The $80 Transformers Hotwheels Optimus Prime Sold Out in Less than Half an Hour

I would have bought this too. always a slim chance of a restock though or repaints.

to be fair, it only lasted that long because of glitches in the system. people were getting "unable to process payment due to technical issues" errors and were getting blocked from buying as a result. had to clear cache and cookies to actually get through.

I wasn't even going to buy this, because I don't see it being worth the $98 (after tax and shipping) But I had a bad day and was like SKREEW EEET. Then I got the error. and instead of taking it as a clear sign I don't need to waste the money, I took it as a HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I CAN'T HAS! and went through a good 20 minutes of hell until I saw the posts about deleting cookies/cache. It sold out right after I finally got through. I may have even got the last one.

I had no desire to get this. However, its probably something we have no way of ever knowing, but Id be curious to know overall of the units purchased; how many were Transformers fans, and how many were Hotwheels fans? I'm guessing for more of the latter. But as stated, we may never know. While toy cars are cool. I don't know if there is much crossover of these fandoms? I mean yes, I know adult TF collectors can be annoying (as I am one myself), but Hotwheels adult collectors are a whole other level of obsessed....

In about a 2 year span when I worked from home, I may have went to a local Target once a month at most (or less less frequently), to check out what they had as the doors opened. EVERY TIME I was there though, there was this same little old guy, in his late 60s, but he was fast...and would rush to the Hotwheels aisle. I'm thinking he was there probably every day. crazy....

o.supreme wrote:I had no desire to get this. However, its probably something we have no way of ever knowing, but Id be curious to know overall of the units purchased; how many were Transformers fans, and how many were Hotwheels fans? I'm guessing for more of the latter. But as stated, we may never know. While toy cars are cool. I don't know if there is much crossover of these fandoms? I mean yes, I know adult TF collectors can be annoying (as I am one myself), but Hotwheels adult collectors are a whole other level of obsessed....

In about a 2 year span when I worked from home, I may have went to a local Target once a month at most (or less less frequently), to check out what they had as the doors opened. EVERY TIME I was there though, there was this same little old guy, in his late 60s, but he was fast...and would rush to the Hotwheels aisle. I'm thinking he was there probably every day. crazy....

All we know is that there were 27003 units available the moment it opened.

Well it's a good thing you can get it from Ebay then...

F*kn' scalpers.

If I'd have more info in time, I'm sure I would have been seriously tempted by that Optimus, despite the price.

o.supreme wrote:I had no desire to get this. However, it's probably something we have no way of ever knowing, but Id be curious to know overall of the units purchased; how many were Transformers fans, and how many were Hotwheels fans?

I'd be very curious to see that Venn diagram between Transformers Fans, Hot Wheels Fans and people that can drop 80 bucks on a 1:64 scale die-cast truck.

As soon as I read it was going to have special wheels that will never be used elsewhere I KNEW it would sell out.

I really don't know how you combat scalpers on an item like this but an order limit of 3 certainly doesn't help. Such an odd number.

1 for keeping in the package
1 for displaying out of the package
1 for reselling to cover the cost of everything?

Seems designed to create a secondary market. Which isn't entirely a bad thing but when you're up against bots, that individual who just wants a nice piece for their collection will always lose.

They were having so many issues with the line, and checking out. I was there watching the clock tic down.... and got in line....and didn't get it.

Bs, same with the Mattel creations He-man 8 ball.

S24 ultra 1Tb, and I have T mobile ... so pissed

Prime is now shipping! I'm not really sure why Mattel places the release date so far out (in this case it was late June) when they already have these in stock when the orders go up. I'm guessing it's really for international orders since those tend to go out later.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:Prime is now shipping! I'm not really sure why Mattel places the release date so far out (in this case it was late June) when they already have these in stock when the orders go up. I'm guessing it's really for international orders since those tend to go out later.

Emerje

Shipped the same time yesterday as Extendar, I got Extendar today, Prime isn't supposed to come until next Tuesday and I PAID for two-day shipping on it.

chuckdawg1999 wrote:

Emerje wrote:Prime is now shipping! I'm not really sure why Mattel places the release date so far out (in this case it was late June) when they already have these in stock when the orders go up. I'm guessing it's really for international orders since those tend to go out later.

Emerje

Shipped the same time yesterday as Extendar(s), I got Extendar today, Prime isn't supposed to come until next Tuesday and I PAID for two-day shipping on it.

