime is here?!? i was actually in the middle of arranging 1 to be purchased from America this week.

the problem for me is that they are so slow with bringing out these toys locally that I and many others have just bought them from overseas. I was waiting for that wave of voyagers and the human alliance roadbuster+leadfoot but have resorted to buying from scalpers on ebay.

basically hasbro is losing sales here because of their ineptness and those scalpers are the ones who are profiting.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Recent promotions and freebies in America by Hasbro (in addition to store sales/promos, which is all we get here) that have helped generate sales in that country...




I guess it just means that I will have to work harder at making sure this place/community stays interesting and active enough to compensate... to make sure that the dedicated and loyal fans stay keen on the Transformers brand, no matter how bad things get for us in this country.

Although I must admit, before the movie lines were out and about, there was always a bit of a lull between lines. I remember it was quiet on the board between Cybertron and whatever came afterwards (iirc), so I think that we manage to keep the board active at the very least even when there isn't that much happeing toy-wise.

I had a good (and sad ) chuckle at your STARS promotion comment there Griffin. Marketting 101 FAIL!

Do you think that all those promotions in the US (which are a bit unusual) are another sign that the DOTM toyline has gone nowhere? Or should that be: has been not the big seller they'd hoped for?

My guess would have been that they expected them to be as popular as ROTF/TF1 and wanted to avoid the massive gap of nothing that they suffered when everything sold out. Unfortunately it looks like the similarity of the characters and the masses of toys they have made have coincided to create a large glut of figures. Which I suspect MAY be heavily discounted to clear out the wave for Christmas. Makes me wonder if we see any more complete waves before then as I assume they would want to be rid of ROTF before the Prime toys hit shops in ...

March....

wow thats a lot of time for discounted toys I guess. Not that I expect Hbro to discount much.

Looks like Prime toys will be out here in time for me to have finished importing them all!!

[griffin]

Thanks to the recent sighting of Voyager Sentinel Prime at two TRU stores, the countdown stopped at 87 days.
I think 3 months between the release of new action figure moulds (of non-exclusive mainline figures) is a record that I hope we don't break.
(if it weren't for Kre-O, Rescue Bots, gimmick toys and TRU exclusives, we wouldn't have had anything new here)

I hate digging up old topics, but it looks like we are closing in on this record again... looking back on the First Sightings topic, it's now 62 days since the last new toy (Guzzle on December 11th) was found in Australia.
At least during that 87 day record, we had some redecos and non-action-figure toys released. This is almost two whole months of absolutely nothing new.

[snaketales]

I hate digging up old topics, but it looks like we are closing in on this record again... looking back on the First Sightings topic, it's now 62 days since the last new toy (Guzzle on December 11th) was found in Australia.
At least during that 87 day record, we had some redecos and non-action-figure toys released. This is almost two whole months of absolutely nothing new.

And that's over Christmas which you think would be the ideal time to pump out new stock on the shelves.

[Golden Phoenix]

This is almost two whole months of absolutely nothing new.

I had been wondering why I actually had money in my bank account