Titans Return toys arriving in Australia

[Soviet Fox]

I had heard the problem was that they are distributed to the sellers under 1 id no. They aren't going to go to the expense of having to create their own product numbers and sort them. The whole random toy mess goes further bck thn the retailer

[Demonac]

Talk about lazy and inept customer service. How many people right now would be happy to but even at the slightly more than retail price If you could actually order what you want?

It's likes somebody actively doesn't want people to bother buying those things online from them.
I don't see this lucky dip BS from kmart, target, big w online or on ebay etc.

Kmart most definitely do the lucky dip with their stock. Target & Big W just don't sell those kinds of things online.

[griffin]

The demographics that are buying online are different to in-store.
And Toy companies have case assortments in ratios that benefit stores because they much bigger customers than dedicated online stores, and only occasionally have special case assortments just for online retailers (like solid cases of just one toy). They also set up assortment ratios based on the target audience of each toyline, like the Generations toys are often equal ratios in the cases, but movie/cartoon toys have a ratio similar to the character's involvement in the Movie/cartoon or its advertising & promo banners (more Bumblebees & Optimus toys per case than say, Movie Barricade or RID Jazz).
So even though we still often had a lot of Bumblebees shelfwarming at times, a lot of Bumblebees were still sold, because the general consumer who isn't a fan themselves, will more often buy the products that they recognise (or it's just a "safe" gift purchase, like for a nephew's birthday or the friend of your son who invited him to their birthday party)... and it is up to the smaller number of customers who are fans or committed kids, to buy up the short-packed oddities that they know and want.

As for those more serious Collectors, who are the majority demographic for online stores, they usually search for certain characters or collect whole waves, which would leave online stores with lots of the over-packed "feature character" toys that in-store non-fans would normally buy up, but don't make up as many sales in the online arena. And as such, you will see those toys being sold for significantly less, offset by higher prices of the items in the Case that will sell to collectors. (just look at BBTS with the way they sell new waves - they generally sell sets of the new toys in each wave, and charge a lot more if the case has any leftover figures that they then charge a lot less for - and for most of the Generations which are aimed at collectors, they've been able to have equal sets, and very rarely have leftovers that throws out the cost ratio for the complete sets)

This is why major retailers aren't likely to offer individual characters out of a case, because they have to have to price all the items in a case at the same price as in-store, and since most of the people who would normally buy the bulk of the assortment that isn't aimed at us collectors (the Bumblebees) are the ones who mostly buy in-store, the online part of that retailer will get stuck with lots of the products (characters) that weren't aimed at the people who mostly shop online for selected characters (us collectors).

[fatbot]

Be careful with TR Astrotrain, I just opened mine & found he has 2 left legs. He displays fine in robot & train modes, but it can't be transformed into shuttle mode.

A phone call to Hasbro in the morning is required to try & rectify the situation.

[Batfan007]

Kmart most definitely do the lucky dip with their stock. Target & Big W just don't sell those kinds of things online.

Target sells the combiner wars boxsets online, and they are not random?

[1AZRAEL1]

Target sells the combiner wars boxsets online, and they are not random?

That's because that is a box set, not individual bots.

[Bowser The Second]

It seems that all of wave 1 is starting to turn up at Myers now. Robina Myers had all the wave 1 Deluxes, Voyagers and Legends figures when I went there today.

[griffin]

The second wave of Titanmasters have been found at some ToysRUs stores now. That's the wave with Brawn, Clobber (Grimlock), Skytread (Flywheels), and Apeface.

[Batfan007]

That's because that is a box set, not individual bots.

But there are multiple box sets. My point was I did not see any of the multiple chain stores who stock them online at their own site and on eBay were not sending those out randomly.

[Trent]

But there are multiple box sets. My point was I did not see any of the multiple chain stores who stock them online at their own site and on eBay were not sending those out randomly.

It's got to do wit how they are cased at the factory. The Combiner box sets are generally two to a case of the same thing. The deluxes are an assortment.

Yes it sucks, but there is logic behind it.