Well, that's just dandy, but its your experience. Yes, its easier to see when things should be available and what is coming out now, much easier than 15 years ago. And your ability to order via Amazon or Pulse is great.... for you. But I am not in the US. Exclusives are often locked via Amazon who wont deliver outside the US for them (not always, but it happens) and Pulse.....? Good luck even being able to WATCH anything through Pulse outside the US.

I have been able to get most of the things I wanted as preorders, except that to do this I had to stalk local online retailers. Thrust was available at a local online store for a total of 25 minutes over here. I preordered the Ramjet/Dirge set from the same online retailer here, and Hasbro cut their stock. I can only speculate why, but if someone said it was to feed the US market I would not be shocked. So, your comments about 'choosing not to preorder' only hurting myself are incorrect. I dont preorder now because I dont want to end up with Thrust and not be able to pick up Ramjet and Dirge, again.

 

That's funny, because this is an entire WALL of condescension.

Wasn't an issue for me, because my travels naturally took me all around the tristate area. Toy hunting was simply a extra which made the long commute (and now Uber runs) more rewarding. The gas used was used anyway, and the toys were a bonus. I'd rather pick up the figures in the course of my normal voyages than pay extra for shipping. Of course, my situation doesn't apply to all.

Not a fan of preordering for Hasbro product because you never know what you're going to get. Missing paint apps? Broken pieces in package? And Hasbro's Customer Service policy is to send a "comparable" figure, so you aren't guaranteed to get the same figure if there is a problem. The issues might be rare, but they do happen. I still much prefer to be able to inspect the toy in the store.

Not to mention, you shouldn't have to schedule your life around your hobby. Or have to skip something important to make sure you don't miss the announcement and criminally short availability window. If you choose to do it that's one thing, but it shouldn't be a requirement. I'd be less critical of preorders if the figures weren't usually already sold out by the time I actually read the news and see the photos. If the preorders are meant, as you say, to make sure the amount of product doesn't drastically exceed demand, then why is the production run preset (and at such a small number)? Why not have the window be a few days/weeks, and let the production run be set by the actual number of orders, rather than making a set, small amount, and saying "May the odds be ever in your favor?"

And that's not even getting into the trend of preorders being cancelled. Used to be when you preordered you were guaranteed a toy.

Hasbro should care, because if there's unmet demand, that's missed revenue. As well as they did last year, how much better might they have done if they'd made enough to meet the demand?

AS it is, I'd say Hasbro is trying to enhance the mystique of their product by creating artificial shortages. I can understand being conservative in what is made but I don't understand limiting preorders to a set number rather than letting the preorder numbers set the production run.

It's like EVERYTHING is a "Limited Edition" these days, and it's no wonder a lot of people are getting tired of that game. There's no need for it.

No it's about not wanting to take the risk on getting a bum figure, or no figure, either due to missing the window or having your preorder cancelled without warning. I actually have a lot more confidence in preordering 3P stuff than Hasbro's. By rights it should be the other way around.

Why? It's not like these things are essentials. You've just bought into the "gotta have it now" mentality the OP is talking about, They're toys. They should be fun. A hobby shouldn't require this much stress or snap decisionmaking.

It's supposed to be a HOBBY, not a second job.

 

They used to make enough to satisfy everyone then overstock was clearance or next years Ross/Tjmaxx/Ollies Christmas sale.

 

That was an estimate, which by nature was imprecise. I’m talking about letting the number of preorders set the production run, rather than Hasbro somehow running out of a toy that isn’t even out yet. If they want us to preorder their stuff, Hasbro needs to give us some confidence that it’ll be available to preorder.

Yeah, there’s some risk in estimating a production run to go to brick and mortar retail, but how risky would it be to produce 100000 of a figure when they’ve already sold them? They should at least make enough to actually cover the preorder demand - any preordered toy is already bought. Any person who goes on the site and see the preorder sold out is a lost sale.

