The Warehouse and Siege

[Zippo]

Since I heard that Siege had Wave 2 Battle Masters, I've been checking the local stores without any luck.
Last night I learnt that the Warehouse app allows you to search store stock, as long as the item is listed for sale on the website. Battle Masters are (deluxes are not) - checking Nationwide, it seems Siege is a North Island exclusive, as no South Island stores have any ...

Anyone have any insider knowledge on why this is?

[Rodimus]

I can confirm for the moment nothing will be in store for a while ( I got someone to do a deep check everything is on order but they are waiting for stock on Hasbros end. I emailed hasbro recently and their response to the siege line At this stage the Transformers will be in store March 2019)

[IronhideTFX]

On the back of this, has anyone noticed the lack of figures in The Warehouse? No siege, no studio series. Also there is listings disappearing from the app (Voyager and leader siege now do not come up).

Not a good sign.

[megatronacepticon]

When I went to Barrington on Wednesday the section was large enough, but it was nearly all Cyberverse and kiddy-Bumblebee toys that are obviously never going to move in a month of Sundays. Has me worried about the future of Transformer availability here when Hasbro said we weren't getting anything new until Wave 4 in September.

[Damolisher]

I'm consistently underwhelmed by whomever is in charge of distribution's "efforts" with Transformers in this country. I have been as far back as the Unicron trilogy. How many figures have we missed out on due to poor marketing and so on and so forth? Combiner Wars, for example, pissed me off because we got Wave 1 with the 4 Aerialbots and one Stunticon, and then they skipped straight to Wave 3, so we missed out on the other Aerialbot and other 4 Stunticons. Titans Return? No Sixshot, Sky Shadow or Overlord among others. Power of the Primes? We got what, like a couple of months worth of distribution with very little advertising. It's frustrating as a collector.

[LinkNZ]

Same with the Terrorcons, all 4 limbs sold here but you want the middle guy to finish it?.... LOLNOPE!

They don't care. Just toys for kids etc. I've complained before that the fun of buying locally is long gone for me, they made sure of that. Now I just pre-order Springer ages ago on Amazon because I just assumed we'd (correctly as we know now) never get him.

It just baffles me why they only get like 1 box of Siege deluxes (and PotP before it) at my local Warehouse, it sells near instantly and they just never restock. Just back to endless pegs of Bumblebee and Cyberverse crap for the next half a year.

It's either that or we get a million stock of the same wave spread all round the stores so every place just has the same character all year round. The cheap place (Warehouse) sells quick and the rip off place (ToyWorld) sit on them for ages because people don't want to pay $49 for a Titan's Return deluxe.

[skydemolisher]

I came across a video from the states the other day from a Star Wars collector that spoke about the distribution issues being world wide, Hasbro is not able to fill the orders that are requested and thats lead to all sorts of issues. E.g a store needs 4 cases of something, they will only be able to send 2 cases because thats all they have. Cases of things are badly worked out because they people putting them together haven't put out any feelers for what should be added to each case out there and thus when they bulk send things out for the "new" lines, they fuck it up badly and we end up with all the shelfwarming. Which then means no one buys, no one orders more in, lines are seen as not profitable and stores refuse to stock them and when they finally clear the crap out, Hasbro is at the door again with the next "new" line and they repeat the same problem.

One other issue the guy noted is unlike the old days, there is a new film, tv show, etc almost every month so there isn't time to really market anything and keep it on the shelves for kids to want to get into it before the next big film is released and thats the thing they should focus on. Plus instead of focussing on providing figures people will buy, they add in too many non main characters that bulk out the line but no one wants. Like we want Darth Vader, Megatron, Optimus Prime, Boba Fett but do we want Yak face, random tetra jet 4, pink shorts boom guy, Autobot drone 43, etc. Probably not, yet every line is being filled with them or odd obscure characters.

Its a bit like the Halo Mattel Line. Wave 2 has shown up here, no south island stores I could see had them but they have shown up in obscure places in the North Island. Oddly wave 2 was released in 2017, so its way strange we get them now as "new" and I suspect they are left over stock.

Watching people do toy hunts and hauls in the states has really opened my eyes to how much cool stuff we are missing out on, like He-man, Terminator and Predator. Star Wars Nerf guns and Centrepieces. and Black Series figures. I'm sure they'd sell here, particularly to us older generation that grew up with them.