To those saying it might still get put into production even if it doesn't reach 8000 because "they made the mould and put the resources into it", did you forget that Takara decided not to run their Waverider shell because they didn't get enough pre-orders?

As @Gamerlingual said, nothing is guaranteed.

 

Anyone, notice the BS and audacity of Haslabs? Hasbro is taking preorders in parts of Asia, via Takara Mall, now through EB games for the Australians, but if the crowdfund does not reach 8,000 North American buyers, the fund fails and Unicron will supposedly not be made. What if Hasbro sells 10,000 units to the Asian and Australian markets, but fail to reach the 8k needed in NA?

 

Seems dumb on their part if they don’t put those numbers towards the goal.

 

They should just do an MTO production run of Unicron every year for a little more money and accept orders year-round for the following years production run.

they'd be stupud to let this go 'out of print' so to speak. They can fire up the factory once a year with niche market numbers and still make money on it.

and they have to make money on it. The investment has been made. They already paid the engineers to design this beast. Then again it is a really simple transformation on a really big toy with a few intricacies they've had no headache designing before like fingers and a jaw, and on a very large frame! So maybe the real cost is in production and 'perceived value' (gouging) rather than the engineering. I still don't see them tossing the investment if this go isn't successful. Maybe they'll downscale it to a regular Titan?

 

Kunihiro's gonna be pissed if this doesn't reach the 8000 backer mark.

 

Absolutely! I considered cancelling my MP-44 in favor of Unicron. I already have several versions of MP-10 (Standard, Nemesis, Ghostbusters, etc.), and there will obviously be repaints of MP-44 up the wazoo, but there will only be one Unicron... "and he has summoned me to this thread for a purpose..."

 

conspiracy theories dont benefit anyone. logical reasoning says part of the surge for the barge was orders placed by resellers (bbts and the like). what benefit would hasbro have of artifically skewing the numbers?

 

As I said, I think the worst case is that we just don't get a Haslab Unicron. As far as I know of how companies operate, I doubt there were engineers hired for JUST Unicron. They're engineers who were assigned the task at some point, and they did their work, and once that was done they moved to different projects.

This means that realistically NOTHING is really lost, money wise. The reality is that in design, ideas and concepts get trashed ALL the time. There's proof in every industry, whether it be video games or Transformers or cars or guns. It isn't a big deal because at the end of the day, no molds have been made yet. I think its safe to presume that part of the reason why this is to be crowd funded is to get US consumers to foot the bill for the molds. If Hasbro has already invested money in the molds, then I doubt we would've gotten this as a crowdfund to begin with...they would've just released it via retail channels to recoup the cost of the molds.

 

Why? He already got his paycheck.

 

Which are..? Would love to see a source.

 

This is exactly what I did for essentially the same reason. Only one shot at this guy. I'll be able to find the MPs I cancelled to fund it later.

 

I get that the expectation should be NA has to get 8000 before it’ll get made, however it just doesn’t make sense business wise.

If 8000 is a money making run, ($4.6 million) I just cannot see Hasbro dropping the project if NA = 6000, Japan = 2000 and AU =1000 ($5.175 million). That’s more than than the original backing number.

Not likely but what if the other regions come in over 8000 combined and NA is only at 4000? There has to be some consolidation of demand before the final decision is made. Having it all hinge on one single region is just crazy.

 

Hasbro is NOT selling it through Takara mall. Takara is. Two separate companies that work together. Keep that in mind. They are not the same company.

 

I know I'v mentioned it, but yeah- MP 44 is the most expensive Transformers release up until, well, Unicron, and so collector's who want both will probably be charged about the same time. That's close to a thousand bucks or over, depending on where you get MP 44. Just another reason this was bad timing.

 

My analysis certainly isn’t perfect but I would defer to the Barge as the most relevant benchmark for Unicron.

Considering the Barge only needed 5,000 backers but reached 8,800 backers I don’t believe Hasbro faked those numbers. Why would they? It wasn’t close enough to failing to require faking it. That doesn’t mean Hasbro won’t for Unicron since it has to hit a higher number, but there isn’t precedent to believe it likely.

 

Why haven't they announced any extras or bonuses like they did with the Barge? Those are def going to help start boosting numbers.

 

One of most confusing marketing campaign in recent times. Resellers in Asia are taking pre-orders for haslab Unicron but the entire project hinges on the crowdfunding effort in NA. So what's the point of opening the pre-order to the entire globe if the project is still an uncertainty? Why not wait for the NA crowdfunding to conclude before deciding on the next move? Bizzare...