Toys R Us UK Top Seller = Transformers?

Short version?

Beacuse Hasbro UK are either;

A. A buch of incompetent fools who couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel and refuse to enagage with fans about what they will/won't be releasing.

B. Are a glorified distribution warehouse and get tols by the USA what they will and won't be sending out.

Either way it leaves us and Europe as an afterthought.

Personally I prefer option A, but others may have a more rational view!

They dont give us the good stuff. eg generations-bad-news-for-the-uk-t69697.php

well, we dont get much new stuff what we do get is very late and overpriced. we only just got pcc wave one, no generations, no hftd. Hasbro just seem to pick names out of a hat then give us those ones. What about voyager long haul and deluxe dirge? we never got them. pcc 5 packs? only argos have them. Also, the TRU closet to where i live only has old stock. the newest thing there is leader jetfire! we havent even got legends wheelie, arcee or jolt yet.

in short, hasbro doesnt care about us.

oddly, in TRU, no-one except me ever seems to be looking at TF's any more. could this year be the one that breaks the chain and has transformers not come out on top in most sales?

(or possibly my TRU is just terrible)

starscream7676 wrote:well, we dont get much new stuff what we do get is very late and overpriced. we only just got pcc wave one, no generations, no hftd. Hasbro just seem to pick names out of a hat then give us those ones. What about voyager long haul and deluxe dirge? we never got them.

The same thing happens in Brazil.

hmmm lets see.. somehow the top selling toy in the uk is transformers, must be the kid sales then because most of the guys i know have avoided the movie stuff, i just dont get it at all.

and fender bender as for why are we dissapointed and disgruntled little matter of us not getting a good selection of the toys, no generations for the uk!? what the hell! been like this for years, what are we getting though??? stealth force....

fething stealh force! a bunch of m.a.s.k wannabes?!

so yeah colour me disgruntled, O.D.B FOR LIFE!!!

Y'know, Smyths has been getting Generations....

Broadside Da Wrecker wrote:Y'know, Smyths has been getting Generations....

well, when i was on holiday in ireland, i got drift from smyhts, but as far as i can tell, hasbro uk isnt getting gen. wave 2,3,4 etc, only wave 1

thinking about it, in the uk smaller places like sainsburys and argos seem to get more. sainsburys has that stupidly overpriced scouts and humans with ravage set and argos got mp skywarp (only £20, still loads left lol)

starscream7676 wrote:well, we dont get much new stuff what we do get is very late and overpriced. we only just got pcc wave one, no generations, no hftd. Hasbro just seem to pick names out of a hat then give us those ones. What about voyager long haul and deluxe dirge? we never got them. pcc 5 packs? only argos have them. Also, the TRU closet to where i live only has old stock. the newest thing there is leader jetfire! we havent even got legends wheelie, arcee or jolt yet.

Erm The PCC 5 packs are out in Argos, Smyths Sainsbury's and Tesco. The 2 packs are hard to come by, Ive only seen them in my local tesco and that was wave 2 which after i took half the case for myself were gone by morning and have not been seen since. Im yet to find wave 1. The next wave of hunt for the decepticons(Elita 1, sidearms sideswipe, hailstorm etc) has just hit as has the Voyagers and Leader Starscream and battle hooks leader Op Prime.

Transformers on the UK is like a real scavenger hunt, its buy it on sight or you may never see it again.

We have the oddest assorments as we have twice as many assortments as the US but its all made up of older figures(ie TF:ROTF waves 1 and 2 US made up the UK waves 1-3).

We do not get full ranges either, as my fellow brit stated we have never got long haul or Bludgeon. Seaspray, Payload, night ops Rachet have just been released but the bludgeon repaint seems to be missing from that wave or the guy who works at Smyths had taken all of them out.

Im quiet lucky have a friend who also is avid toy collector and we keep an eye out for each other and do bulk orders for things we have missed or know wont come out in UK from www.hlj.com or big bad toy store. Importing to the UK is also expensive, on top of the VAT(Currently 17.5% going up to 20% in the new year) the postal service charge you another £8-£12($13-$20) as a handling fee of top of the taxs on any item valued over £18.00.

