Looks good so far, I'll have to see the whole figure before I decide if I want to track him down or not though. Looks like they're reusing the Siege lightbar design on him rather than the ER version they gave all the other emergency vehicles, interesting. Not that I'm complaining, not every emergency vehicle IRL has the same style of lightbar so I'm happy to have some variety. I'm also glad to see they kept the old-timey font for the F.D. logo, I was half expecting them to just use Helvetica or something.
I think it's kind of funny, Kingdom Sideswipe is definitely directly based on his MP+ version while Red Alert here seems to be taking more from the original MP.
I’m hoping the rumored jeep with the Jurassic Park/World crossover set is a remolded siege hound mold with an earth mode, thereby ensuring a regular retail earth mode hound somewhere down the pipe….
The toy manufacturers don't make their products to sell them to us. No, really! Hasbro makes toys to sell to retailers. Their customers are the buyers for retail stores and the retailer is the one who bears the burden of selling Hasbro's toys to the consumer. The problem that the toy industry is facing is an ever widening disconnect between retailer's ordering habits and our buying habits. North American big box retailers order all products for their stores alike, whether the product is Transformers Deluxe-class figures, or hammers or scented candles, they order and stock to meet a set sales expectation. If they generally expect to sell one of any product every week, and that product arrives in a case of eight units, the store will order one case and expect that case to keep the shelf stocked for eight weeks. In the case of a hammer this practice works. It's very rare for one customer to come in and buy all the hammers in one visit. Toys (especially action figures) are different, though. When a case of Transformers Deluxe-class figures arrives in store there will be eight units in the case, often two of each character in the assortment. If those four characters are all new in the assortment one collector will likely buy all four, or maybe even all eight if they want extras. The store will have sold eight weeks worth of inventory in a single day and you might think this would trigger a reorder command in the store's inventory system, but stores don't have special reorder policy just for toys. So, the store will let the peg sit empty until the next eight-week restock because that's how their reordering policy works. The store doesn't see the empty peg as a problem because the product that would be hanging on the peg has met its sales expectation. In a perfect world retailers would see that there is profit to be made by reordering popular toy lines more frequently, but that would require unique reorder policies for only the toy department and would probably require knowledgeable staff to track which action figures sell out more frequently than others. Unfortunately this extra effort equals extra dollars spent and in the end the additional profit isn't worth the effort. Sorry about the long answer with no happy ending, but it's the unfortunate truth of why toys are so scarce at retail and why Hasbro aren't more actively doing anything to push their products onto the empty pegs. You don't have to take my word for it! Spector Creative has a YouTube channel full of content addressing this subject, all explained by a toy industry veteran of 25 years. ~L~
Hasbro doesn't care if we get the figures. The retailers buy the product from Hasbro so Hasbro has their money and it's no longer their problem. And then the scalpers buy the product from the retailers so the retailers have their money and it's no longer their problem either. It sucks for us, but Hasbro isn't being stupid, they're making money, which is what they're in the business of. We just gotta deal with it really because they'll keep doing it until it stops bringing in money for them
I guess we're just gonna have to deal with it until something changes. Sucks, but that seems to be the way it is for the forseeable future. Thanks for taking the time to explain that to me.
The first time we've seen this mold. And knowing how these exclusives work, probably the last time too.
It looks nice, but I’m happy to stick with my Siege version. The alt-mode, while not a Lamborghini, (and the Earth mode of upcoming Kingdom Sideswipe, and this arguably isn’t either), is close enough for me. It seems more futuristic Earth-car than alien vehicle, anyway.
That's cool, I totally get what you are saying about Target and exclusives, and for the most part I agree with you. I'm not a fan of Target, and think there are too many exclusives right now as well.
No problem. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow. Everything I wrote is true for North American retailers, but as an Australian collector I'm very interested in finding out how Australian retailers manage stock levels. I know at the supermarket there is a strong focus on reducing out of stocks. An employee will walk their department every morning scanning the shelf tags of lines without any stock on shelf in order to fill the shelves with stock from out the back or to order stock that is not automatically replenished. I should go talk to the people I know in Target's toy department and find out if they have a similar focus on reducing gaps in their department. ~L~
FINALLY! This guy looks great from what we’ve seen! I skipped the siege version because I knew they would make an earth mode for him, and I made the right call! They didn’t reveal Bluestreak, and if I remember correctly, they didn’t even reveal Ratchet. Hasbro doesn’t even reveal Walgreens exclusives, they just appear with no announcement.
What? He's not supposed to be grey. Though they messed up by giving him red arms instead of white. That's not Hasbro, that's retail. Red Alert is a repaint of a remold from a figure that's be released like 8 times, no retailer is going to want that figure on their shelves clogging it up. Core characters or not, a lot of the pre movie cast were straight up repaints and the main line doesn't get as many repaints as they did back in the old days. Retailers seem to think repaints are too high risk these days.
If it's just a figure that's 95% the same as one made a year or two ago then what's the point for either..... I'll stick with the SIEGE version once again and if there's a better 3P shoulder cannon for Red Alert somewhere at a reasonable price ($10). I'll invest in that....
Hasbro bangin out these reveals right now. Seriously tho the amount of leaked and released stuff yet to get revealed is pure incompetence.
Oh no, I thought all the Earth modes would be an easy pass but I think I prefer Red Alert with red arms and thighs more than the Siege one.
Considering most of our current leaks have either come from the factory level or a drunk guy it's really hard to try and pin the blame on Hasbro
This one is abit odd though since it has the box and everything, and Hasbro has had a recent track record in slow reveals with artfire barely being revealed when multiple sites had pictures up and Twrecks straight up not having an announcement