 

This is the key point for me. Sure, you COULD spend the time checking all the US and international online stores, find the preorder that is still available, and then hope that they dont get their stock cut by Hasbro, but this is what I do to escape the stress of my job. If my 'hobby' requires me to spend a weekend online stalking a toy that will sell out in less than an hour, then its no longer a hobby. And if Hasbro are going to make it difficult, then they lost a sale. Sure, maybe they wont care, but at least I will be better for it, taking a step back from the treadmill. And, make no mistake, Hasbro ARE making it difficult. You can talk about the pandemic and the loss of TRU, but when these things are exclusives in the US to specific stores, international customers are left high and dry. Ramjet and Dirge were an Amazon US exclusive, and people are STILL waiting for these to arrive, and if you are outside the US your options are limited. And how many exclusives did we get for Earthrise? Of the ten (?) Earthrise Seekers/Coneheads, ONE was not an exclusive.

 

I agree with everything you said, even this bit I'm quoting, but I have some thoughts on the bolded part:

Roughly once a year for the past ten years, until the pandemic happened, I would get a table at a toy show/convention and sell off pieces of my collection I no longer wanted. For every figure I sold for less than I paid for it, I sold two or three figures for more than I paid for them--because at least in the short term, these figures do appreciate in value. I got so good at knowing what to sell, and when, that I could pay for the table, the trip, shopping, and still have money left over. It can be done. This hobby can pay for itself.

 

As even you said, it's not collecting though. It's PS5 and rtx3080. It's furniture. It's clothes. Its cars. It's even specialty foods. All it takes is one disrupter to shift the marketplace towards this model. Tesla did it with it's preorder system for cars. Now it's spreading through car companies, particularly as they transition to electric and have to retool their factories and retrain their workforces.

The way things were, were more of a function of absence of a specific set of tools, than tradition or consumer friendliness. We used to think of "inventories" that stories had, but over the last 20 years, Walmart and Amazon have really standardize "a single inventory between production and distribution" than inventories, so to speak. Manufacturers don't have to hear requests from retailers/distributors for more product in the biggest cases. Now manufacturers can see product move, and fill distributor needs, in near real time.

The most pertinent real world example of this only applies indirectly to us as consumers, but it's with microchips for cars. Semiconductor foundries have backorders stretching deep into 2022 because, Toyota aside (for historic reasons), automanufactuers procured microships for cars exactly as needed, with almost no stockpile. Toyota, because of shortages in 2011, built a 6 month stockpile, and is consequently doing better on that front. But they faced investor pressure for years to cut costs on that, because it's an inefficiency.

Is it consumer friendly? I mean, we have to pick our poison: do we want lower costs or not? Because these efficiencies are how costs are kept low. They may seem like extremely derived efficiencies, but it's absolutely the same as any other means of optimizing output.

The world got to know this up close and personal last year with toilet paper, which in a way is absolutely hilarious. Nobody really ever stopped to think "you know, turns out people as a whole use the facilities more at work, between 9 to 5, then at home, between 6pm-10pm and 6am-8am.". Except toilet paper manufacturers, who did the research and produced more "industrial" toilet paper for offices and workplaces than the softer, more expensive "home" toilet paper. They had built their business efficiently around supplying almost exactly what both markets needed, so when people didn't go to work, and demand for home toilet paper skyrocketed, they had no capacity to surge production for it. Instead we lived with shortages, until months later they reconfigures their industrial toilet paper factories to produce the home stuff. This is such a wondering sandboxed example of just-in-time manufacturing, because it's a simple two-bucket market (work vs home) basically applicable to everything.

Now for toilet paper, it was an annoying inconvenience. But that's an essential (well, in the US). But as collectors, I'd say a prerequisite to be savvy. Consider a video game. You have a given video game... there are casual fans who dabble and engage in superficial detail, and there are hardcore fans who come to understand the game at a extremely nuanced level. Timings, rotations, order of operations, even the engineering behind it. For a gamer, it's very common to be "hardcore" at one or two game and "casual" at many other games. As collectors, we're basically on the "hardcore gaming" side of things, which means we have to take a similar approach of understanding the whys and hows to optimize our participation in this hobby. If we don't do that, we're definitionally casual, and if we get or miss something becomes unimportant.