My Extendar shipped yesterday and is arriving tomorrow. Prime hasn't shown up on FedEx yet, but will probably be Sunday or Monday.

Emerje

I got Prime today. It's really nice!

chuckdawg1999 wrote:I got Prime today. It's really nice!

Waiting for the video review.

I wonder if the fists partsform, or does it pull a "missing link" at the mini scale?

-Kanrabat- wrote:

chuckdawg1999 wrote:I got Prime today. It's really nice!

Waiting for the video review.

I wonder if the fists partsform, or does it pull a "missing link" at the mini scale?

Looks like proper chest storage rather than rattling around inside like the original.



Seems mine has been pushed back to Tuesday thanks to the holiday Monday.

Emerje

At that scale, it's understandable that the fists partsform. Also, this time around they could design the storage space inside the chest specifically for the fists, instead of minding Diaclone seats. Neat!

I 100% don't understand this. Like I actually can't wrap my head around it. If you're into it then great, clearly I'm not the target audience for this. I mean, it's shiny, it looks nice. The video review was nicely presented. It's the product it's self for that price that I don't get. Maybe I'm just old.

EDIT: Mind you, I say this while also thinking $50 for Missing Link Bumblebee and Cliffjumper is fine, so I dunno.

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I 100% don't understand this. Like I actually can't wrap my head around it. If you're into it then great, clearly I'm not the target audience for this. I mean, it's shiny, it looks nice. The video review was nicely presented. It's the product it's self for that price that I don't get. Maybe I'm just old.

I really think the price has to do with the exclusive parts and deco. Honestly, the fact that I got one and some crazed Hot Wheels guy didn't, makes me feel good.

chuckdawg1999 wrote:

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I 100% don't understand this. Like I actually can't wrap my head around it. If you're into it then great, clearly I'm not the target audience for this. I mean, it's shiny, it looks nice. The video review was nicely presented. It's the product it's self for that price that I don't get. Maybe I'm just old.

I really think the price has to do with the exclusive parts and deco. Honestly, the fact that I got one and some crazed Hot Wheels guy didn't, makes me feel good.

Hot Wheels collectors do go hard. At least you also managed to get him at base price and not have to rely on the scalpers.

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:

chuckdawg1999 wrote:

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I 100% don't understand this. Like I actually can't wrap my head around it. If you're into it then great, clearly I'm not the target audience for this. I mean, it's shiny, it looks nice. The video review was nicely presented. It's the product it's self for that price that I don't get. Maybe I'm just old.

I really think the price has to do with the exclusive parts and deco. Honestly, the fact that I got one and some crazed Hot Wheels guy didn't, makes me feel good.

Hot Wheels collectors do go hard. At least you also managed to get him at base price and not have to rely on the scalpers.

True, but I think once the hype dies down the prices might become more reasonable, or not.

I know what the first thing I'm doing is if I get this prime.

chuckdawg1999 wrote:

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I 100% don't understand this. Like I actually can't wrap my head around it. If you're into it then great, clearly I'm not the target audience for this. I mean, it's shiny, it looks nice. The video review was nicely presented. It's the product it's self for that price that I don't get. Maybe I'm just old.

I really think the price has to do with the exclusive parts and deco. Honestly, the fact that I got one and some crazed Hot Wheels guy didn't, makes me feel good.

Or just being exclusive period. Selling 27K+ of these in half an hour at $80 a pop means they could have sold many more at a lower price at retail. But for all we know this may be a 1 of 1 situation and even if they reduced the amount of diecast and paint they probably paid out the nose to license it from Hasbro as a transforming figure, as opposed to the regular retail priced non-transforming Prime and Bee we're getting.

Emerje

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I know what the first thing I'm doing is if I get this prime.

Um, my friend, I'm sorry. They clearly say on the box it's not meant to be used on a track. While it rolls nicely, it is very top-heavy and while secure, there's no doubt that the arms could open up zipping around in a loop or something.

The Hot Wheels Optimus Prime looks amazing and I love the idea of a tiny, shiny diecast replica of the G1 toy, like WST Optimus back in the day, just more awesome, but god damn that original price and it doesn't even come with the trailer.
It does look fantastic though.

I kinda love the skateboards.

