The Energon Pub

[Sabrblade]

and Red Wing, who I'll probably never get because he was stupidly locked behind that dumb card.

He's still available at both RobotKingdom and Action Robo.

[Wolfman Jake]

But, I suspect Earthrise Smokescreen will be WFC Smokescreen with the Cybertronian "38" replaced with Arabic numerals. It'll satisfy some people unhappy with the previous offering, but not leave many of us in a quandary over whether to get him.

I'm quite happy with how Smokescreen and especially Bluestreak came out in Siege/Selects/35th Anniversary. However, I'd love to see a repaint of Prowl in some fashion. He doesn't need any remolding. Just a much more premium paint job to make him look a little less boring visually. There's plenty of G1 toy stickers and character model details to choose from. Making the paint under the clear "window" parts light blue instead of silver would really help things "pop" too.

[TF-fan kev777]

That's a relatively small geographic area however

St. Louis, MO, and Knoxville, TN? It's a 500 mile drive between them. That's about 1/6th the span of the 48 states.

That's assuming the majority of stores in between have them.

The "majority of stores" is an unrealistically high bar for saying something has received "general release". In the town I live in, Kroger is the only store that stocks any Micromasters or Battlemasters at all.

My apologies, I thought it was a foregone conclusion we were talking about Target, since that is the only store according the sightings forum, and other accounts, that Rung has been found at in the continental US. So I'll reiterate, *most* Target stores. I live in a suburb of a top 20 populated city. I've documented my frustration in years past, I can travel to 15 or so Walmarts, and 15 Targets within an hour of where I live (not bragging just stating a fact, because I'd rather not waste my time driving all over), but there's no reason that these items shouldn't reach my general geographical area, given enough time

I think you might be overlooking the possibility of just bad luck in your particular area. Both Target and Walmart have a number for regional distribution warehouses. I have no idea how many they have or how large of an area they each might cover, but I'd say that any stores within an hour drive of you are likely all served by the same distribution warehouse. If the warehouse for your area experiences lower overall sales for each of the different cases of TF's as compared to other warehouses around the US, then your stores will be slower to get the newer waves in stock. If you have a perfect storm type of timing, say like having the newest wave hitting right before Christmas, and your area warehouse still had enough of the previous waves backed up, then your area may in fact not see a certain wave at the tail end if other area warehouses sell through the stock while yours was backed up.

The biggest question I would love for Hasbro to answer would be whether they make the same number of cases for each wave, or if a tail end wave has fewer made in the first place than the earlier waves. That might answer a lot of questions for collectors on tail end waves and how to plan out whether to pre-order or chance finding them in stores.

[o.supreme]

I think you might be overlooking the possibility of just bad luck in your particular area. Both Target and Walmart have a number for regional distribution warehouses. I have no idea how many they have or how large of an area they each might cover, but I'd say that any stores within an hour drive of you are likely all served by the same distribution warehouse. If the warehouse for your area experiences lower overall sales for each of the different cases of TF's as compared to other warehouses around the US, then your stores will be slower to get the newer waves in stock. If you have a perfect storm type of timing, say like having the newest wave hitting right before Christmas, and your area warehouse still had enough of the previous waves backed up, then your area may in fact not see a certain wave at the tail end if other area warehouses sell through the stock while yours was backed up.

The biggest question I would love for Hasbro to answer would be whether they make the same number of cases for each wave, or if a tail end wave has fewer made in the first place than the earlier waves. That might answer a lot of questions for collectors on tail end waves and how to plan out whether to pre-order or chance finding them in stores.

Or just make everything available on HasbroPulse. HTS we understand was more of an *outlet* for overstock items, but Pulse is being branded as a premium online shopping site, pretty much every other Siege offering has been made available, (even latecomers such as Crosshairs, Spinister and Astrotrain). Why the last Micromasters and Battlemasters are not there is puzzling. I notice there are no BM's on HP currently, but they had previously been there.