 

What does any of this have to do with the fact that preordering simply doesn't work for a lot of people? I'm not talking about not liking going that route. I'm talking about preorders "selling out" rather than being the baseline for production numbers. I'm talking about preorders being cancelled, often so the vendor can relist the item at a higher price.

There is absolutely no reason for preorders to sell out, though Hasbro's own web site, within minutes of listing. If anything, later buyers should get a later release date. Hasbro could easily produce another run of a high demand figure, tailored to the numbers of preorders left to fulfill.

Saying that people who miss the preorder window or don't trust that option "aren't playing the game right" are doing it wrong is simply insulting. This is supposed to be a HOBBY, not a second job.

 

It is at the core of the issue: understanding how things work now, to adjust your purchasing approach appropriately, rather than scream at inevitability at the way we would prefer things used to be. People, Americans in particular, grew very used to thinking they were in control of things that happened to them. If the pandemic hasn't driven home how nonsense that notion is, I don't know what will. There is ultimately, no such thing as a single person controlling anything. We're all just kind of riding this wave called, the world, and everything. And we need to be better about knowing *how* to ride it.

The way production-distribution work now is a reality. It's not something you or I or anyone else can control. It is here. It's an element of "the wave" and maybe in 10 years there will be another wave we have to surf. We can say this wave doesn't work for us. We can protest it. But we ultimately have to surf it, if we choose to do this hobby. Those are really your two choices: surf the wave well, or stay on the beach and out of the water.

I think you're making an exception rather than the rule with canceled pre-orders. I've pre-ordered *litterally* everything for the past few years for this hobby. I've waited on shelves or inventory for nothing. I've preordered at Hasbro Pulse, Target,BBTS, Walmart and Amazon. THis is exactly my record for cancellations:

Target: The $25 SS Overload.
Walmart: Netflix Bumblebee, Elita-1 and Soundwave (but they reopened so I got them anyway).
Amazon: nothing canceled
Pulse: Unicron (during the pre-order period, sorted out with exactly two short emails).
BBTS: nothing canceled

I'm talking *literally* every single Generations figure of the last 3 years and most of Studio Series. Zero skip. And that's the extent of my cancellation record. 5 figures out of a few hundred. The only annoying one on that list was Overload because of the great bargain and the essential part he formed in Devastator. I saw him exactly once at the local target and skipped him, wanting to preserve by $25 preorder, which then got canceled. I ended up paying $60 for him on Ebay. I took that in stride, given the pandemic's distribution disruption.

I'm not that lucky to have just 5 failures in hundreds upon hundreds of preorders. The sample size is too big. That represents a pre-order system that *is* operating at near optimal performance, connecting buyers to product. But nothing is 100%, as I have seen as well. It's just 98%-99%.

I absolutely standby my comments that people who who miss the preorder window or don't trust that option "aren't playing the game right" are doing it wrong. Like... I'm not sure what people think this is. So we have a system that works 98% of the time. And that is not enough? What's it going to take to convince folks this is one element of *control* that we've never had. When we were hunting for inventory on shelves at TRU we didn't have, because sometimes distribution was regionally poor or TRU didn't put in many orders. That this pre-order system is a thing, and it's that way or nothing, is even more fair than the old system because it eliminates some of the distribution risks that existed under the prior model, and trades them for smaller, lesser risks now. To put it another way: it is better to live in a regime where cancelled orders are a thing, than bad regional distribution is a thing.

The one thin I will say though is that pre-orders ABSOLUTELY have to be a first-come, first serve thing, which they are not. But the new pre-order systems popping up as a result of supply disruptions at places like Newegg are pioneering what I hope, is an even more evolved pre-order model that spread.


