And the gahdamn scalpers are at it already! This hobby...smh.

cheez it grooves | eBay

 

Well played.

 

You have got to be kidding me.This is really a new low.

E=kibble;13634719]And the gahdamn scalpers are at it already! This hobby...smh.

cheez it grooves | eBay[/QUOTE]

 

I'll second this. One of the things I absolutely love about Hisashi Yuki's twitter is that energy and exuberance he seems to have for this product. He has a ton of fun with his own product it looks like, and that energy translates into hype for it.

While I think this post by Hasbro is pretty fun with Groove doing the "Robot," consider that Yuki does posts similar to this all the time. Just when you think we might have forgotten about a product that has yet to be released, Yuki reminds us again just how great toys are and how much he wants us to have them.

 

You guys are basically accusing Hasbro of "failing" to properly market a figure that keeps selling out within minutes of becoming avalaible.

Surely, with a stop motion video that feels less "corporate", Groove would sell out much faster!

 

But isn't the purpose of marketing to get people excited for a figure? To Hasbro's credit I feel they did a pretty good job of hyping up Slingshot and Wildrider, for instance. They built up some hype for it with the initial tease and got the community involved, by giving off the reveal after a certain number of likes. We also had things like a release date and more solid information of who's gonna be getting it.

In contrast, following the Groove threads there seems to be more general confusion of release and who's getting it, or anxiety that they might miss out on an exclusive. As far as I'm concerned, Hasbro HAS totally failed to market this guy. While it's still selling out, I'd argue that the overall mood for this release is a lot less lower than the previous exclusives. Coming up to it's release there was no solid release date, and no real acknowledgement of it's release after the Botcon reveal.

Again, the whole point of marketing is to get people aware and excited for products. When they hyped last year's releases pretty well, and then fail to do so with Groove, then yeah, I think this is most certainly a marketing fail.

 

Last year there wasn't a BotCon reveal because Quickslinger and Brake-Neck's release pre-dated BotCon.

So, not really comparable.

 

I'll make do with Afterburner.

 

It's about public relations, not marketing.

 

It's not that Hasbro's online/ social media marketing failed, it's that it sucked. All they did was make an announcement at Botcon and this lime stop take animation. They let us hype it up after they mane the botcon announcement, then did next to nothing until, yesterday, and they still have not give us any info other that "hey you might be able to buy Groove" Hasbro has put minimal effort in to that and it's worked so well for them because of fans so desperate for ZMORG GEE WON Defensor! that they bought him at inflated prices and justified it on the grounds that the did not want to "miss out" even though last years May mayher toys were still available just a few months ago.

 

Yes, the figure sold out ridiculously quick, but I'd wager that's only because of the stupidly limited quantities it was released in (compared to Quickslinger and Breakneck's initial release).

My big gripe, again as a professional, is that A) They don't give any of their upcoming figures the "Yuki Treatment" i.e. constant, fun updates and photos to get the fans psyched. Yuki is killing it with the Japanese releases and it's a solid lesson in marketing that Hasbro is just ignoring. Don't get me wrong, they're doing well enough, but imagine if they took a page from his book. And B) Communication. They posted that video and message well after all the initial stock had sold out and didn't point the more casual crowd in any direction regarding where they were or would be in stock. This is 2016, Hasbro has social media employees and the ability to tell their consumers anything, but they're not taking advantage of it like they could be. It just seems silly to me.