Hey everyone so I recently bought my first masterpiece figure (Bumblebee) from TRU. I was wondering if Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Grimlock, Seekers and others will get re released and if so when? Also wondering how much masterpieces TRU puts out every year and when Wheeljack, Hot Rod and Ultra Magnus will be released? Thanks
American Masterpiece releases are inconsistent, expensive, and hard to get. Buying the Japanese versions is usually the same cost in IMHO nicer boxes and much easier to get.
It's also at times cheaper. I got all of my mp cars from Japan (I only have Prowl and Bee). The total price with shipping was $10 cheaper thank the tru variants. Personally it's only worth buying big mp characters domestically if you can find them.
There is no release schedule for MP's in the US. It is almost always easier and cheaper to get the Takara versions when they come out. If you preorder from a Japanese retailer, you can usually get a pretty good price. Nippon-Yasan, Anime Export, HLJ, etc..... There are a couple exceptions. TRU Soundwave was much cheaper and included all the tapes, but it was very difficult to find. TRU Starscream was also a good deal before they upped the price, but it was also pretty hard to find. Basically if you see an MP figure still sitting on a TRU shelf, it was released by Takara 6-12 months ago for $20 cheaper.
One instance where TRU was potentially better was with MP-13 Soundwave as it included all of the cassettes. The problem was finding it and up until the re-release of the Takara one with all the tapes, was very expensive.
If you are in the US and have an Ollies store nearby, they are getting the latest release of MP Grimlocks from TRU at $39.99 each.
Will there be any other figures this year in TRU? I'm considering doing what all of you guys are saying but will there be any more this year and when can we expect shockwave, ultra magnus, hot rod, wheeljack and others?
Hasbro masterpieces are usually cranked out by one decepticon and one autobot a year, it really depends if takara can have hasbro go with the go for masterpiece toys. Also, licensing the name like with wheeljack is a huge issue. Also, hasbro won't do a hasbro re release of the figures they've done because of time constraints with also farting out as much titan returns crap they can give out.
They might (and will probably) never come. There's no consistent release schedule. Especially releases like Ultra Magnus and Shockwave, who are large but not necessarily popular. It depends on what TRU wants to carry and what hasbro is willing to release. Even if they do happen, like has been said, they're not necessarily better deals. The best thing is to wait for a sale on BBTS or HLJ and snag the Japanese versions then. Also, for MP Bumblebee, we never even got an official solicitation until it was found in stores, so you might not even know when they're out.
Yeah I'm definitely in the majority on this one. Get them online and go Takara. Pretty much the only way to get any of them in Canada. I did find the Masterpiece Bumblebee at a Toys R Us once but they wanted $120 for essentially a deluxe sized figure before taxes. I ended up getting the G2 version on sale from BBTS for like $60 American which was still high with the exchange rate but cheaper than TRU, the version I actually wanted, and a Takara one.
As others have said, the US TRU releases aren't the best way to get into it. Well they're good for getting you into it, but not keeping up with it since they release so few. I would definitely just look elsewhere, eBay is a great tool to get really good deals on MPs. Buy when they have 4-8x eBay bucks so you get something back for your spending as well. There's many chinese/JP sellers on there who deal in toys and are legit. There are knock offs of many releases, but typically they are pretty clearly called out.
TRU is not the way to go. As mentioned above they can be hard to find, driving up scalper prices. Never once saw Prime, Soundwave, or Starscream in store.
