That's interesting, as Hasbro are doing that in America (allowing certain online stores to start selling on the 12th, while real stores are not supposed to be selling before the 16th... but stores here and there already are).

I was going to email them on Friday to see if Australia was going to have something special happening, as other countries in our region were, but was sleeping most of the day.
I might have to try tomorrow... and maybe get a comment on what they think of the other major stores already selling toys for the last week or so.

(I don't think we will though, as they had already been promoting an in-store Barbie event for the end of the month, so a Transformers event would have been advertised by now if there were one on the 16th.)