A few UK dealers do offer good value for money like 3darths and kapow. The only problem is that Bandai have started suing UK importers of their toys, it is now illegal to import Ben 10, Zoids, Gundam or any other Bandai owned toy and sell it on as a trarder. Rumor has it Hasbro UK might be following their trend.

We do get held to ransom to a certain degree, but then again we do get the occasional surprise by Asda getting the Walmart exclusives.

The last true UK exclusive wasn't even advertised ( war for cybertron startscream toy) so none, or very few, of the fans could get them.

Hasbro Europe does the best job it can, its been along time since they were the ones who kept the transformers brand selling long after it had died out in the states.

Im pretty sure if it wasn't for the continued strong sales in Europe Hasbro wouldn't have tested the waters with Machine Wars and Beast Wars in the states and the face of TF collecting would be very different place than that what it is today being the second biggest collectors community on the net.

I will say that if you can get hold of Hasbro UK they are more transparent than Hasbro US and do give straight answers like we have no plans for that item but this item is coming. Getting hold of them is a pain but they do answer.

They did used to have a toy shop(sadly it closed down) which I personally got items off of that weren't available widely on the high street and they used to provide the entertainer with stock for their website that didn't get to their shops(any one remember how hard it was to get BW transmetal 2 cackle?).

Another problem is the market for toys is a lot smaller in the UK than it used to be. Long gone are the independent toy shops replaced by supermarkets and smyths/toys r us/the entertainer who out priced them with their greater buying power and generally lower prices.

there's no Smyths neat me. Guessing it's an English chain? Edit: No The Entertainer's either. It's TRU, Tesco, Argos, maybe ASDA or Sainsbury or possibly Toymaster.

I'm uninterested in movie figures, or PCCs really. Generations has loads of cool stuff...I'll just pop down to my local shop and pick some up...oh wait. Never saw them anywhere here and Hasbro UK don't want my money for them. OK then, internet it is. Gotta say I am a little surprised that TRU's top sellers aren't Star Wars, as they seemed to go through loads of them in the Ep2-Ep3 era, and still carry over half an aisle and an end of the normal figures and vehicles. Maybe SW collectors can't be bothered racing to fight the SW scalpers and buy their Jedi elsewhere? While TF collectors have very limited options. Hell, we don't even get the same variety of KOs that the US does. TRU will get my money for MP Grimlock, if they get them in, and that'll be near half the £ I've spent on TFs this year. Also, unlike the other places I know that sell TFs, TRU does seem to do offers and sales on a lot. I picked up a lot of Armada/Energon toys on sale during the transition from one line to the other.

Shame Woolies went bust as they were always good for the bargains. Less so for sorting out stock. (I once asked them if they'd get more of a certain item in, or could order it, even in case assortments, and was told "we just get what they send us" I questioned the logic, as certain items may sell really well at one store or in one area and not in another. I got a look like I'd just asked them to explain string theory.)

Smyth is originally n Irish toy company I think. We dont get many Toymasters in London any more

I too miss Woolies on the high street but they are still online. I miss the Jolly Giant too, they found a load of old Gen 1 toys back in the early 00's in some old warehouses and put them out at ridiculously cheap prices.

If your that hard up ask other UK tf fans to help you out.

My local smyths has all 4 generations wave 1 figures for £9.99, HFTD wave 1 and 2 for £9.99, HFTD Voyagers discounted to 19.99 Leaders 40.00. might all be gone now though.

All else fails Kapow toys, 3darths, play.com entertainer.com(might be thetoyshop.co.uk havent used it ina while)toyzandgamez or ToysRus uk.

Infact the UK toys r us website has MP Grimlock on thier web site but have sold out(yes they did have some stock):
http://www.toysrus.co.uk/Toys-R-Us/Toys ... ck(0044477)

Neurie wrote:

starscream7676 wrote:well, we dont get much new stuff what we do get is very late and overpriced. we only just got pcc wave one, no generations, no hftd. Hasbro just seem to pick names out of a hat then give us those ones. What about voyager long haul and deluxe dirge? we never got them. pcc 5 packs? only argos have them. Also, the TRU closet to where i live only has old stock. the newest thing there is leader jetfire! we havent even got legends wheelie, arcee or jolt yet.