Last bit: hobby not second job. That's ridiculous. Driving around on a Saturday to every Target and Walmart and TRU and coming away empty handed because of lousy regional distribution (Massachusetts), and doing that several saturdays in a row, was a second job. Being able to pre-order all of Earthrise from my phone on Pulse AND Amazon, while taking a 10 minute bathroom break at work back in 2019, is a hobby. Hasbro emailed and said "be ready at noon on Tuesday". So guess what I did on Tuesday? I made 10 minutes.

10 minutes on the john, or multiple afternoons driving? Which one is actually the job.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: I sincerely hope that Transformers puits a hard cap at some kind of $38 "post-Voyager" size in coming years, and everything above that goes made-to-order on Pulse and Amazon, with the prices calibrated to the product rather than fitting an arbitrary size class. General Retail Generations in the post TRU era should consist of exactly three price points: $14 Core, $27 Deluxe, $38 post-Voyager. Anything bigger should not be done through retail. It makes less and less business sense in retailers exclusively interested in fast sellt-rhough and is just leading to compromises. It'll be better for collectors, fans and retailers that way. It'll be better for the franchise as a whole. I mean hell, the word "Voyager" referred to a specific class in Transformers Cybertron, 16 years ago, and has somehow stuck around despite being conceptually irrelevant to every line since. It's past time to rethink, and largely phase out, size classes at retail.

 

They don't do that anymore because of this:









This is an absolute disaster. And no, this is not from TRU going out of business. This is was Titans Return. TRU collapsed during mid-late PotP. This was unsold inventory that was pushed to discount retailers.

Distribution of Predaking (particularly Predaking), Omega Supreme and Scorponok have been far, far tighter because of what you see up there.

Omega Supreme was online-only in the United States because TRU was in recent times, the only retailer to carry Titans, and it collapsed leaving Omega without a retail partner. Hasbro did a second production run on Omega before the pandemic hit, and a third production run late last year, all through pulse and Amazon.

Scorponok was available at retail in the United States for a brief period. Target stores generally got two cases of two figures each (so 4 figures total per store) back in August 2020. They got another two cases around the holidays, for a total of 8 Scorponoks per store. You had to be shopping on the *right* weekend in August 2020 to pick him up at retail. For most people, he was again, online only. And to answer demand, Hasbro did a second production run earlier this year.

Late last year, Hasbro also did a second production run for CW Devastator, who did not have poor distribution, but wasn't overstocked like the TR titans. THey did it probably to sate demand for an adversary for Siege Omega.

PotP Predaking had terrible distribution. It came during the waning days of Hasbro Toy Shop (pre-pulse), pre-partnership with Amazon/Target, and as TRU was actively collapsing. In the US, you got Predaking one of two ways mostly: you preorderd through Amazon (though it was not like the current partnership pre-order) or you got lucky and found it at a TRU that summer.

So when was the last time Titans were cheap? 2017, when the above pictures were taken. Four years, and 3 (soon 4) titans ago. And yet we *still* see people saying "I'm gonna wait for the Ark to show up at discount". All I have to say to that is "K........".

The above pictures are why Titans are speculated to be done after the Ark or the 2022 line. It's why I personally think Titans need to become $350 Haslab annual events (akin to the Razorcrest and Sentinel). The best case for this I think is that the modified reissue of the "New Millennium Falcon" from 12 years ago, which originally retailed for $150, was a Target exclusive last year for $400, $50 more than the Razorcrest. Why do a compromise $165 titan when they can do $350 and go nuts? Titan at retail make no sense in a world where Haslab is a thing. It's why doing Unicron there rather than through retail, even as a "$250 titan" was the right and forward thinking move on Hasbro's part.

