Universe Superion and Bruticus Maximus released in Australia

Everything costs more in Australia, regardless of the exchange rate, dudes. Just because it's $70AUD/$40USD over here, it does not mean it will cost that much in the United States. From what I understand, because of retailer monopolies like Wal*Mart, things are sold below-cost in the US anyway, so you'll always get things considerably cheaper.


Whoa with the belligerent patriotism, mate. I was making an accurate comment on the fact there have been sightings in the US that have turned out to be hoaxes, which is largely why US toy sightings require photographic proof + a scan or photograph of the receipt, while sightings in most other countries can be taken at face value on the word of the person reporting.

In that case the Movie Scouts shouldn't have been Target exclusives because I saw them at stores such as TRU in Germany.

Plus, lots of other toys that were exclusive to Target in the USA but available at other stores in other countries.

RE: The radio - even if you are naive / ignorant enough to assume that Tesla was 100% responsible for the creation of the radio, there's still the fact that he was a Serb who later became an American citizen. Conclusively, the radio is not an American invention. If you had to attribute it to a nation then I suppose it would be Austrian/Scottish/Welsh/German.

RE: The television - an invention that traces back to work done by a German, a Scotsman and a Russian.

RE: The internet - one of the founding inventors was Polish. A lot of what we call the internet today is thanks to our good pals at CERN. In fact, the "world wide web" is a European invention.

Picked mine up tonight, both of them. They're lovely... makes me wish I'd found Classics Devvy ages back... but dunno if he was released here. $140 FTW, my birthday present, now I'm broke for the next two weeks

That said, there's still a bunch at Myers in Queen St Mall in Brisbane.

I noticed you left out his comments?? He made a very broad not too flattering comment about Americans that was uncalled for. I stand by my comments.

Your comment wasn't as accurate as you would like to believe. I recently posted a sighting and it didnt "require photographic proof + a scan or photograph of the receipt" as you stated. I suggest you think twice before you make unnecessary statements about an entire group of people.

Target Exclusive Animated Rescue Ratchet with Legends Prowl and Starscream Out in US

First of all I thought this might be out of place at first but he did say SOME and it is a true statement I've seen the hoaxes (SP?) by Americans

On the ohter hand I've never heard of a a hoax in another country, not saying it doesn't happen, I just have not seen or cared about other country sightings to check on them much

There might be a few reasons for this to have been taken as legit and I'm thinking it's mainly cuz a lot of people don't care about these sets
or that they were sighted in another country first so it's safe to assume they will pop up in America
or people could take you as a reliable source that doesn't need to show proof

Keep in mind a lot of people want to see final box art and other pics of toys they don't have. The first country with a sighting gives the rest of the world a chance to see what Hasbro/Takara decided to change from their 'OFFICIAL' pictures to what they really end up selling
Wasn't exactly called for he was indeed making a point although it might not have been the best way to put it. Just chill dawg

I have to agree that things do end up cheaper in the States any way you look at it but I wouldn't go as far as to say they are selling them "below-cost" that just flat out makes no sense. Hasbro wouldn't make say $100,000 worth of toys and only sell them to retailers for $90,000 There's a huge difference between selling toys below cost and selling at a lower mark-up value, which is what happens in America due to huge corperate whores like Walmart and in turn it probably causes the rest of the world to take the hit and pay more which I don't think is far. It's actually gotten so crazy in the states that Walmart stated selling deluxes at $7.77 then Target marked down to $7.99 and even Fred Meyer dropped to 9.89 when they used to be like 11.99 there

I think you are on the right track. Imagine if I made the comment that "some people who use the word dawg are lazy". You may not be lazy but you are going to be offended by the comment.

I just read the thread again and ironically enough it appears he was commenting on something that was said by MISATOKITTY whose location is listed as Queensland. So I ask you, why was there even a comment about Americans at all????

From what I've seen on documentaries on Walmart, their sheer control of the retailing market in North America (something like over 80%, I believe) gives them the power to dictate what prices *they* would be willing to pay wholesale for goods, and thus they could take a take a significant loss upon each individual product sold so they can undercut their competition. This also had the side effect of causing many, many manufacturing jobs in the US to go overseas.

Pretty much prices for stuff in the US have stayed pretty similar for a long time while in the rest of the world they've more or less steadily gone up. For example, the $9.99 price for Deluxes in the US has been around since 1996 or so, and it's only recently gone up, but in Australia it used to be in the teens in 1996, and now it's about $25-30. It was worse when the US dollar kept sliding down in 2007-2008, making our dollars near parity - some of the big-ticket leader class TFs cost twice or almost thrice as much.

I did say some Americans. As Lucs pointed out, there have been cases of hoaxed sightings in the US, but such hoaxed sightings are virtually unheard of in most other countries.

Also, as this is an American website, in my observation people more or less demand pictures of the toy + receipt as proof of general release (rather than being obtained through channels in Asia), particularly in the case of toys that Hasbro hasn't bothered to tell anybody about.