Erm The PCC 5 packs are out in Argos, Smyths Sainsbury's and Tesco. The 2 packs are hard to come by, Ive only seen them in my local tesco and that was wave 2 which after i took half the case for myself were gone by morning and have not been seen since. Im yet to find wave 1. The next wave of hunt for the decepticons(Elita 1, sidearms sideswipe, hailstorm etc) has just hit as has the Voyagers and Leader Starscream and battle hooks leader Op Prime.

Transformers on the UK is like a real scavenger hunt, its buy it on sight or you may never see it again.

We have the oddest assorments as we have twice as many assortments as the US but its all made up of older figures(ie TF:ROTF waves 1 and 2 US made up the UK waves 1-3).

We do not get full ranges either, as my fellow brit stated we have never got long haul or Bludgeon. Seaspray, Payload, night ops Rachet have just been released but the bludgeon repaint seems to be missing from that wave or the guy who works at Smyths had taken all of them out.

Im quiet lucky have a friend who also is avid toy collector and we keep an eye out for each other and do bulk orders for things we have missed or know wont come out in UK from http://www.hlj.com?utm_source=seibertron.com&=&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=news%20post or big bad toy store. Importing to the UK is also expensive, on top of the VAT(Currently 17.5% going up to 20% in the new year) the postal service charge you another £8-£12($13-$20) as a handling fee of top of the taxs on any item valued over £18.00.

A few UK dealers do offer good value for money like 3darths and kapow. The only problem is that Bandai have started suing UK importers of their toys, it is now illegal to import Ben 10, Zoids, Gundam or any other Bandai owned toy and sell it on as a trarder. Rumor has it Hasbro UK might be following their trend.

We do get held to ransom to a certain degree, but then again we do get the occasional surprise by Asda getting the Walmart exclusives.

The last true UK exclusive wasn't even advertised ( war for cybertron startscream toy) so none, or very few, of the fans could get them.

Hasbro Europe does the best job it can, its been along time since they were the ones who kept the transformers brand selling long after it had died out in the states.

Im pretty sure if it wasn't for the continued strong sales in Europe Hasbro wouldn't have tested the waters with Machine Wars and Beast Wars in the states and the face of TF collecting would be very different place than that what it is today being the second biggest collectors community on the net.

I will say that if you can get hold of Hasbro UK they are more transparent than Hasbro US and do give straight answers like we have no plans for that item but this item is coming. Getting hold of them is a pain but they do answer.

They did used to have a toy shop(sadly it closed down) which I personally got items off of that weren't available widely on the high street and they used to provide the entertainer with stock for their website that didn't get to their shops(any one remember how hard it was to get BW transmetal 2 cackle?).

Another problem is the market for toys is a lot smaller in the UK than it used to be. Long gone are the independent toy shops replaced by supermarkets and smyths/toys r us/the entertainer who out priced them with their greater buying power and generally lower prices.

must just be my area then, deluxes are swerve, mudflap and skorponok. pcc wave 1 2packs, 5 packs only in argos. Odly, i just saw lockdown in asda for £2.96. I would have bought it but had forgotten my money (I know, stupid...) leaders= little to none. voys= megs, old op, ratchet, mixmaster, fallen. dont get me started on scouts....

I feel bad for us fans that live in different parts of the world that are just teased with all the TF that come out every month and are let down cause they aren't shipping them out to us. Take the new Challenge at Cybertron 3 pack. So many fans would pick this up but on a small percentage will acually get it cause its a Japanese exclusive. What a bummer for us.

Neurie wrote:Smyth is originally n Irish toy company I think. We dont get many Toymasters in London any more

You get more speciality shops in the London area though. Probably more than the whole of Scotland has that carry TFs.

I too miss Woolies on the high street but they are still online. I miss the Jolly Giant too, they found a load of old Gen 1 toys back in the early 00's in some old warehouses and put them out at ridiculously cheap prices.

