Movie 2007 Toys

[Shockprowl]

Look out Skyblast!!!!

[The Doctor]

Too late! He's going down!

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

What TF:TM Toys Can YOU buy this Christmas ?

OK. There's 8 dlx TFs, 6 Voyagers and 3 Leader toys that are actually in the movie. Since the early assortments with these in are long gone where can little Johnny Public's parents get him the toys from the film this Christmas ?

DLX
Bumblebee (old)
Bumblebee (new)
Jazz
Final Battle Jazz
Barricade
Scorponok
Bonecrusher
Brawl

VOYAGER
Blackout
Ratchet
Starscream
Ironhide
Op
Megatron

LEADER
Op
Megatron
Brawl

[Philip Ayres]

I'll start you off:

Scorponok and Blackout are in a pack in TRU as is the original Bumblebee (with Longarm)

Which other packs are out there ?

[The Doctor]

Protoform Prime, Jazz and Brawl are in a 3-pack in Woolies for £20.

-Ralph

[Bogatan]

Tesco have the old and new BB pack. ASda had the 78BB and Barricade 2 pack which is incredibly nice but I've only ever seen the one I bought, probably cause it only cost a few pence more than the individual packs.

Andy

Edit: Voyager Prime and concept BB from Argos seems to be available still, sometimes.

[Hero]

I've pretty much bought all the movie figs I want except for Voyager Megatron and Dropkick. I'm saving my toy buying energy towards the Animated stuff.

[Nigel]

I've got Bonecrusher in stock.

[Philip Ayres]

The point is Ken is how many of the characters from the movie can a parent get for their child ? Surely Hasbro is doing something wrong if you can't get major characters in nthe run up to Christmas ????? Though if I were Hasbro I'd have the initial dlx assortment and a mix of Voyager wv 1 & 2 back on the shelves NOW

[The Doctor]

Bear in mind we are dealing with Hasbro UK. Slightly less sense than a drunk duck, that lot.

-Ralph

[Bogatan]

What parent would possibly want to buy toys in November and December, crazy.

Working for Hasbro UK must be like those horrid bank adverts. How can we make life harder for
our customers.

Andy

[Nigel]

I've mentioned this before: I've read on the internet (ie I can't vouch for its accuracy) that retailers did not order sufficient quantities to meet the unexpected demand so insufficient quantities were produced.

I don't know what sort of lead times and order quantities manufacturers would require to get the toys back on the shelves; coupled with the problems in Chinese toy production (thousands of factories having had their export licenses revoked so industry capacity must be reduced), I can't see it happening somehow.

Legends and FAB versions are still relatively easy to come by, though that will be little comfort come Christmas morning.

[kayevcee]

From my experience with Ben 10 this spring, I'd say lead times for big quantities of toys that people really want but toy shops sell out of is at least two months. With the increased safety legislation/paranoia, you could be looking at a full quarter.

My branch of Toys'r'us usually has some of each of the three Leaders- when Prime sells out, Megatron starts shifting instead. Brawl sells at a decent pace. Thankfully we get Primes back in quite regularly, as at this time of year we can get shot of about two dozen a week easily. From reports from customers and other Hubbers, Prime is actually pretty hard to get. TRU must have ordered several container-loads back in the summer to keep shops stocked.

We did have Final Battle Jazz up till a few weeks ago. Now at least we have deluxe '08 Bumblebee. We do Ultimate Bumblebee as well, but we had sold out of him when I was in on Saturday.

-Nick

[kayevcee]

Transformers: Premium Series

I guess this explains the 3 leader-class listings in Hasbro's 2008 assortment.

Megatron and Starscream look a lot better. Prime has a new weapon. Ironhide just appears to have a few more paint applications. The rest seem to have minimal alterations.

-Nick

[Nigel]

Wave 1 Deluxe, comprising the characters actually seen in the movie and therefore the most desirable toys, have been pretty much sold out everywhere since June. Suddenly, branches of Toys R Us had massive quantities available in store about a week before Christmas.

Now, they were in store ready for the last and probably busiest weekend before Christmas. But is it too late? Many people will have finished their Christmas shopping already, though there will likely have been toys sold because children wanted particular characters.

So will there be an ironic situation where the most desirable toys suddenly become shelf warmers?