For some reason, Mattel has decided to make their first Transformers Hotwheels car, Bumblebee, massively shortpacked. How shortpacked? Well the 2024 mainline has 250 non exclusive cars, and they come split in 15 waves/cases throughout the year. As with most cars, Bumblebee will only appear in 2 of those waves but each time he will be 1 in 72.
That means that in each case he's in, he will be on par in rarity with the standard Treasure Hunt cars. And looking at it from an entire year's output, he will be 2 out of 1080. That makes the Hotwheels Bumblebee car the rarest standard car from the 2024 set, which is not a Treasure Hunt car.

For those unaware, Treasure Hunt cars are those which are at most 1 per case and will not repeat in a following case (so at most 1 out of 1080 if you buy every case of 72 cars in a given year).

With both Transformers fans and Hotwheels fans interested in this collectible, Bumblebee could become quite the hot commodity. Especially since this would be the very first release in a growing collection of Hotwheels Transformers cars. So, for those wondering which other cars are in the same waves as Bumblebee, we have videos of the cases below.

Dang, looks like it will be difficult.
I'm more hyped for this than the hotwheels version of g1 toy Optimus.

Day 1623 of waiting for Transformers Armada Masterpiece news.

Soi glad I have no desire to get these. Hotwheels fans are ruthless. Going to be interesting if these ever actually show up in a store.

Yeah, I'll keep an eye out and if I spot it I'll buy it, but I'm not a big collector of HW in general so if I can't find it oh well. It's a neat niche item to have but not worth any hassle.

I suspect that if the employees don't snatch it ups first the early bird HW collectors will be there first thing.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Yeah, I'll keep an eye out and if I spot it I'll buy it, but I'm not a big collector of HW in general so if I can't find it oh well. It's a neat niche item to have but not worth any hassle.

I suspect that if the employees don't snatch it ups first the early bird HW collectors will be there first thing.

My local dollar store gets stuff half a year late but the employees dont care. So today I actually found a treasure hunt item. Will probably see this bumblebee at the beginning of next year

I'm really hoping that the only reason it's rare is to get people talking (like we are) and they plan on doing many other releases later on, maybe even in a multipack with those other cars that were listed but haven't been revealed yet.

william-james88 wrote:

Till-all-R1 wrote:Yeah, I'll keep an eye out and if I spot it I'll buy it, but I'm not a big collector of HW in general so if I can't find it oh well. It's a neat niche item to have but not worth any hassle.

I suspect that if the employees don't snatch it ups first the early bird HW collectors will be there first thing.

My local dollar store gets stuff half a year late but the employees dont care. So today I actually found a treasure hunt item. Will probably see this bumblebee at the beginning of next year

I was reading an article recently about things you didn't know about Dollar Tree and one of the things they said was that it isn't uncommon for them hand over a HW case to whoever shows up first as long as they put the cars they don't want on the pegs for them in return. What an unexpected dichotomy, usually you hear about HW buyers being a nuisance.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:I'm really hoping that the only reason it's rare is to get people talking (like we are) and they plan on doing many other releases later on, maybe even in a multipack with those other cars that were listed but haven't been revealed yet.

william-james88 wrote:

Till-all-R1 wrote:Yeah, I'll keep an eye out and if I spot it I'll buy it, but I'm not a big collector of HW in general so if I can't find it oh well. It's a neat niche item to have but not worth any hassle.

I suspect that if the employees don't snatch it ups first the early bird HW collectors will be there first thing.

My local dollar store gets stuff half a year late but the employees dont care. So today I actually found a treasure hunt item. Will probably see this bumblebee at the beginning of next year

I was reading an article recently about things you didn't know about Dollar Tree and one of the things they said was that it isn't uncommon for them hand over a HW case to whoever shows up first as long as they put the cars they don't want on the pegs for them in return. What an unexpected dichotomy, usually you hear about HW buyers being a nuisance.

Emerje

Every collector after about six months has at least one HW collector story.

Been watching eBay and he is selling pretty quickly for $20 a pop. Since we posted this it has gone up to $27.

Emerje wrote:I was reading an article recently about things you didn't know about Dollar Tree and one of the things they said was that it isn't uncommon for them hand over a HW case to whoever shows up first as long as they put the cars they don't want on the pegs for them in return. What an unexpected dichotomy, usually you hear about HW buyers being a nuisance.

Emerje

Interesting, when I worked retail this was not something that would be allowed by the bigger chains. Sure a customer could look through a box of product If they so choose to, but not put product away on the shelf. That is your job as an employee.

