Quote Originally Posted by Paulbot View Post
I think it's great that Hasbro have shared these reveals with our local fan community. Australia is obviously a smaller market but we're loyal and there's a lot of interest (as seen through this forum, the Facebook groups and other Aussies taking part in the international forums). Hopefully this will not be a once off and maybe we'll see more opportunities like this in the future. So thanks again Hasbro Australia!
Yes, it is great that Hasbro America/Global have seen some value in adding our Toyfair into their reveals schedule (along with their own American events and other scheduled reveals), and we've worked hard in recent years to earn their trust to disseminate the info and images as public as possible, and not claim ownership of the images (including the official images of Astrotrain and Ravage they have sent me to release).
Now, after everything has been released from the Australian Toyfair, if Hasbro America assesses the overall outcome and feedback from the global fandom as being worth the investment on their part to use us as a "March reveal" of some Transformers products, we could possibly see this as being an annual thing, with the possibility of having actual Transformers team members coming to Australia for Toyfair and the preview fan presentations.
Two years of begging and butt-kissing for us to have a similar preview event to what America has at SDCC and NY Toyfair, has finally paid off.

I notice a very "Evil" bias in these preview figures though? No Autobots? Galvatron and Astrotrain are a nice looking pair of robots with really complimentary colour scheme. The little Squeezeplay toy looks interesting. Bruticus in G2 colours is also very nice (and the white Blast Off jet doesn't look as out of place as a brown Blast Off jet looks on the regular release).
Yeah.... I didn't realise that they were all evil, but the evil bias was accidental, and my fault. I was told to pick some of the toys from the actual exhibit to bring to the meet, and just picked the ones I thought would get the most attention.
Galvatron - because of the pink version in last weeks Hasbro promo video, I chose it to reassure fans that the final version should be a proper purple colour.
Gen2 Bruticus - They had Superion and Victorion on display, and we've seen reveals of them already. We've only seen official images for Bruticus so far... and fortunately for us, someone posted up a huge gallery of Victorion online just two days ago, so our coverage would have been made meaningless.
Crashbash - it was him or Loudmouth, as they were the only two out of packaging in the display (Nightbeat and Terri-Bull were still sealed). I was actually having trouble deciding which one to bring, but recalled that the Japanese Skull(cruncher) has Crashbash, so people were already talking about it and trying to figure out how the headmaster fits into it. Considering how much people were impressed by how it plugs into the dino mode (including me), I think I picked the better of the two.

The other Titans Return toys on display for me to choose from were Hardhead, Blurr, Blaster, "Powermaster" Optimus, and Wheelie. I would have loved to have brought them all, but they needed to keep some toys on the shelves to show off to their customers (the Retailers).
Their selection of RID toys was very small, and only the Powersurge figures looked to be the only unreleased non-minicon figures on display.

I will be posting up photos of the exhibit soon-ish... I just still got a lot of photos to process first.