[Philip Ayres]

Not just TRU. Found some in Sainsbury's too.

IMO: 4 weeks too late. Should have been there for the DVD launch.

[KoshNaranek]

As the Americans say, I think Hasbro "dropped the ball" on this one. Mind you, there was a load that came in to my local Toymaster recently with only a few Bumblebee's and they disappeared very fast just leaving poor Arcee to sit there on her own.

I still want Ironhide.

- Tony

[kayevcee]

My shop got about 20-25 cases of wave 1 in weekend before last. 160-200 figures. Our store has among the best Action Figure sales in the country so that was probably a generous allocation. When I left this evening we had two cases left in the back and about thirty on the shelves. I reckon when the kiddies turn up on the 27th with their Christmas money they'll polish them off in a week or two.

Our distribution is more likely to blame than Hasbro in this case- it takes a long time for things to get from the manufacturer to our distribution centre and out to stores. Stuff has to be ordered a couple of months in advance of its arriving in stores. The shortage of TF stuff pretty much everywhere can be blamed on Hasbro under-producting, on retailers under-ordering, or on folk spending more than was anticipated on them.

Lacklustre as our TF display is right now, it still compares favourably -in my store at least- to Power Rangers (2 £50 Manticore Megazords in battered boxes and a yellow ranger on a motorbike), WWE (two dozen of the worst selling character from Deluxe Aggression, and half a dozen of the worst seller from Ruthless Aggression), Pokemon (eight spinning figures) and Ben Ten (nothing at all).

In all honesty, I think we're just not used to seeing TF be such a massive seller. It hasn't been this hot at Christmas since... well, since the 80s! I think I was asked about the Prime voice changer five times today alone. I guess the good news is we'll be ordering plenty of TF: Animated next year!

-Nick

[Philip Ayres]

Related topic - how's the SW sold ?

[kayevcee]

Epically.

We shifted 4 cases of AT-ATs (putting in a surprise appearance after two months of no-shows on the last delivery truck of the year), two cases of Y-wings, half a dozen TIE Interceptors, four Bombers, the last six 'medium vehicles', two ARC-170 fighters, half a dozen ARC crews, the last of our AT-RT scout packs, four Banthas, our only three SWTF Millennium Falcons and half a dozen Death Stars. During my shift. I know because I was running back and forth with more boxes all day. Probably a couple of the giant, 60 quid Lambda shuttles too, but they were on a pallet further down-store.

Goddamn it, people! It's Christmas eve! You should have done this weeks ago!

-Nick

[Philip Ayres]

Warms my heart to hear this. Here's to the ATTE and *NEW* Millenium Falcon next year

[kayevcee]

There's a new Millennium Falcon coming out next year? Not before time!

Is the ATTE the big tank thingie from ROTS? Should we take this discussion to Other Toys?

-Nick

[Philip Ayres]

kayevcee said:

Should we take this discussion to Other Toys?

-Nick

Yes

[Gav]

A little known fact is that Cybertron Evac is my favourite transforming toy. His little winch, his blades...amazing. I love it, and don't care what anyone else says.

Now look! WANT:



I was always on the fence about Blackout's toy. Now it's EVAC i want it! Want it! Want it! Want it!

[grahamthomson]

The original Blackouts had dodgy Automorph mechanisms so I hope they've made improvements for this remould.

[Dark Stranger]

Nice repaint!

[Andy Turnbull]

Like Graham says Blackout's automorph feature was dodgy. If that's not been rectified the toy will be a shiny, pretty disappointment!

Andy

[legios]

I wasn't originally that fussed about this repaint - I had been thinking about getting Blackout as I quite liked the more real-world colours on him. However, other peoples experiences with the Blackout toy made me rethink (hearing how someone on MW eventually disassembled his to fix the Automorph worried me a bit). If they have fixed the technical glitches that the first release had I would be half-tempted by this version.

Karl

[kayevcee]

Hasbro squeezes a few last drops out of the movie line udders with two more repaints, exclusive to Toys'r'us (hopefully just in the States).

Meet voyager-class Inferno and Mudflap, aka Tote and Erector.

-Nick

[Nigel]

Blimey, they like repainting Red Alert, don't they? That's four versions of that mould (not counting the Micron Legend version), not to mention the other moulds for the character.

I quite like the Mudflap.