Victory Saber got here just fine in the U.S., the Taiwan shipment reportedly got utterly wrecked during shipment due to them transporting them during typhoon season; not only was the packaging water damaged, but they were crushed too. Hasbro Taiwan's response was refunding customers in full and giving them a free Legacy Orion Pax/Alpha Trion set as compensation.
The great thing about that is that you can actually use this Breakdown as the leg, if you really, really want to. Might look a little strange, but it's doable.
Oooooof a full refund and replacement figure is a nice gesture but holy shit I'd still be devastated missing out on such a glorious one-off. Hopefully they're able to figure out a way to get these back in to people's hands down the road.
I did not order VS so it does not affect me, but I think that's trash about Hasbro not replacing the VS units that were wrecked. I understand that it's a limited run HasLab, but I think in this case they should have fired up one cell at the factory and produced replacement units for Taiwan. Even if it had to be done months from now due to factory scheduling. There's gotta be a way to build more. Do they destroy the tooling as soon as the run is finished or something? Not cool Hasbro. Anyway, I feel bad for the Taiwan fans that didn't get their VS.
We don't know if they won't at this time...just that for now they cannot. I'm sure Hasbro would LOVE to be able to fire things up and make a new set but it's likely that once the VS run was completed the factory shifted to whatever was next on the plan. So the current resolution refunding buyers and sending a figure is what they can offer for now while they investigate what they can do going forward. Because any production run (regardless of size) will have a cost and schedule to it that they need to figure out. Along with transportation logistics. And I'm sure they're already trying to figure something out. It's just probably going to take a while because a replacement at this scale would interrupt everything else they've got going on. ...and for as mad as buyers are, I imagine the people at HasTak are even moreseo. This is an entirely unforeseeable situation and who knows if there wasn't a screw up beyond their contro with regard to the shipping teams and their logistics. It'd be like if someone at the factory cast a bunch of figures in the wrong color and didn't bother doing anything about it so they just went to stores like that.
After the refund and the free con 2-pack, I doubt Hasbro plans to do anything about anything. Taiwan's best hope at this point is probably to see if anyone would be willing to sell their extras for the original price (plus shipping) plus the 2-pack. I could honestly see a few dealers possibly taking them up on that offer. The Pulse Con 2-pack will probably see triple digit pricing after a year or so.
you can say "oh they could have" but do we really know that? I definitely agree that it sucks BIG TIME
I wish I could share your optimism. But by giving everyone a full refund and a bonus set, Hasbro probably feels like the issue is now resolved.
Tarn and Leo Prime appear to be the W1 Voyagers. So if they do a full reveal, yes. Considering it could be months (or even a year) before they're able to work out a solution, giving the money back for now is the best way to give people relief until they can figure something out. They can't just sit on the money. They know who backed it if they are able to offer it to them again. But it's an unprecedented situation so it's gonna take some time. Especially since the Saber production line was likely shut down once they wrapped. Even if they wanted to that production line was likely already shut down. It's going to take time to budget and plan out how to get that line up and running again without interrupting other planned production. They refunded the money because they don't know how long it's going to be to resolve this. Again, rhey can't just sit on the money. Even if Hasbro broadly produced a bunch of backups I can't imagine there's enough to replace the entire Taiwanese supply. Also, that shipment likely had insurance. It's a loss, but Hasbro hopefully has the ability to reclaim something to compensate. Once that's all processed they'll be able to start looking in to how to get replacements out. They gotta. You'd likely lose the entire Taiwanese market for future HasLabs. Even with the refund.
I just don't think they plan to do a second run for the benefit of probably 5% of the sales. If half of those buyers say never again, Taiwan just probably doesn't make up enough share for it to make much difference. It's a sad situation but I don't see further resolution.
I'm in this camp. Existential threats such as adverse weather, earth quakes, etc will always be a clear & present danger when navigating bodies of water or air in this region. What surprises me is the radio silence coming out of Hasbro U.S. Nothing. You'd think they'd at the very least send out a tweet, while working tirelessly in the background to bolster numbers on the ground. That would go some way to show unequivocal support Hasbro U.S. stands shoulder to shoulder with Hasbro Taiwan. It doesn't resolve the issue but it does send a strong signal & quell the immediate clusterf**k that followed. Optics is sometimes just as important.