Oh yes! Jolly Giant! I remember they had some of the G1 Classic Heroes toys and even some seemingly original G1 releases sometime around or maybe a bit before G2. The one near me had shelves and shelves of Bumblebees and I got my G1 Prime there for £3 because someone had returned it after breaking his arm. It wasn't all the way broken, just the join in the upper shoulder busted open. He was missing one of the little ratchet bits, but with a bit of superglue the arm looked normal, he just couldn't hold any weight on it. ASDA also had a bunch of G1 toys around that time. I got Boss at the same time they had Sunstreaker, Silverbolt, Motormaster and a few other G1 originals in. Some wharehouse here must have had a big cache of mid 80s stock that they lost for a while or something.

well in northern ireland things get worse. major brands like argos and smyths toy store get a select number of stock per order that is expected to last two to three months. in my time working at argos i saw 12 coming in each shipment for the year i was there. thats 48 figures a year!!! the only reliable source is forbidden planet where when they sell out they order more. even then the less desirable figures normally take up valuable shelf space and mean no orders are put forward. hasbro uk, you suck....

The thing that annoyed me was the fact that we didn't get half of the Alternators line, we haven't had the G1 colours Starscream, and are STILL waiting for Grimlock. Come on Hasbro, you have TF fans over here as well, you know!!!

TRU are overpriced and only useful when they are trying to get rid of stock

I would love to know which argos has MP skwarp, as i have never seen it.

My best haunt is tescos, but even then they seem to be one or two waves behind. The best buys are found at home bargins/bm bargins in the north. I picked up most of the animated deluxes for £3.99-4.99 each, voyagers for £9.99. but you have to wait a long time (with fingers crossed) for that kind of deal.

All in all it sucks to be a collecter in the UK, VAT hits you hard when you order from BBTS (extra £15.00 on top of shipping for 20th aniversary piranahcon!!)

DARKAGEIS wrote:hmmm lets see.. somehow the top selling toy in the uk is transformers, must be the kid sales then because most of the guys i know have avoided the movie stuff, i just dont get it at all.

and fender bender as for why are we dissapointed and disgruntled little matter of us not getting a good selection of the toys, no generations for the uk!? what the hell! been like this for years, what are we getting though??? stealth force....

fething stealh force! a bunch of m.a.s.k wannabes?!

so yeah colour me disgruntled, O.D.B FOR LIFE!!!

Oh, I know why your Disgruntled, lol. I want to know why Hasbro UK continues to shaft you guys if it's apparent that Transformers sell so well.

Fender Bender wrote:

DARKAGEIS wrote:hmmm lets see.. somehow the top selling toy in the uk is transformers, must be the kid sales then because most of the guys i know have avoided the movie stuff, i just dont get it at all.

and fender bender as for why are we dissapointed and disgruntled little matter of us not getting a good selection of the toys, no generations for the uk!? what the hell! been like this for years, what are we getting though??? stealth force....

fething stealh force! a bunch of m.a.s.k wannabes?!

so yeah colour me disgruntled, O.D.B FOR LIFE!!!

Oh, I know why your Disgruntled, lol. I want to know why Hasbro UK continues to shaft you guys if it's apparent that Transformers sell so well.

wouldnt we all like to know that

Toys 'R Us Uk doesn't ship overseas!!!!
I mean C'mon! Get your shippingpolicy adjust and ship those few Transformers that are interesting to the Dutch People!

I also feel that the extra efforts could be made with the likes of Toys r Us UK and Hasbro uk. When ever I go to Toys r Us and ask a staff member about a specific item (Normally a transformer), I soon find them shutting down and re-booting. I've never met one member of staff yet who is helpful, or committed. At least I can get abit of a bigger picture when I talk to staff at Smyths, and The Entertainer.

It does annoy me that the likes of Hasbro UK and Toys r Us UK dont use their connections across the pond to they're and the fans advantages. This is why us fans have to use specialist retailers as described in earlier posts.

