These are my kind of shit stains. In fact on of 'em shitstain CW Defensor is my current fav shitstain.
There appear to exist samples of all four wave 1 Deluxes in European packaging, since I was able to find official Hasbro promotional photos at the Chinese and Portuguese Hasbro websites and at several Brazilian online retailer's websites. This also serves to show once again how poorly organized Hasbro is when it comes to their promo images.
A lots been said by folk who know a lot more about this thing then I but I can weigh in on my observations 1 A lot of collectors here were patiently waiting for wave 2 to arrive at mass retailers. It never happened and then it was announced that wave 2 was skipping europe. 2 I had preordered from a specialist shop so they arrived on import. It was only way we could get them without going online. 3 We never get any leader figures (bar movie stuff) so no Jetfire or Megatrons. Again I preordered through the specialist shop picking up Leader Jetfire and G1 Megatron. As a side note I love Jetfire. Okay so hes hollow in places but he still looks great with a great altmode. He just wasnt sold at mass retail here. Ive had menasor months and recently wave 3 has started to show up at retail but we wont get Ultra Magnus, Thundercracker or Starscream at mass retail. They will have to be ordered through the specialist store. Devastator will not be sold at retail here either because hes too high a price point. Its why Metroplex wasnt sold here either. Joke.
Where are you? Toys R Us in the UK have both varieties of Leader Megatron, G1 and Armada, right now. Jetfire has recently been spotted in UK shops as well recently, check the UK sightings thread but he's been spotted in B&M's (Home Bargains?) for £30. UK Toys R Us's also got in Metroplex in decent numbers, he was available for a good few months for those that wanted him.
Sorry to bump this old thread, but I have a new theory for why wave 2 of Combiner Wars was skipped last year. 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 4 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, as seen in the first post of this thread, 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 past few months: 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 are currently barely stocking anything new in terms of Transformers, and the figures they have in stock barely seem 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.
Actually, the wave 1 voyagers started turning up (almost too) early, about the begining of December. I bought both Silverbolt and Optimus, and Optimus was as a Christmas gift. However it all seemed rushed, and they were not in the computer database. It had been reported as happening to nearly everyone at the time-fortunately my local Smyths seemed on the ball and had an overide code for all the til staff so they could be sold-my guess is you are right-they were too late for Christmas, so stores threw them out early. TF's in the UK has been a mess for a while now. Who is fully to blame is unknown, but it is a sad fact wave 1 IS STILL on my entertainers's shelves
