As I've been looking at the fan sites over the past few days keeping track of all of the Toy Fair news I am starting to notice a couple of oddities in what was revealed. I am basing some of this off of the TF Wiki listing for Earthrise so please keep that in mind while reading:

I find it odd that normally at the big convention type shows Hasbro tends to reveal whole waves of upcoming figures. The only full wave of figures that was confirmed this weekend were the wave 2 deluxes. All of the other size classes were either only partially revealed or not committed to any wave at all. I also find it interesting that BBTS put up a listing for Wave 3 of the Earthrise deluxes with only two figures confirmed and the other two being "secret figures". Most likely Trailbreaker and Sunstreaker but still strange, I don't believe a partial wave has been put up for preorder before. I know that there are more toy shows coming up in Europe and Asia and they have to save reveals for those shows but if that is the case why not just show off the whole wave at once?

Also, it seems like there is a fairly large gap between waves 1 and 2 of Earthrise. It seemed like during Siege there was a pretty consistent 2-3 month gap between waves but with wave 1 of Earthrise coming out early, March was the original release month, and wave 2 not hitting until June/July of this year that is about a four to five month gap between waves. Really making that Netflix Siege line feel like a filler wave between wave 1 and 2 of Earthrise.

I know that a few figures like Astrotrain, Apeface and Spinister were speculated to have been moved up from Earthrise to help fill out the last wave of Siege. It is possible that may have created these issues. Or Hasbro wanted a line of figures to be released at the same time as the Netflix show drops so some things had to be moved around to accommodate that and Earthrise just got caught in the middle.

Anyway just somethings that I've noticed and thought might make an interesting discussion topic. Or maybe I'm just looking for riddles when there are none.

Here is a line to the TF Wiki Earthrise page: War for Cybertron: Earthrise (toyline) - Transformers Wiki

 

The gap between waves one and two of earthrise can probably be chalked up to Chinese New year.
Usually somewhere in February/march-ish, all of southeast Asia (where all of our shit is made) pretty much shuts down and parties for a month.

So by the time the hangover wears off and everyone files back into the sweatshops to start making stuff again, it'll be April. The stuff will be on boats by may. And start hitting our Walmarts and Targets by June

I could be entirely off base though. I'm just spitballing here. If someone who actually lives in southeast Asia and works in toy manufacturing wants to correct me, please do so.

 

The Netflix wave hits in April. Earthrise wave 1 hasn't gone into stock most places yet.

March - Earthrise wave 1 street date
April - WFC Netflix wave 1
September - Earthrise wave 2
October - Skylynx
November - Scorponok

Somewhere in there is wave 3 and 4 and Netflix wave 2 plus selects

 

Not really. Chinese Lunar New Year does depend on the Chinese Calendar, but the family reunions only happen for approx 2-3 weeks. What makes me think that the gap is so huge this time is the coronavirus.

 

Where is this info that Spinister and Apeface being "moved up" coming from? I thought they were Siege reveals from the start.