Now this comes as a surprise. Didn't expect to see these guys anymore at this point, what with Titans Return already being in full swing and whatnot. Found at the Karstadt department store inside the Rhein-Ruhr-Zentrum shopping mall in Mülheim an der Ruhr: Two Trailbreakers and one Wheeljack.
Hasbro Europe certainly took their time in releasing these for you guys. Any sign of Sky Lynx, though? Wave 6 has been out here for months, but Deluxe/Legends only... no sign of Voyagers. And well, we never got any Leaders beyond the two Megatrons.
What? That's nothing. Titans Return Deluxes cost 30 Euros, and in the Netherlands they even cost 35...
These are now showing up at Marshall\'s for $10. In fact, it is the last 2 CW waves in fact. Also showing up at Marshall\'s, Ross, TJ Maxx are some of the voyagers: White Optimus, Motormaster, Onslaught, Scattershot, and sometimes Silverbolt for $13. If you\'re missing some of these figures, you can go a find them at these places.
I explained this before, but I think it bears repeating: Last year, no European country got any wave 2 Combiner Wars figures, be it wave 2 of the Legends Class assortment (Blackjack and Huffer; though Blackjack later came out as part of a revision case of wave 4), wave 2 of the Deluxe Class assortment (Air Raid, Dead End, Breakdown and Offroad), wave 2 of the Voyager Class assortment (Motormaster) or wave 2 of the Leader Class assortment (Thundercracker). There has been a lot of speculation for why this happened, with the only official statement by Hasbro UK being worded rather vaguely ("as we couldn't meet quantity targets for Europe"). I have another theory, based mostly on the fact that all the myriad stores around me have barely stocked any new Transformers figures in the second quarter of this year: Bad timing. Simply put, Combiner Wars was launched at pretty much the most inconvenient time imaginable. Wave 1 hit around New Year's eve, after the big Christmas season had already ended. So stores were stocking figures at a time when the main target demographic for Transformers toys (i.e. kids) had already gotten their Christmas presents. Add to that the fact that with Combiner Wars, Generations ceased to be a Toys"R"Us exclusive line, so the number of stores that stocked the wave 1 figures increased tremendously over the course of the following weeks and months. By the time wave 2 was scheduled to hit, it was the time of the year when stores are traditionally very hesistant to order massive quantities of new product. In fact, as I've mentioned before, stores were barely stocking anything new in terms of Transformers at the same time one year later, and the figures they had in stock at the time barely seemed to move. So I can kinda see how stores probably weren't willing to order enough figures for Hasbro to warrant an order for a production run for the wave 2 figures for the European market. Yes, this was reported several times in the dedicated Ross/TJ Maxx/Marshalls/5 Below thread over in Transformers Toy Discussion, starting here.
Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, Hound and Smokescreen now also at Toys"R"Us, seen at the store in downtown Krefeld.
