So I know you guys are probably fed up with these threads, but why does hasbro choose to make sure there's enough of the unwanted stuff, but always leaves out the awesome stuff. Not only do they put very few numbers of the cool toys in threads, but hey outright cancelled the awesomest lines. SO I'm just wondering, do figures like fe stuff, dotm soundwave, vehicon, or leadfoot just not sell well, and bees and primes sell amazingly?
Bumblebee and Prime are the flagship characters, and retailers want to make sure that they're always present, and that there's enough of them to go around. And there's no ill-will against the particular characters that got cut. Just that the retailers mismanaged their stock, and canceled the assortments that had all the new stuff because they still had too much old stuff to sell.
If you offer to buy a toy for your kid at the toy store, yes they would probably want BB or Optimus, but if they're not available, they can and will choose any one else. Kids aren't nearly as fickle about this as we are. If they can't get the one they really want, they're not going to turn down a free toy.
As a parent, I think it's rare for parents to walk a kid into a store and say "pick a transformer you want" with the kid thinking I either get whatever or I won't get anything at all (the free toy you mentioned). Rather, most toy purchases for kids come from two sources: 1) the kid allocating their allowance or a "gift slot" to a toy or 2) presents from adults. For #1, kids may very well hold out and save their pennies for a well-known character, rather than buying whatever is on the shelf. For example, my kid loves Iron Man. That's Iron Man, not War Machine, or Dynamo or some such other "Iron Man" series character. For #2, gifters will buy what they percieve as a well known character: bee or prime. Ultimately, Hasbro didn't screw up by packing more Bees and Primes, as a concept; Hasbro screwed up because they went too far with it.
My understanding is that retailers "cancel" lines by not ordering it anymore, rather than Hasbro having any say in it, and in turn the retailers base their ordering on what actually sells. Since Hasbro can't know how long a line will run, and how TF toys can take several years to create, they got to some stuff in reserve just in case the line continues. It's also good business NOT to show all the good stuff right at the start, rather it's better to space them out to keep interest in the line. Paramount also adds to the mess. They wanted Soundwave secret, so his toys had to be withheld several months. Renaming Wheeljack and Mirage and the whole mess with Ferrari *may* have also caused some delays, too. The upcoming Prime also may have had a hand, being a "shiny new thing" after so many years of the same stuff. Granted, it seems Hasbro themselves cut off a lot of the recent items for reasons known only to them.
Hasbro Toy Store is just an online toy store that's licensed to use Hasbro's name. It's not a direct branch of Hasbro itself. Moreover, HTS can't support the numbers required to make a production viable. If the store could reliably sell even a quarter of the numbers that all the cancelled retail support would have provided, then maybe. But there's no way HTS is going to be able to sell 10,000 of each figure, or whatever. And if it was Hasbro trying to sell their product directly, then what happens is the retailers (especially Wal-Mart) cry foul for trying to cut out the middle-man, black-list Hasbro and stop carrying all of their products outright, Hasbro loses hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales as a result, and goes bankrupt. I'm not exaggerating.
It's also a shame that hasbro doesn't have a "Designed by you" dealie,fans got lots of ideas for figures,repaints,etc. plus it might be interesting for the kids in a way.
They did that once... ONCE. G.I. Joe sort of had it with their mail-away figures, but GI Joe's are slightly more flexible in concept than TFs in that regard. Also, remember that in many cases, these figures, and the decisions surrounding them, are made months and months and months before any of these distribution problems arise, so Hasbro has to gamble on who's going to sell (and more importantly, who the retailers will want most) to a large degree.
As a shopkeeper I can attest that parents do indeed state to their child "pick the Transformer you want" where in which the child will turn to me and ask "Do you have Bumblebee?" I've had children walk out empty handed because I didn't have any BB toys available.. and when I do have BB he's always first to go. If I had 100 Tf's to sell I wouldn't mind if 85 of them were Bumblebee.
Wow. I can relate to that, though. I'm 24 and can clearly remember being a kid and wanting only specific toys since my parents would scarcely buy toys for me. This is why I buy my kids toys far more often than birthdays and Christmas.
Hasbro makes decent choices. They only look bad in hindsight when you have more information available to you. Take for example RTS. People complain that Hasbro made a bad choice by making a RTS line and then getting Wreck-gar/Tracks/Jazz end-of-line. Hasbro's original purpose was to get two lines running at the same time to get MORE generations toys out. How were they supposed to know that retailers would stop ordering RTS and start gearing up for DOTM so early?
If they did there would only be more threads on how they sell out of X in one hour or less. It's honestly kind of good they don't because everyone would mostly just be pissed over it.
Thank you. I'm so tired of people thinking if something doesn't appeal to them, it must not appeal to anyone.
im anoyed that jolt, baracade, netro bb, repainted ratchet- bb, came out they could of put in soundwave, que and leadfoot and crowbar as for prime so far fe being cancelled buged me but as a genral rule from being a card collector anything with first edition you jump on it as for vercon ummm wave 4 is supposed to have ironhide and aracnid that leaves a whole heap of slots and vercon could be in them
Repaints don't take away development slots from new molds, so no, Crowbar couldn't have replaced any of the repaints. As for the other guys, it's all about staggering the releases. If they load all the non-movie guys into the final waves, then the stores won't buy them at all. They've gotta maintain an even spread to keep things moving along. And as mentioned previously, Soundwave was intentionally held back due to spoiler potential. Hasbro was obviously planning to have the line go on as long as Movie 1 and RotF did, and planned accordingly. With retailer cancellations suddenly on the horizon, Hasbro had to dial back their plans considerably.
As others in this thread have sort of mentioned, I'd just like to point out that Bumblebee is NOT a pegwarmer. Hasbro just ships a ton, and stores move through a lot. He's nothing at all like Jolt or Tuner Mudflap. Hasbro, for their part, would surely be happy to sell a million of each figure they make, be it a Bumblebee or Leadfoot or Vehicon. They can only produce and ship what retailers order though. As for the idea of offering hard to find figures on websites, didn't BBTS try that a few years ago with Battle Unicorn? As I recall, they wound up sitting on a ton of them and had to clearance them out. The problem is that they had to order thousands of them, and once you got past the few dozen people willing to pay $50 for one on ebay, there just wasn't enough remaining demand there for that figure.
Know what? Complain to the stores. They apparently have say on what goes and what doesn't. Hasbro can only do so much.
