I told you guys before over and over. There will always be an overabundance of Bumblebee action figures that Hasbro will make whether its still pegwarming "Nitro" Bumblebee or some other gimmick themed Dark of the Moon Bumblebee figure pegwarming alot in Walmart, Kmart and anywhere.

Even witih Transformers Prime, all I see is bumblee everywhere.

At least with the Fall of Cybertron videogame action figures at leas I can find Shockwave and Optimus Prime for once.

I would rather see a store pegwarming with like 30 Shockwave Fall of Cybertron figures instead of having to see 5 pegs in a toy aisle pegwarming with tons of Dark of the Moon Nitro Bumblebee

 

Even if this were to happen, a peg warming Transformer is a peg warming Tranformer. I highly doubt we'd have any difference in the number of disgruntled opinions if Bumblebee were replaced with another Transformer in abundance.

 

My biggest fear is Hasbro pulling a Mattel and sabotaging themselves with the over production of BB. Like what happened with the 2002 MOTU line. It was a great line of figs and had an outstanding(IMO) cartoon going along with it. Problem was Mattel mistakenly thought that ALL kids wanted was He-Man and Skeletor, so the cases for every wave of figs was packed to the brim with them and all their gimmicky variations across the line. And very few secondary characters. And just like BB today, they clogged the hell out of the pegs.

Mattel realized their mistake and relented with the He-Men and Skeletors with the planned MOTU vs The Snakemen rebranding of the line. The figs were made and there was only *1* He-Man and Skeletor per case. But it was too late. All the major retailers pulled their support for MOTU and caused Mattel to cancel both the toy line and cartoon. Which was a damn shame because they were planning to move on to Hordak and the Horde after the Snakemen arc wrapped up on the toon. They were even gonna include She-Ra.

I fear for the same thing happening to Transformers. That the retailers will say "enough is enough" and cease their support of the Prime toyline and cause Hasbro to pull the plug on it and the show. Maybe even the FoC line too and cause all the unreleased stuff past the Bruticus wave to go on hiatus or straight up cancelled. Worst case scenario, I know. But still, should things keep going like they are...

 

Hasbro and the workers are losing their minds or something.

For Star wars they keep making another Darth Vader figure after another

with Transformers its freakin Bumblebee. Sorry but I still get tired of having to see like 5-6 peg racks full of Nitro Bumblee figures clogging up the pegs.

 

What's clogging the toy aisles in our area:
- FP RID Knockout, Shadow Strke Bee
- TFP Weaponizer Bee , Powerizer OP
- DOTM Voyager OP (the worst)

 

but, how will Collectors build their Bumble Swarm Army? (I really wish type would detect sarcasm) as Hasbro would think.

Figures, the character you can't really Army Build is the one on shelves (we got lucky with the Sweeps..... and Vipers....and BATs.....and Crimson Guard Troopers.....and Clone Troopers......and Zombie Vipers. I think I got off topic) but when we need Vehicon Legions, they shortpack the actual Army Builder

 

Hasbro was able to have Prime stay on air for a whole season last year without a toyline to back it up until this year because of DOTM so if Hasbro was able to do that then having the show go on without a toyline shouldn't be a problem. After all the show was orginally not going to have a toy line of it's own.


Besides my local Wal Marts are starting to do some adjustments to the TF asle which they're likely trying to rid the Bumblebee problem. I've heard many stores in America are doing the same thing too. So hopefully that's a sign of improvement.

 

Well if they don't agree with us on the 'Bee's they should.

 

Are you guys serious with this topic? Do you not understand why there are so many bumblebees? He is the most popular character with children and last time I checked, transformers was geared toward children. It's simple business. They are going to put as many of a character out as there is demand for it. Even my aunt, who doesn't know shit about transformers, knows who bumblebee is. This is the character that transformers is marketed around. Just because all of us here, on this board know more than bumblebee and optimus prime, doesn't mean the general public does. Go up to any kid and ask them who their favorite transformer is. 4/5 kids are going to say bumblee and 1/5 is going to say prime. I"m not saying that I'm happy with all the popularity over bumblebee, seeing as I think he's a shit character, but I understand how business works. Stop with these silly topics.

 

But did DOTM have problems of less shelf space and Bumblebee or someone else filling them?

 

Cheetor, Sideburn, and Hot Shot were kid target characters too, but they never had armies of them in stores during BW, BM, RID, Amada, Energon, or Cybertron.

There needs to be a balance, you have Bumblebee and then you have the other figures. Not every kid is going to like Bumblebee, I didn't like Cheetor when I was a kid during Beast Wars. I liked Rattrap, I didn't have to dive through pegs of Cheetors to find one Ratttap.

 

Dear Hasbro Toy Company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island,

While your toys have been the delight of children all over, I wish to address a Problem pertaining to the distribution of the Transformer character known as "Bumblebee". As I have seen, This character has been overpopulating store shelves since "Transformers Dark of the Moon". This is a Problem because with the massive overabundance of unsold figures, retailers are reluctant to sell any more of your toys. This affects me as a Buyer of your product and not just a Transformer Collector in General because it makes it harder to locate new figures to not only populate the Shelves of my own collection, but the toy box of the child I purchase toys for. I believe it would be within everyone's best interest if you produced fewer figures of Bumblebee and maybe gave the some other figure case space.
Sincerely,
a concerned Consumer.

 

Sooooo-

Is there still anybody on the boards who's adamant that Hasbro knows exactly what they're doing?

Seems like for quite a while there were some board members who were convinced Hasbro was on top of things and there was no Bee problem.

 

You're kidding, right?

 

Okay, but back then there weren't any movies out and TF wasn't as big as it is today. Most of the attraction to Bumblebee these days is because of the movies, not because of the cartoon.

 

"Hive" hahahaha. Nice!!!!

 

Thing is, TFP does not even get the amout of people watching as the movies did. So having the same amount of Bumblebees, for a show on a channel that some don't have or never heard of before, is just bad business.

The demand of TFP figures is not even near the demand of the movie figures. So the supply should of reflected that as well.

TFP Bumblebee should of been two per case, with other TFP deluxe figures. That would of balance stuff out, instead Bumblebee is left on the pegs as collectors and parents are getting the other figures.

 

Man! That just totally reminded me how hard BB was to find back then. How I miss those days.

 

Ah I remember those days. Shame MOTU had to be cancelled. I was really looking forward to the Horde season and the introduction of She-Ra.

Back to the topic at hand though, it does seem that the toy companies these days are more focused on trying to push a more select or in some cases one or two characters than trying to push a wide variety of them. Back then it'd be years before we'd get another iteration of Prime, and back then, he'd always be a big toy because parents were more likely to spend bigger bucks on leaders. GI Joe and Transformers were different in that they had a huge cast of characters versus something like TMNT or Batman. It's a shame that we lost the variety of a line, and instead get tons and tons of iterations of the same characters over and over again.

 

So true.

One of the really cool things about Transformers and G.I. Joe was that they didn't have a central hero in the same way He-Man and Starwars did. Many of the characters worked- really who ever your favorites were.

I had quite a few He-Man toys as a kid. At some point I lost He-Man somewhere. Until I got another one a few months later I pretty much couldn't play He-Man. Everybody else existed to be sidekicks or canon fodder. It was terrible.

Ram Man, Moss Man, Orco or MecknNeck (periscope guy, what ever his name was) just didn't cut it as the main hero.