[Dr. Caelus]

I think you might be overlooking the possibility of just bad luck in your particular area. Both Target and Walmart have a number for regional distribution warehouses. I have no idea how many they have or how large of an area they each might cover, but I'd say that any stores within an hour drive of you are likely all served by the same distribution warehouse. If the warehouse for your area experiences lower overall sales for each of the different cases of TF's as compared to other warehouses around the US, then your stores will be slower to get the newer waves in stock. If you have a perfect storm type of timing, say like having the newest wave hitting right before Christmas, and your area warehouse still had enough of the previous waves backed up, then your area may in fact not see a certain wave at the tail end if other area warehouses sell through the stock while yours was backed up.

The biggest question I would love for Hasbro to answer would be whether they make the same number of cases for each wave, or if a tail end wave has fewer made in the first place than the earlier waves. That might answer a lot of questions for collectors on tail end waves and how to plan out whether to pre-order or chance finding them in stores.

Or just make everything available on HasbroPulse. HTS we understand was more of an *outlet* for overstock items, but Pulse is being branded as a premium online shopping site, pretty much every other Siege offering has been made available, (even latecomers such as Crosshairs, Spinister and Astrotrain). Why the last Micromasters and Battlemasters are not there is puzzling. I notice there are no BM's on HP currently, but they had previously been there.

**** yeah. Hunting for stuff was fun when I was younger, but I've got a child now - I don't have time to run to three different targets in another town looking for something that has long-odds of actually being there. I just preordered everything on Pulse that I knew for certain I would pay full price for anyway. I would have preordered the MM packs and Soundbarrier too, if they'd been there.

Honestly, I end up coming so close to completion on Generations figures each year that, if there was an annual subscription to just get one of each figure in the line with say a 10% discount, I would strongly consider it.

[TF-fan kev777]

I think you might be overlooking the possibility of just bad luck in your particular area. Both Target and Walmart have a number for regional distribution warehouses. I have no idea how many they have or how large of an area they each might cover, but I'd say that any stores within an hour drive of you are likely all served by the same distribution warehouse. If the warehouse for your area experiences lower overall sales for each of the different cases of TF's as compared to other warehouses around the US, then your stores will be slower to get the newer waves in stock. If you have a perfect storm type of timing, say like having the newest wave hitting right before Christmas, and your area warehouse still had enough of the previous waves backed up, then your area may in fact not see a certain wave at the tail end if other area warehouses sell through the stock while yours was backed up.

The biggest question I would love for Hasbro to answer would be whether they make the same number of cases for each wave, or if a tail end wave has fewer made in the first place than the earlier waves. That might answer a lot of questions for collectors on tail end waves and how to plan out whether to pre-order or chance finding them in stores.

Or just make everything available on HasbroPulse. HTS we understand was more of an *outlet* for overstock items, but Pulse is being branded as a premium online shopping site, pretty much every other Siege offering has been made available, (even latecomers such as Crosshairs, Spinister and Astrotrain). Why the last Micromasters and Battlemasters are not there is puzzling. I notice there are no BM's on HP currently, but they had previously been there.

While Hasbro Pulse is being billed as a full fledged online site, keep in mind that are also technically competitors of their regular retail partners and have to walk a fine line.

I also think their share of sales is pretty small compared to the big online and brick and mortar retailers. So if one of their retail partners experience larger sales than anticipated (and I do think that happened with Siege) and need additional product, they are probably going to pull that from stock that was intended for Hasbro Pulse. The only other option is to tell their retail partners, sorry, we're all out and keep them for Hasbro Pulse. If their share of sales from Hasbro Pulse is as small as I suspect, it would not make sense to tell a partner that sells 10/20/30 times as much of Hasbro's product than Pulse they are out while they are trying to sell them directly from their site.

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

[no-one]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

[TF-fan kev777]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Yep, and those who aren't pleased will complain about it on the internet (as is their right).

