Yep... Canceled my preorder on BBTS for the Bumblebee movie Optimus Prime & preorder him alongside his wave mate Rampage on Amazon. It looks like unsurprisingly Amazon will be getting them a month ahead of BBTS too.

 

Not working when I try to add him to cart. The listing is still up, he just doesn't appear / becomes unavailable once added.

 

It's not uncommon for Amazon pre-order dates to suddenly move up. I think all three of the Prime Wars exclusives did this.

Caching. Hopefully come April he'll be more readily available.

 

Well Rampage went back up to 50 dollars preorder... Hope everyone that wanted him got him when he was 20 dollars.

 

And now he's back to 50. Looks like it is the same case as last week, where they did a small preorder number. Managed to nab him myself at least but hopefully this means for everyone else that the Pulse will also put him up soon.

 

is there any listings anywhere for studio series shatter? she's supposed to be available soonish right? yet i'm seeing preorders for waves after hers

 

Nope. Near as I can tell Hasbro Pulse did preorders for the toys they showcased at Toyfair in order to build buzz around the new site. See it at the show, preorder it now... that sort of thing. Other sites instantly jumped on this and did their own preorders FAR earlier than they normally would (look at Rampage... preorder just dropped on BBTS a month before hand).

I would say we'll begin seeing Shatter, Scrapmetal, and Cogman within a week or so

 

Did anybody else just have all of their Wishlists vanish from their profile? Mine are inaccessible.

 

Just snagged a 29.99 Rampage preorder.

 

I saw that I had a gmail notification about the Amazon thread on TFW. I didn't even look at my email. Refreshed the Amazon listing and bought. Thanks!

 

That went quick, back up to $50 again.

 

Thanks! Just placed my preorder in at 29.99! Availability probably trickling in and out to ones's annoyance/Amazoyance. But available now 12:32 p.m. PST ymmv! Good luck!

 

ugh!!! amazon jp had MP36+ for 18000 yen yesterday and now it's back up to 23000   I snoozed...I lost

 

An alternative reading would be this:

Over the past few years, RKillian has persistently propagated this theory that Hasbro is deliberately prohibiting online retailers from listing new toys (even those that have already been officially revealed by Hasbro at a show) for preorder until a specific date at the specific request of Walmart, who are demanding a certain lead time to put those toys on store shelves to encourage people to shop at Walmart rather than preordering toys online.

The recent Toy Fair reveals appear to have been either an exception to this rule, or the beginning of a policy change: Everyone, including Walmart and Target, has been allowed to list those new toys for preorder at the same time. Most likely has something to do with Hasbro Pulse.

However, this only affected the toys specifically revealed at New York Toy Fair (plus Siege Deluxe Class Mirage and Impactor, Commander Class Jetfire and Titan Class Omega Supreme, who were revealed a few days earlier), but not their wavemates who were revealed earlier (i.e. at New York Comic-Con back in October) or later (i.e. at the Australian Toy Fair).

That's why Studio Series Voyager wave 6 Optimus Prime and wave 7 KSI Boss (officially "revealed" at NYTF) were for preorder but wave 6 Rampage and wave 7 Long Haul (both revealed at NYCC) weren't. Or why Siege Deluxe Class wave 3 Red Alert (officially "revealed" at NYTF) is for preorder but his wavemates Brunt and Refraktor (both revealed at NYCC) still aren't in many places.

 

Anyone else in the US having problems ordering from Amazon Japan? I am getting an error saying they will not ship to my address, even though I've been able to order from there in the past. It won't even let me order items I have bought previously like cordon

 

A problem with that theory: we've gotten more new wave sightings from other stores than from Walmart. Targwt usually is first and heck I think Meijer in the Midwest has gotten more than Walmart recently.

 

Only specific sellers will ship overseas. This includes Amazon itself, fortunetly, but not most of them. It should tell you if you signed in when you view a products page if it will ship to your saved address.

 

Thanks I saw that after the fact

 

Not entirely a problem with the theory. 1.) Walmart tells Hasbro when, but other retailers may have gotten their shipment in and broke the "date". 2.) Walmart may actually be sitting on these and just haven't put them out. I know of several in my area that have Voyagers and Deluxes just languishing in the back because the workers don't know where they are and won't go get them. (One store had six on hand, because he couldn't find them on the shelves, he actually took the Palm Pilot/Telzone and 0'd them out. Like they weren't even there. I'm still in shock. He refused to look for them, btw.)

Walmart gets them first, yes, doesn't mean they put them out first. Especially if they're sitting on them. You snooze, you lose.

 

All of those were revealed as part of the build-up to Toy Fair, though.