Its not just issues with stocks for transformers. G.I.Joe is another toy line which is ignored. When I got the G.I.Joe Rise of Cobra Game, (not the best game), but I was looking on the shelves everywhere for a new Snowcat within a week of playing the game.
Now the Pursuit of Cobra Toys are out in the US which has a snowxat / wolfhound in its line up, but I can only find them in the UK far via the interent at amazon, or Kapow.

finding a decent shop to buy them in Newcastle is nigh on impossible. ive given up. Play.com hasnt had new stuff on its list for months. I use Kapow, TFsource and Ebay, theyre all decently priced. ever since i went to online ordering i actually have the figures i want, not the crud left on the shelves that never sell (im pretty sure my tesco has had the same rotf mixmaster on shelf since january)

Many toys don't reach the uk because the release of wave 2 onward in any line is delayed they get replaced by new lines.

ROTF voyager Megatron only showed up in uk shops during the summer, nearly a year after he was in the states. At christmas the stores were still full of movie wave 1 toys which had already been bought by most of the people who were ever going to buy them by that time. Will there be new figures available by christmas this year? No.

Fender Bender wrote:one has to wonder why our "Disgruntled Brits" continue to be disappointed by Hasbro UK.

Your answer can be found in part here.

And another thing - if Hasbro and other oversea suppliers treat us the same way for every toy line, TFs don't have that much competition.

It's typical that a big company like Hasbro would overlook the UK as a collector's market like the U.S. Why else would they give us s**t like 'Stealth force' and the
crappy, overpriced Movie line and not give us Generations?!
I've personally been using sites like eBay, HLJ, Robotkingdom, 1999, and more recently
Kapowtoys.co.uk as there's simply no other way to get hold of the toys I want.

Even before it closed, the Hasbro toy shop's UK pages didn't have everything I wanted
so I ended up buying from abroad again.

They're missing out on a massive opportunity by not running a decent online shop for the UK and would it kill them to run a European collector's club?

Until they pull their finger out, people in the UK will bypass local shops with crap
toy lines and shop around. Often, even factoring shipping to the UK in, I've personally
saved money by ordering from companies based in Hong Kong as well as getting items months before they were released over here, if ever at all.

All we get in the UK is the movie crap, thats it really, some odd stuff that isnt movie related occasionally turns up but nothing great. No generations, which is a line i'd like to collect, especially the G1 and war for cybertron figures,only lace i can get them is on the net from usa or china usually, it costs more but thats just the way it is.

I want war for cybertron starscream! So bad! Does anybody know if its gonna be made or being designed atm? Any news would be good

GunFire Alpha wrote:Often, even factoring shipping to the UK in, I've personally
saved money by ordering from companies based in Hong Kong as well as getting items months before they were released over here, if ever at all.

Quoted for truth.

dkreed7 wrote:I want war for cybertron starscream! So bad! Does anybody know if its gonna be made or being designed atm? Any news would be good

It has, you didn't say how big it had to be tho'

dkreed7 wrote:I want war for cybertron starscream! So bad! Does anybody know if its gonna be made or being designed atm? Any news would be good

It has, you didn't say how big it had to be tho' [/quote]

Thats not really war for cybertron starscream, its a legends cybertron starscream.

WilliamStopBeingEvil wrote:G.I.Joe is another toy line which is ignored.

oh, I know about that. I'm pretty uninterested in the Movie line, but damn would I have spent far more than I should have on 25th anniversary figures if I could have got my bloody hands on them.

When I asked in Forbidden Planet I was told that they weren't allowed to import them (probably "LIES" but who knows? certainly not Hasbro UK). Of course, I then went to the same store a few months later and they had the Desert Cobras set. And of course, I'd wanted the Arctic ones. Still, I got my cartoon Destro and that was the main requirement. Still thinking about ordering some Joes off Kapow.

You know what would be hilarious???
To tell hasbro uk that we will all buy online from hasbro us until they sort something out...

ArmadaPrime wrote:You know what would be hilarious???
To tell hasbro uk that we will all buy online from hasbro us until they sort something out...

aren't we forbidden to do this? I didn't think hasbrotoyshop shipped to the UK?

craggy wrote:

ArmadaPrime wrote:You know what would be hilarious???
To tell hasbro uk that we will all buy online from hasbro us until they sort something out...

aren't we forbidden to do this? I didn't think hasbrotoyshop shipped to the UK?

They don't, but with a bit of planning you can buy from eBay or site sponsors who will supply you with US stock, at roughly the UK rrp, plus you don't have to pay for petrol, parking or worry about crap distribution.