[Tigerhawk7109]

You know, I think the bot behind Bee is actually Devcon.

[Rodimus Prime]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Or, how about do some market research, analyze sales either by quarter of the year or waves released, and see what sells and what doesn't. Then compare sales to production and figure out what figures are getting overproduced and what needs to be made more.

[william-james88]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Or, how about do some market research, analyze sales either by quarter of the year or waves released, and see what sells and what doesn't. Then compare sales to production and figure out what figures are getting overproduced and what needs to be made more.

Are figures really being overproduced? Do you still see POTP toys at Walmart or Target?

[Hellscream9999]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Or, how about do some market research, analyze sales either by quarter of the year or waves released, and see what sells and what doesn't. Then compare sales to production and figure out what figures are getting overproduced and what needs to be made more.

Are figures really being overproduced? Do you still see POTP toys at Walmart or Target?

no, but wave contents matter, every store in a 20 mile radius of me has about 10+ shockwaves sitting on the shelves, and the studio leader megatrons' aren't far behind, the downfall of having too few leaders in a year is if one's a stinker, it's there forever gumming up the restock process

[Jelze Bunnycat]

I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Or, how about do some market research, analyze sales either by quarter of the year or waves released, and see what sells and what doesn't. Then compare sales to production and figure out what figures are getting overproduced and what needs to be made more.

Are figures really being overproduced? Do you still see POTP toys at Walmart or Target?

no, but wave contents matter, every store in a 20 mile radius of me has about 10+ shockwaves sitting on the shelves, and the studio leader megatrons' aren't far behind, the downfall of having too few leaders in a year is if one's a stinker, it's there forever gumming up the restock process

Here's the thing tho: not every area is the same when it comes to sales, and from the looks of it, continent is as deep as Hasbro is willing to go for adjusting supply. Fragmenting that or adjusting cases by country, or even state in our case could develop into a logistic nightmare. Offering solid cases to some more specialised retailers may be meant to curb that without having to jump through hoops.

[Stargrave]

Overproduced maybe but also there’s just some misses with the hits. Shockwave sitting on the shelves isn't surprising everyone’s regarded him as the weakest in the wave. Same for Chromia she wasn’t over produced she was sitting on the shelves because her wavemates were just better. I’m not saying that’s the entire issue but it’s definitely layered. Most times what’s not moving is the stuff that’s just not that awesome.

[Rodimus Prime]

Let me clarify. I wasn't talking about actual figures being released. We all know Primes and Bees outsell any other figure. I was talking about numbers of waves. Do figures from waves 1 and 2 sell more than waves 4 and 5? If so, why? Because it's the first wave of a new line? And some people will buy it just to try it? What I'm trying to say is that Hasbro and the various retailers they work with need to find a balance between the early waves and the later waves so that all the figures are available to everyone. Until then, we'll keep seeing shelf warmers from the first waves even at the end of the line, whereas figures from later waves are nowhere to be seen.

Tl;dr Hasbro, we know you're worried about the bottom line, so if you not only want to keep profits but make more, cut back a bit on the first couple of waves and put that production effort and time into the later waves. Unless I'm proven wrong by your diligent market research.

[Jelze Bunnycat]

Let me clarify. I wasn't talking about actual figures being released. We all know Primes and Bees outsell any other figure. I was talking about numbers of waves. Do figures from waves 1 and 2 sell more than waves 4 and 5? If so, why? Because it's the first wave of a new line? And some people will buy it just to try it? What I'm trying to say is that Hasbro and the various retailers they work with need to find a balance between the early waves and the later waves so that all the figures are available to everyone. Until then, we'll keep seeing shelf warmers from the first waves even at the end of the line, whereas figures from later waves are nowhere to be seen.

Tl;dr Hasbro, we know you're worried about the bottom line, so if you not only want to keep profits but make more, cut back a bit on the first couple of waves and put that production effort and time into the later waves. Unless I'm proven wrong by your diligent market research.

