Editor wrote:In re-reading the translation....
To make this stick-out a bit further than the two in the previous announcements which are reused from other molds, there is a chance that it only means that this is a new mold that simply is not YET been made available.
yeah, at this point, that's what i thought it meant as well. clearly it's not available in the US.. but that doesn't entirely mean that it won't be.
plus, if it did get released in the US, it doesn't mean it needs to be named "groove" .. i mean, look at "break-neck" and "quickslinger"..
do i think hasbro will release it over here? probably not.. i hope they do, but at this point it doesn't seem like anything is concrete.
now, i think hasbro has handled this whole thing, like they do most everything else lately, terribly. they seriously have no regard for their fans and collectors when it comes to transformers. it's rather insulting.
i'd love for botcon to be held within 100 miles of where i live, but it isn't. i wish i could ask them all of the questions i want.. but i can't, and it seems like everyone who asks a question at botcon never really calls them out on crap like this. whether it be at a public Q&A or in a private conversation.. i never see answers for this type of stuff.
i mean, there's been TFA blackout, thundercracker, wingblade prime, hydrodive bumblebee, dotm deluxe leadfoot, soundwave, que, human alliance soundwave, TFP unicron, breakdown, jet vehicon, jet vehicon general, and now this crap with groove. all of these figures that haven't been released in the US are based on designs and characters from US content (movies and tv shows).. how is it that another country gets more complete collections of figures than where the content originated from?.. it just doesn't make sense. i think it clearly delineates hasbro, the company that only cares about the bottom line, from takara, the company that cares about money, but also cares about what their fans want.
why won't they release all of these figures here?.. i think it shows a ridiculous lack of care for the fan base. it's stuff like this that makes me want to support 3rd parties even more.
oh well, i guess we'll have to see how this plays out. i'd love to buy the takara set.. but with how cheaply these figures are made, how they all basically share a similar, if not identical transformation, i can't justify paying import prices for figures like these. i'll gladly pay BBTS prices for masterpiece figures.. but i just can't do that with these combiner wars figures.