In short, Hasbro going out of their way to make sure that production and inventory is nearly perfectly fit for the market is simply good business. I will say, I have absolutely no idea how to make the situation better for overseas fans (all my comments are US/Canada centric). I don't know the details about their purchasing avenues to comment on that. But for Americans and Canadians, step 1 is deciding what your collection is going to include before it is even officially announced, so the act of preordering is mechanical, not decision making. And if you're deal hunting, your best option is Amazon's pre-order price guarantee. But hope for Ollies to deliver cheap toys is a bad bet. And in the post-Pandemic world, where necessity forced changes to production, inventory and distribution, it's going to be an ever worse bet.

 

And why should we have to work to try to give our money to Hasbro? Why should be have to make sure to be available at a certain time to stand a chance of getting these toys? They're the ones who need us to buy their product to stay in business. You'd think they would make it easier to do so.

You act like the main focus for everyone is simply the acquisition of toys, rather than playing with/displaying them. For you "the hunt" may be the focus, but for me it's actually owning and using the toys. If Hasbro is going to keep "the hunt" difficult, both online and in stores, I've got over 30 years worth of toys to enjoy. They NEED us to keep buying, but I at least don't NEED to keep buying.

Except it doesn't work 98% of the time. Nearly every time I've seen these announcements, most of the product is already sold out. And I'm far from alone in that. Disappointment and frustration doesn't encourage collectors to keep coming back, so it isn't a good business model.

I'd be a lot more open to doing preorders - if the damn toys were available to preorder! I've had good experiences the couple of times I've actually been able to place the order, but most of the time they're already sold out. Since these things aren't supposed to be limited edition, that shouldn't be happening!

I'm not buying much these days, because I haven't been thrilled by much of WFC. And then it was nigh impossible to get the figures I did want. Unless I feel like spending $50 for Bumblebee.

Sure, they're doing well at the moment, but they could do even better by keeping the preorders open and extending the production run to cover those orders. And it would keep people from quitting the game out of frustration.

We shouldn't have to worry about figuring out how to "ride the wave", not for nonessential items like toys. Hasbro should be looking at ways to make the supply match the demand better. Make the preorder system work for more than the ones who make sure to sit in front of the computer when the announcements are made. Some people don't have that luxury.

You keep talking about how much "easier" preordering is over the physical hunting. I don't deny that, but I do deny that it's unequivocally more effective. It doesn't matter if the figure doesn't show up in your area or if it's sold out before you learn about it. The end result is the same. The only difference is you missed out sitting on your couch rather than in your car using gas. You still don't have the toy you wanted in both scenarios.

My hope is that Hasbro improves both distribution formats before they start selling stuff I really want.

 

A lot of what you say is true and fairly applicable to TFs but less true with other lines like G.I.Joe Classified and the Target exclusive Keldor MOTUO 2 pack and to a lesser extent with MOTWWEU at Walmart. The "optimization" has led to ludicrous scarcity.

Likewise, I think the "made to order" approach is potentially a death spiral for any line because without full shelf pegs, the line can't be discovered by new or casual collectors. Surplus needs to exist for visibility, the peccadilloes of retail shareholders be damned. The market needs a retailer like TRU committed to fully stocked shelves. Mom 'n Pop retailers get this but a nationwide chain that caters to this niche can be viable. TRU was a perfectly viable company saddled with bad debt from a leveraged buyout of another company and the vulture capitalists at the wheel rejected any reorganization that would free TRU from essentially having to pay credit card interest rates on debt. It was murdered despite being a viable, low risk, low return business that mostly needed to shudder the Babies R Us units due to stagnant birthrates.

 

It's not. In fact the opposite is true. Displaying toys is my focus. That's why I want the hunt to be the easy to the point of non-existence. Which with the current system, it absolutely is. It's never been easier and never been better, pandemic disruption aside.

Okay man. I legitimately don't understand how this is possible.
You signed up to Pulse promotional emails? You should be, because when they say "Transformers Tuesdays is next tuesday at 11am", that's them declaring, 9 times out of 10, that there will be pre-orders up at noon.

I would totally empathize if it was like the first or second time they've done it. But they've done a few dozen Transformers Tuesdays (and if not that Fridays). There is zero mystery to when these pre-orders drop. They email you an invitation to do so days ahead of time. What more can they possible do?