It's not just Hasbro that's to blame here, but also the ones doing the ordering for the stores, perhaps more so. It's pretty customary to order in bulk upon first introduction to cover potential sellouts, then reorder and/or shrink the allocated space as needed. My wife works retail (Crocs outlets for 4 years now), I can ask her more specific stuff if you guys would like.

[Rodimus Prime]

It's pretty customary to order in bulk upon first introduction to cover potential sellouts, then reorder and/or shrink the allocated space as needed.

That would work fine if all the waves had the same figures in it. But if an earlier wave has a figure that won't sell for whatever reason, and a later wave had a figure that most fans were waiting for, the figure in the later wave won't be available as widely or in a high enough count because the earlier figure didn't sell.

[Skritz]

All I know is the local TRU is swarming with Starscreams. Again. Things haven't changed at all since POTP.

[D-Maximal_Primal]

All I know is the local TRU is swarming with Starscreams. Again. Things haven't changed at all since POTP.

It's amazing to me how slow Starscreams have seemed to sell lately, other than the movie ones. Potp and siege Starscreams have been, and still are, ubiquitous around here. I have seen those 2 more than any others around.

Same with the Cyberverse toys, he is usually the last one to be around.

[Sentinel_Primal]

I tend to notice that it's almost exclusively the Decepticons from WFC that seem to linger (and also Chromia), but that made me think about something: Is it just the quality of some Cons? Because Megatron is fairly regularly called the weakest voyager, Shockwave is overpriced, and Starscream barely contributed to his alt mode. The only real deluxe class Cons were the Reflectors, Brunt, Skytread, Barricade, and Spinister, but the only deluxe class figure that seems to stick around is Chromia. It could also just be the typical "Bad guys don't sell" bit though, but I find it strange that the deluxes sell while the others linger for months (or a year if it's Chromia, because I fully expect to see Chromias still on the shelves while Earthrise is going on )

[D-Maximal_Primal]

I tend to notice that it's almost exclusively the Decepticons from WFC that seem to linger (and also Chromia), but that made me think about something: Is it just the quality of some Cons? Because Megatron is fairly regularly called the weakest voyager, Shockwave is overpriced, and Starscream barely contributed to his alt mode. The only real deluxe class Cons were the Reflectors, Brunt, Skytread, Barricade, and Spinister, but the only deluxe class figure that seems to stick around is Chromia. It could also just be the typical "Bad guys don't sell" bit though, but I find it strange that the deluxes sell while the others linger for months (or a year if it's Chromia, because I fully expect to see Chromias still on the shelves while Earthrise is going on )

At least in the case of Starscream, his colors have to contribute. He is pretty boringly colored, especially compared to his repaints

[Sabrblade]

I still see Hound lingering here and there.

[Sentinel_Primal]

At least in the case of Starscream, his colors have to contribute. He is pretty boringly colored, especially compared to his repaints

Quite possibly, especially as that's the reason I ended up not grabbing Screamer. Earthrise's version looks a lot better comparatively. The brighter blues and the red look very good in the in hand pictures, but that could change when seen in stores

[Jelze Bunnycat]

At least in the case of Starscream, his colors have to contribute. He is pretty boringly colored, especially compared to his repaints

Quite possibly, especially as that's the reason I ended up not grabbing Screamer. Earthrise's version looks a lot better comparatively. The brighter blues and the red look very good in the in hand pictures, but that could change when seen in stores

To Hasbro: to prevent Earthrise Starscream from lingering on the shelves, do not re-release him in a later wave like you with did Siege (and possibly PotP)!

[no-one]

To Hasbro: to prevent Earthrise Starscream from lingering on the shelves, do not re-release him in a later wave like you with did Siege (and possibly PotP)!

I think that's exactly the problem with the lurkers, they got re-released in later waves. We have a bunch wave oner's hounding the pegs as well.

Who wants another (maybe better) look at Prime?