I don't mind as long as they're reasonably easy to get (especially outside the US)

 

Pit of Judgement is back up for preorder. Here’s your chance.
Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Trilogy Quintesson Pit of J – Hasbro Pulse

 

But the repaints do help fund new molds overall, maybe not within the same line, as all those molds will likely be designed already, but in general less repaints in exclusive slots means more repaints in the main line which means less new molds in the main line because there are only so many slots available in the mainline per year. Nobody "likes" exclusives, but they are a necessary evil to get the quantity of product that we have been getting the last few years

 

I hate them simply because Target gets most of the ones I am interested in and we dont have any here. I also dont like doing business with Amazon out of general principle. Pulse is a no-go for me too. Their shipping rates to me are obscene.

 

And they can do repaints all they want for the exclusive "as necessary evil" but it should NOT be the main characters.
Once upon a time, exclusives were only obscure/secondary characters... now... Ratchet? Smokescreen? Prowl? etc. as exclusive... that's just freaking wrong for making it hard if not impossible for the younger or less financially stable fan.

And exclusive should NOT be as hard to get as they are made to be. Exclusive is NOT "limited edition" btw... their numbers shouldn't be so low, and the stores that carry them shouldn't make them so hard to get.

Hasbro makes hundreds of different toys and lines, they have BILLIONS in the bank that they can buy fairly pointless, useless company (I still have yet to hear what they've done with that last BILLION dollar purchase) so that budget and such is 100% artificial... molds and production is cheaper than it's ever been, there's no excuse for the lack of numbers, and fans need to stop making excuses for a billion dollar company as in "poor them they can barely manage to give us what they do". The half complete figures that a few more pieces, a bit of paint, a smarter approach wouldn't cost them much, and again, when they've doubled the prices in just a few years, they are far from suffering, and I'd love to see the upper management's houses and cars, and vacations. It's all about making money off of us, and no f@cks are given.

There's a lot of other companies that produce as much and don't do this sort of thing, hell, I've seen quality stuff at dollar stores... if such company can produce decent toys for a few dollars and still make a profit, Hasbro could stop being such a capitalism-minded entity and stop milking fans... they are starting to drive fans away and make these "toys" out of parent/children's reach, and eventually this will kill the brand completely... and the times that such things happen are here now, but no one dares to say it.... we are seeing the true beginning of the end of the line but it'll be once too late that someone will say "hey remember when...we should have done something" well, this IS it.

Remember this post when it does happens.

 

You know what, while I respect your opinion, I disagree with it, but we are all entitled to our opinions and the ability to voice them. Granted, you're very close to calling people sheep or apologists with this post, simply for having a different perspective on the situation than you do, and that's not right dude, even if our opinions differ, there should still be respect  

Hasbro is a for profit business, of course it's all about making money, that's their sole reason for existing.

 

Clicked that I like exclusives. It's not that I like the concept but rather that, if it's the only way to get characters we want, then it becomes a necessary evil. To that end, I'd rather have more exclusives than less, if that makes any sense.

Honestly, I'd rather Hasbro just go back to individual cases for deluxe and voyager characters ala G1 and rotate the characters each quarter. Six deluxes per quarter equals 24 characters per year. Price points can be adjusted to their individual budgets - no more "figure A lacks paint" to make up for "figure B comes with an extra gun". Three SS deluxes per quarter will give you 12 deluxes for the year. Keep the small figures in assortments so they only take up one peg. That's a grand total of 10 pegs on a shelf for Transformers. 24 characters over the span of twelve months is more than sufficient to give us most of the characters we want. There were only 25 characters featured in the Beast Wars cartoon and after shuttling several of those to other price points, you'd be able to cover the entire show and then some, maybe even throwing in a Vok.

 

Covid really screwed over Earthrise huh?
It is interestunt piecing together the behind the scenes stuff of POTP and WFC triligy from your posts.

 

This isn't the case. There is much more competition now for shelf space. You don't get whole shelves of 30 figures per line any more. You get a few of each size on a row or two of pegs per quarter. That's the business model Hasbro has to work with. There are so few venues to sell in brick and mortar shops that the stores are largely the ones calling the shots. Hasbro wants more shelf space in WalMart? WalMart wants them to be exclusives. No way would you get all 4 (or even 3) Datsun molds or Seekers (let alone Coneheads) at the exclusion of new molds. WalMart and Target want stuff that will sell to the kids, and repaints of 35 year old characters just won't do that. What many consider to be "main" characters have gone years without a new toy.

 

Not at all.. I'm just saying that we are "at their mercy" as far as being fans and collector goes, and it simply sucks that they are doing what they are doing...and no one should justify it for them.

These are toys, and just should not be that complicated for anyone, regardless of which country we're in.

So we shouldn't say that it's "ok" for them to do this sort of thing.

Anyways... this stuff is pushing fans away. They end up selling less anyways, so they are shooting themselves in the foot. The consequences are what they are.

This wasn't an issue years ago... it was made into one. Exclusive was the funky characters that was more for specific collectors... now, it's targeting everyone, including that kid/parent that might watch the cartoon, wants the figure of a main character but can't get it easily.

And again, it's all about some figures just shouldn't be exclusive, and if they are, they should be easy to get from those stores, in proper quantities... But stuff like "red card" specials that forces someone to be able to get a store credit card that has zero value for anyone outside the country makes zero sense.

