Found them today at the Intertoys store in downtown Herne. Fellow German fan Metro, a member of the Starblight.de community, also found them at the Intertoys store inside the Shopping Arkaden shopping mall in downtown Bocholt last week. Some disclaimers: 1) Intertoys is a mostly regional chain with a Dutch parent company. Most of their stores are located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, near the Dutch border. 2) As a consequence of the above, Intertoys supposedly gets its stock of Hasbro toys through the Hasbro Netherlands supply chain, which has in the past occasionally resulted in German Intertoys stores stocking toys that were either never officially supposed to be available at German retail (e.g. Energon combiners, or Cybertron toys in 2005), or were officially supposed to be exclusive to another chain in Germany (e.g. AOE Deluxes and Voyagers at Toys"R"Us). 3) According to Hasbro Germany at this year's Nuremberg Toy Fair, the Titans Return Leaders are not planned for a German release, so coupled with the above, they might very well be de facto "Intertoys exclusives" as far as the German market is concerned. Only time will tell. 4) On top of that, the stores in Bocholt and downtown Herne, where these figures were spotted, both have occasionally been given "special treatment" in the past, insofar as I've found some toys (both Transformers and Nerf products) at each store that I've never seen at any other German Intertoys store. The store in downtown Herne is effectively their "flagship store" for Germany, located in the same building as the German Intertoys corporate headquarters, while the city of Bocholt is directly bordering the Dutch border. So it could very well be that the Leaders will never even see a wide release at German Intertoys stores. 5) And lastly, there's the price. 80 Euros for a Leader Class figure. Seriously. EIGHTY EUROS. You gotta be kidding me.
I'd be as bewildered if our local toy shop king chain, Smyk, didn't already pull that off in Poland. Well, they are discounting them now to the 60 Euros other retailers dish out, but, to quote Obama, yes they can. Then again, sad as it is, what are we gasping at, nowadays in some more regular places we have to pay up to 30 Euros for Deluxes, and that should put things into perspective for us pretty well.
Pricing in Europe and the UK is outlandish right now. It's approaching the point at which it's easier to import and pay the customs charge for the same price or less. Perhaps China is such a huge market now that Hasbro don't care about the EU?
Hahahaha, this is why i just do not care about hasbro products anymore. The outradious prices! I can buy and import premium Takara Masterpieces for that amount. €80 for an optimus prime. I remember an evasion optimus being sold in the us being $20 and here in the Netherlands it was €70. Looks lije prices went even further up. €80,00 = $89.00 incl taxes btw
Wow, that is an insane price. Odd too, since here, the prices did not go up that much for the Deluxes and Legends...
80? Good I imported him. I payed 60€, including taxes and import fees and thought that was already expensive.