Limited Edition is a largely obsolete concept. Remember when Selects was announced, many of us thought it was going to be a direct replacement for the TFCC redecos (at a better price)? Those were legitimate limited editions. But Selects is not that. Selects is a shadow line. It's redecos that have no place in the retail line, but are straightforward enough to be collector targeted, with additional cost savings coming in having generic mailer boxes.

Instead of Limited Edition being really a thing, everything is essentially "limited" now, or more specifically produced calibrated to the market. I'm not sure what to say beyond "that's the way things are now". For Transformers. For cars. For clothes. For video games.

Video Games is a great example. Want to know why Xbox X, PS5 and Switch have been hard to find? It's not just the pandemic and supply disruptions. It's because Microsoft and Sony (and less so Nintendo) bled money on all the prior generations of consoles. They took massive losses per unit sold of consoles for years on end, in order to build a user base and make money off software royalties. It often wasn't until the redesigned models came along that the physical consoles were profit making.

But here's the thing: the PS5 and Xbox X (in particular) are actually fantastic deals from a hardware perspective. Microsoft and Sony are giving console gamers far more than ever before, at an excellent price. A price that's almost too good to be true. They're still losing money on every console sold, but - as observed before the pandemic - because their manufacturing orders were so tightly fit to demand, they are losing less money than they otherwise would. True, the consoles would be easier to find if there was no pandemic and people weren't at home for most of a year. But not that much easier, because of an efficient production-demand relationship. Why are they doing this? You just have to look at the evolution of the internals of PS4 and Xbox One went years back. Before doing outward iteration, they did significant internal refinement to control costs. But that meant proft-making (or less loss making) Xbox Ones that looked the same (but had a bigger drive) sat on shelves next to their predecessors which Microsoft took a bigger hit for. Producing consoles like they do now means that when manufacturing efficiencies kick in for the current gen, there will be no "waste" in excess inventory (and thus, cost of production) of the older model.

It's incredibly good, incredibly smart business and it's very consumer friendly, because it's pretty much the only way those consoles get sold at that price. The consequence of it is, like toilet paper, it's prone to supply disruption.

The pre-order system, hearing what you're saying, sounds like you need to address how you get the heads up. But that does not render judgement on the overall effectiveness of the pre-order system. That just means you need a slightly different informational approach. But given as Hasbro won't be altering their business model in a way that takes us back to the days of massive inventories sitting on shelves, any more than any other major modern producer will, it really is an invitation to learn to ride the wave or sit on the beach.

From a consumer angle I understand what you're saying and am sympathetic. I've even said, I hope Hasbro does another round of orders for the great molds that people had a hard time getting in ER because of the pandemic (Ironhide and Prowl come into mind). But I see things like that as largely the exception. Not to rehash a post I've written like 4 times now, but I'm reasonably certain that if you look at Siege, then look at Kingdom and compare it to ER, that there were a bunch of figures that were meant for the main ER line - Prowl, Ratchet or Ironhide, one of the Coneheads, Netflix Bee, Netflix Soundwave, Netflix Elita-1 - that got shifted into exclusives over the course of the year in order to get them out the door and allow Kingdom to start in 2021 on time rather than be shifted to "pace" ER fully. In fact, if you put some of these figures in virtual waves, you make a line that is nearly identical in figure count, to Siege and Kingdom (minus exclusives).

So while I think it was very consumer friendly for Hasbro to get them out the door, I think given the extraordinary nature of the last year, it would be great of them to put them back into production, or return them to production in the 2022 line.

But that being, designing their production so that it's fit with demand is good business, and ultimately good for consumers, because it makes cost of production efficient. If Hasbro made a lot more product than there was demand for, and had excess inventory always going to discounters, either they would eat that loss, or they'd have to pass it onto consumers with higher prices eventually.