 

The one red card exclusive though was not a main or legacy character in any sense, and he was available in other venues outside of the USA (I got mine from Hasbro Asia months before he was at Target) and made available again later on via other venues within the USA (Entertainment Earth, BBTS, etc etc). It's an isolated case and hasn't been repeated.

 

Definately not a fan. Especially when you have to pay double to get them outside the US

 

The Pit?..Siege Ratchet? Frenzy (as part of a cassette set)? and so on. All of the Netflix figures have been in extremely small numbers, Springer... and all of the end of line from the combiners/titans, etc. More than I can even try to remember.

Again, the "outside the USA" venue was horrible... the numbers so low that these sold out within an hour or so.

Because it was "easy" for you... doesn't mean it was for lots of fans. Every line that comes out is now a gamble for anyone outside the US if they'll be able to get it... and that sucks.

Anyways, if you don't see my point, I'm done as this shouldn't be an argument.

 

Weren't we told that wave five of Siege being pulled from wave one of Earthrise was what shortened it to three waves? In other words, we got all of what was supposed to be Earthrise and Soundwave was nowhere in sight.

Their site has been absolutely awful this year. They just don't understand how to do preorders. At all. Neither does Target from my experience but their site has always been awful so I don't go there much except as a last resort.

Anyway...I can't answer the poll because it's so black and white. When I think exclusive, I think one store. You know, a literal exclusive. Target's been bad at those forever. Kay Bee was the best and look at where they are now. But the last couple of years, we've had fan channel "exclusives" too. I love the ones that go to BBTS and Pulse and GameStop and basically anybody that's not Walfart, Scamazon, or Target. Except Walgreens. Fuck them. Back on point, those "fan channel" ones have been pretty easy to get. They really do fit the bill of "hurrr if it wuzzint sclusive its never get made." If people are mad about those, they're going to go nuts when conventions open back up and we get to see some asshole with piles of SDCC stuff priced at a 5X multiplier. Regardless, though, exclusives have just exploded in the last few years, probably because it was the easiest way to lure people back to stores they stopped considering due to years and years of bare shelves.

 

I can only speak as a fan living in the USA that also buys imported figures but The Pit went up for multiple restocks, in fact it's up again currently. Frenzy was generations selects and available from multiple retailers. My local walmarts (can only speak to my own experience) still have Netflix wave 1 pretty plentiful. Springer wasn't an exclusive and doesn't factor into the conversation at hand.

You cited "red card" exclusives and then changed the criteria to be any exclusives and mainline figures in your next post. And that red card exclusivity only pertained to Redwing's initial USA release.

 

I gave one example for reference only of the worst case scenario that bit the most for "exclusives", right now the Pit is pretty bad for outside the US as you need to take in consideration that it's not just their availability but the extreme markup that we get outside of the US.. To order the Pit from Pulse more than doubles it's price for me right now, and that's just way overboard, and the scalpers that exist because of the way Hasbro is doing things are milking it.

Look at the discussion we've had about Nonnef.. I just don't agree with the way it's done now as it doubles the price of anything I'd get. I just can't justify such expenditure over toys and kits.. this is a hobby about TOYS that should be fun... not a financial and availability stress.

Remember my post when I stated that people in the US don't know what it's like... that's part of the problem.

edit: maybe you need to read this whole thread as you might not have noticed that the ones that are ok with the exclusives appear to be almost all US based fans, and almost all the ones that aren't ok with exclusives are outside the US.

 

Not disagreeing, but that's a different topic altogether and not intrinsically linked to exclusives. That's really more of a general supply/demand/distribution issue than anything else

 

It isn't years ago. The market has changed dramatically. Fewer retail outlets, less interest in toys by children, more by adults. You can't say it should be a way now because it was that way in the past.

 

Got to disagree as it is THE main reason why exclusives are a problem. The demand is there, but not the availability... why I mentioned that they end up losing sales because of it.

All exclusive have been low quantities and generally hard to get 100% of the time if you're outside the US, it's ALWAYS a gamble if someone will carry an exclusive and if they'll have enough for everyone that wants to purchase one... much more than the other bad distribution/quantity of the general lines where some figures were horrible to get, but still showed up in local stores or were available to a much higher level than the exclusives (with much more resellers being able to obtain them).

Yet I see people on here that will argue until they are blue in the face that Transformers are "just for kids" and the fandom means nothing to Hasbro.

And yes it has, the geek chic has created this scenario for all fandoms, and every company has switched to upping prices due to it and doing anything to create and feed it as its maximizing their profit.

So, should I say that it should be that way?.. yes, I absolutely should... it's TOYS, they should be easily available and not overpriced.

 

I have consistently empathized with overseas (or up north) collectors, and I remember when it was hard for US collectors to get the Japanese exclusives. It is a thing that is factored into the hobby, unfortunately. But to say exclusives are bad because of the shipping costs is like saying Nonnef's products are bad because of the shipping costs. The shipping costs are out of his control, and the only other option is to not make the product.

Given a choice between wide release and exclusive, I'll take wide release, but that's not the choice here. Right now it is "exclusive or nothing", which sucks but it is what it is. And I am aware for overseas folks the choice is even worse - "exclusive + prohibitive shipping/scalpers or nothing". Unfortunately this is still a largely US focused fan base, and Hasbro caters to that base.

I hope they find a way to better serve you guys, and anything that can be done to facilitate that let us know.