It should be noted that this was a comic book shop sighting, not mass retail. Probably no reason to jump in the car, if anything I figure we will be digging through discount stores like Ross, TJ Maxx, etc to find this guy. Especially when you consider Ultra Magnus and Thundertron are already showing up at these locations and Beast Hunters is apparently already showing up at Toys"R"Us. However the OP who found Skyquake states they know the shop owner and he was not imported, but shipped directly from Hasbro.
Kowing that I bought a Kup and a Vehicon at Ross yesterday, won't surprise me if Quake does come out their first.
I see why many people are buying Skyquake. Besides from being a completest myself, he has a pretty good mold that's worth every centavo (or penny in this matter ).
Why is everyone doubting Skyquake will get a mass retail release? At least he's a Hasbro release, unlike the last wave of DOTM.
Everyone's basing that though on the patterns previously often set for end-of-line Hasbro releases. They are going from Prime to Beast Hunters, and sometimes, unreleased toys from the previous series either come in extremely limited quantities, or they get dropped from the schedule altogether.
I believe that it's not the case because end of line toy such as Animated Blackout only get a Takara release when canceled. I'm pretty sure I've seen the end of line repaint of Animated Jazz at retail anyways
Loads of late-line assortment Animated never happened. Goldfire Grimlock, Wasp, Mercenery Swindle, Vortex Blurr, US Blackout, Voyager Thundercracker, Voyager Mudbuster Bulkhead - a lot were at various stages of being ready to go, but never happened. Also, RTS had Lugnut, Deep Dive, Strafe and Grappel - never released at US retail until much later at Ross. Same with the one assortment of Scouts that got released. Late-line items were always ones who had a habit of shuffling into the realm of "hard to find" like Armada Nemesis Prime, in recent years that problem got worse with last assortments being missed at US retail entirely until they appeared by a fluke in stores like Ross. Or in some cases, they simply never made it, like Wheeljack and Soundwave from Dark of the Moon, who were released in Asia in US packaging. TL;DR version - it's a legit concern given past trends.
Considering Thundertron , Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus can be had for $13-$14 from Ross / Marshalls / TJ Maxx and the only way to pre order Skyquake is by buying a case for around $105 shipped from BBTS. It is almost worth paying the Ebay price to guarantee you will actually be able to own the figure at this point.