Riding the wave is part of life in everything now. There was a time buying things in big box store was unprecedented. There was a time buying things in a specialty store was new. There was a time buying things online was niche. This is just more of that, from the sales perspective.

The information thing again. There are *active* ways to address this. Pulse mails. BBTS mails. TF Scource mails. Checking these forums once a day. As a collector and "hardcore fan" like the rest of us, it's a prerequisite. See my gamer example a post or two above.

 

In the middle of the workday. As a former IT worker, I know watching toy news and shopping for toys on company time is usually not appreciated.

Make the preorders open in the evening rather than the middle of the workday? Allow for additional/longer production runs to accommodate those who can't immediately jump on the preorders? It's not a case of not knowing when the preorders drop, it's being able to place the order when you actually stand a chance of getting the toy.

And even when you do jump, there's no telling if you'll actually manage to get the item. I've checked the preorder links pretty early at times and items have been sold out.

Yeah, this isn't "optimized". This is artificially inflating demand. There's no reason Hasbro can't use the preorder numbers to guide the production numbers. None whatsoever. It just seems they'd rather not make those additional sales for some reason.

 

I do recognize this. Transformers Generations has this almost-unique position of being both a general retail line, that is extremely collector friendly. Maybe only Marvel Legends and Star Wars is also this. That's Hasbro's 3 big lines, but there is much more on the shelves than just them. I've said for some time, the future of Generations if and when true blue G1ers like myself reduce our collecting, could basically what we're seeing in the NECA lines. Limited releases, essentially one (maybe two) size classes, a couple times a year, at higher price, and located in the specialty collectors asile and not the general toy aisle.

The "Optimization" for things like GI Joe and MOTU I think is because Hasbro (with GI Joe) and Mattel (with MOTU) have gotten repeatedly burned trying to make GI Joe and MOTU "core" and active franchises for new fans and collectors alike, the way TF Generations and Marvel Legends is. In particular GI Joe Classified is what amounts to a last ditch effort with Hasbro on the brand: "what if we updated the classic characters and did them like Marvel Legends". Its proven popular enough to keep doing. But is it drawing in new fans? Does Hasbro actively care if it does?

Let's take a step back and look at another franchise. What of Power Rangers? Well Hasbro sunk a ton of money into buying the franchise. They actively produced new toys all their own rather than imported Bandai. And while their active TF product, like Cyberverse, has been very kidfriendly, their collector 6 inch "Lighting Collection" has doggedly stuck to MMPR Seasons 1-3 and Zeo, which was basically Season 4. Yeah they dabble with later shows, but the line's bread and butter is a crudely edited, amateurishly acted show, from 25 years ago, that few if any kids have seen. So who are they for?

My feeling? That's why John Warden left Transformers and went to Power Rangers. He was the most successful line manager TF ever had and revolutionized this line (seriously, think of where we were 10 years ago). He left Transformers healthier than they've ever been and really innovating. My thought? He went to Power Rangers to fix Hasbro's investment in it. To make it their 4th Major Action Figure line, alongside Transformers, Star Wars and Marvel Legends. That's going to take a lot of work on his part, if that is indeed why he was sent there.

So what does this have to do with limited distribution for GI Joe Classified and MOTU? It's because they have shriveled fanbases that have not responded to prior attempts to significantly grow them, but there is enough of a consumer base to keep producing. This makes them intrinsically vulnerable to optimized production. From what I've heard with GI Joe, it's indeed been unacceptable, given Hasbro runs it and has the same systems in place it does for Transformers. But from what I thought we heard late last year, they were being receptive to fan criticisms about difficulty in distribution and are doing more through pulse.

In short: yeah it sucks for other frances, and companies not named Hasbro. THough I gather NECA does it well.

TRU bled to death because of pretty much the thing you said retailers should do. It died on the back of vast swathes of Star Wars toys nobody bought, or Platinum Edition Transformers at $200 nobody touched, or $150 Power Rangers swords, or wall fulls of WWE figures and other junk like seasonal goods and dated board games nobody touched.

