I received this email from HLJ this morning. It is the first email like this I have gotten from them since ordering through them, and it would leave me to believe that most people wold be better off ordering this piece sooner rather than later.

it seems that many of the things TakaraTomy have done post merger have been more limited than what was done by Takara pre-merger.

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Hello all,

We have been advised that for the upcoming release
of the MP-06 there may be a small shortage of
available pieces. Rest assured we are doing all we
can to get enough to fill everyone's orders, however
we ask that you please be prepared for the possibility
that we may not be able to provide the full quantity
you originally ordered.

I am sorry for the inconvenience, we should have a
good idea as to whether any cuts will actually need to
be made in the next week or two.

 

Sooo...

That kinda doesn't sound like good business sense to me, potentially HURTING your possible sales on a figure people will want to buy.

And watch as we get some new Kissplayers next, or even some toy versions of all those fanarts of anime girls wearing transformer armor.

 

Pfft, a few weeks after the first batch are sold, I bet TAK/TOM start production again.
They did it with MP Megs, though I dont know if he was said to be limited in the first place.

 

TakTom said early on that they were targeting collectors, and perhaps more limited production runs are one of the ways they are meating this benchmark.

Either way the recent releases they have made have all sold out quick, and have remained relatively difficult to track down even when more supplies have been made.

 

So, IS there another production run of MP-Megatron on the way then?

I haven't gotten confirmation yet.

 

Could this be a garbage marketing ploy?

email: "Omg shortages, lol."
reader: "ZOMG preorder ftw"
** heads to BBTS, TFSource, etc **

 

Dunno, never ordered one, but as far as I heard there was going to be.

 

The production run is probably getting cut short to get a head start on the USA Edition (or what ever it's called) MP version of Starscream. That's my guess.

 

After an initial production run of a mold, it's assumed that later productions will not sell as well because there will be people who say "I already have that, I'm not going to get it again."

The production run shortage is usually not as severe with redecos as straight re-runs, but it is definitely present, often cutting the production to 75-50% of what the first was. The idea is to sell quickly through a mold and avoid stocking anything (a danger with second runs or redecos of anything), and move on to another item which makes up the other 50 or so percent of the production. In this case, that item is probably the US deco Starscream.

 

I 'early bird' ordered ages ago from them and have not recieved any such email from them.

 

perhaps this is specific to HLJ, saying that they're not getting as many personally as they thought they would?

 

Not from HLJ it isn't. They just emailed us as a wholesale account holder to let us know that the orders have a small possibility of being cut. This is unusual because the only other time this happened was with the whole THS 02 fiasco. Take it for what its worth, but if you want one of these and don't have a preorder somewhere I wouldn't wait too long.

As far as marketing from TakTom it could be a ploy, but the recent stuff they have done has indeed been produced in lower numbers.

 

Ill get one of ebay... a few bucks here and there no biggie.

 

Well...that sucks, but if I can't get one thats a ton of money I'll be saving.

 

Could be, but HLJ is a large volume exporter, and their supply chain issues are generally indicative of overall supply issues.

I'm not trying to be Chicken Little her, but just passed this info on as an FYI that you may be bale to save a few bucks by buying Skywarp sooner rather than later, ALA MP Megatron.

 

I never really understood the short run mentality...is the secondary market completely invisible to them? Look at the price of MP-01 Convoy less than four years later and tell me they couldn't make a mint letting the unsold MPs leak out of a warehouse a couple of years down the road.

 

thats lame. "Just go ahead and buy it before you even see some clear pictures or hear anything else about it".

 

They could just not allow pre-orders and then end up making an even smaller run and you wouldn't get it at all. Having stores able to take pre-orders so far in advance can give them an idea of whether or not they actually need to make a few thousand more. This happens with a lot of items that may not be as wildly popular as transformers or a few other key properties.

Remember, they don't want to have inventory sitting on store shelves and getting clearanced like the hasbro 20th prime release in the US. This allows them to get other products on shelves and retail stores know they won't be sitting on a pallet of an item for a year.

 

I preordered MP-06 back in April, so I'm hoping my order is safe. Has TakTom announced an official release date for Skywarp?

 

I ordered mine as soon as it was annouced so I should be fine.