I miss TRU. I just had a nephew born in the past year and he'll never know the joy my brother and I had in going in a toy store like it. And Bain Capital absolutely murdered a salvageable company. But TRU absolutely made miserable business decisions that made it vulnerable. The only reason it didn't happen earlier was LEGO (TRU was their primary partner at the time) and stuff like bikes.

Hobby Lobby went where my TRU was. And I frown at it every time I see it.

 

I'm a software engineer in the middle of the workday too. I go to the restroom and use my phone if I have to.

Now this I 100% agree with. While I feel mid-day orders are doable since they give a heads up, I'm not sure exactly who they do these mid-afternoon Tuesday and Friday Pulse things for. Stay at home moms? I mean asid efrom being dated, it's a collectors event. Collectors without jobs? Seems suspect. Maybe they just do them in their work day and hope people watch Yotuube later? Maybe that's it.

But I do think a better route would be pre-orders starting at 6pm for Pulse members and 10pm for non-Pulse members. The noon thing is just strange.

It does have to be generally immediate and that does suck. A pre-order window should *absolutely* fill all orders in that pre-order window and not close pre-orders during the window. That does need to change (and just happened a few weeks ago with Kingdom) to make this entire system consistent.

But the immediacy is doable. You do have to be fast though.

A few dozen people on a few message boards saying they have failed to get an item doesn't qualify as artifically inflated demand, when production was already in the thousands. That "demand" is a drop in the bucket. From Hasbro's business angle, it's absolutely optimized, because their goal is to sell us a specific number of painted, molded plastic in cardboard boxes at set price points. It's us, the consumer, and only us, who cares that it's one character versus another. Hasbro, and their retail partners, just see units moved. But considering collectors are a small fraction of overall sales, it's largely immaterial to Hasbro what is being sold, so long as it sold, because general consumers are less discinering.

The example of this I like to give is as follows: Hasbro put out Voyager class Apeface in Siege. *We knew* it was Apeface. The first time he got a figure since the 1980s. Hasbro's creative people used that slot in Siege to sell us painted, molded plastic in Apeface form. From a business angle, Hasbro saw a new voyager release in wave 3 that was different than wave 1 and 2. Target (or whoever is the retail partner) saw a $30 figure that moved (or didnt). And the general consumer saw a robot that turned into a monkey that Little Timmy really liked, but mom had to choose between the monkey and the green robot that turned into a Helicopter (Springer).

 

I do wonder how well the Ark will sell given that it’s a new character. I’m planning on sitting this one out.
Also I swear people got Predaking really cheaply. Not me, as I bought him last year from BBTS. But I thought he had a big discount.

 

We've been talking exclusively about the collector's market here. Of course regular retail doesn't care which of the wave is in most demand. That's not relevant to the discussion.

But if they're marketing to collectors with these Pulse announcements etc, then they're aware of the demand for particular characters over others. Surely they must know that there's more of a demand for G1 Bee as a Beetle over say Runamuck. While they might be meeting their sales goals with their current strategy, they'd do better still by - as I've been repeating - tailoring the size of the production run to match the preorder numbers, rather than limiting the preorders to that set number. Of course that strategy wouldn't apply to Walmart or Target, but there's no reason why they can't do this on their own sales site. Sure, if you got your order in late you might have to wait longer, because it would be a later, additional production run, but I'd rather get it later than not at all or at scalper prices.

A few people on a message board saying they've never had a problem getting their orders in doesn't mean Hasbro is serving the collector customer base adequately, either.

 

Predaking fell to 95.99 around thanksgiving 2018 on Amazon. Possibly lower, but that’s what I snagged him at.
that the my typical pattern on Titans until
Omega which was really high on my want list. I didn’t preorder but I did observe the lack of discounting leading up toward the holidays so I snagged him at 20 percent off with a coupon at target. Based on that i assumed distribution was changing and just preordered skorponok and the ark.

 

I bet this thread has the TFW record for most characters per post...