Till-all-R1 wrote:

Emerje wrote:I was reading an article recently about things you didn't know about Dollar Tree and one of the things they said was that it isn't uncommon for them hand over a HW case to whoever shows up first as long as they put the cars they don't want on the pegs for them in return. What an unexpected dichotomy, usually you hear about HW buyers being a nuisance.

Emerje

Interesting, when I worked retail this was not something that would be allowed by the bigger chains. Sure a customer could look through a box of product If they so choose to, but not put product away on the shelf. That is your job as an employee.

It's cause Dollar Tree has next to no enforced policy for stuff like that. They don't even have enough workers to man the store, so anyone showing up and volunteering to put stuff away is given an ok from the staff there.

o.supreme wrote:Soi glad I have no desire to get these. Hotwheels fans are ruthless. Going to be interesting if these ever actually show up in a store.

After looking into it, I kinda get it. We’d be just as ruthless if a TF we wanted was 1 per case of 72 (or 1 per 5 cases of 72)

We’ve seen several Transformers Hotwheels toys already but all were part of another Hotwheels line. Well now we have images for a subline dedicated to Transformers. There are a few odd bits about it though, so these images from Instagram might be fake.
While these are cars of Transformers alt modes from live action media, the Transformers characters are not named, nor are they shown on the art. Instead, each pack simply has the name of the car with standard evergreen Transformers art, not reflective of the product, making them a lot less interesting to collect for MISC collectors.

Still, if real this would be another way to get Bumblebee, which is rare in the mainline.

The « characters » in this subline are Crosshairs, Bumblebee, Stinger, Drift and Barricade.

william-james88 wrote:

I really want a transforming deluxe Bee that would have that exact vehicle mode.

Not a fan of the packaging, but it's super cool to see movie alt modes in Hot Wheels! RPMs are kinda back xD

Will definitely try and track down the Bayverse ones!

The Transforming diecast Optimus Prime we got a few weeks ago was really cool, but all of these seem really low effort. These are diecast molds Mattel already had, painted in movie colors and stuck to generic evergreen packaging. They didn't even bother to put the character name on the card.

They look nice!

I like seeing Crosshairs here, I kinda hoped that he would become the standard version of the character, like how Barricade became a recurring Decepticon.

We need someone to make custom blister cards featuring thr actual character art for Crosshairs, Drift, Barricade, and Stinger. That Bee looks weird, though.

Hotwheels Bumblebee is supposed to be out soon in the US (if not already out). The toy has been found in Canada. It was found at Maxi/Real Canadian Superstore in Quebec. It is packed one per case of 72.

We also got wind of an upcoming variant meant to come out later in the year, thanks to an ebay listing. This is a gold variant. This is not a chase or rarer release. It will be a regular release within the same year in a later case.

I think I've seen that wave at Target, or at least I'd seen that wheelchair and blue truck, not sure if they're part of that wave. My local Walmart hasn't stocked the Hot Wheels in months.

I said before that there was no way they were only doing one Bumblebee and I'm glad I'm right. Not sure why the one everyone would want is the chase and Goldbug is the regular release, that feels like a major oversight.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:I think I've seen that wave at Target, or at least I'd seen that wheelchair and blue truck, not sure if they're part of that wave. My local Walmart hasn't stocked the Hot Wheels in months.

I said before that there was no way they were only doing one Bumblebee and I'm glad I'm right. Not sure why the one everyone would want is the chase and Goldbug is the regular release, that feels like a major oversight.

Emerje

Neither are chase, both are regular releases found in more than one wave/case

Also cases always repeat new cars from the previous case so its not a sure thing that you got this BB case or the previous one.

I have not found info on this BB case found at US retail yet. Just specialty stores at a markup

william-james88 wrote:Neither are chase, both are regular releases found in more than one wave/case

How ridiculous are Hot Wheels packouts if 1 out of every 72 isn't considered a chase? That sounds like anything but "regular".

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

william-james88 wrote:Neither are chase, both are regular releases found in more than one wave/case

How ridiculous are Hot Wheels packouts if 1 out of every 72 isn't considered a chase? That sounds like anything but "regular".

Emerje

Chase is 1 out of every 72 and only found in one case. Both these Bumblebees will be featured in more than one case. So those arent chase, they are regular releases.

What's chase is this car for instance. It's in the first case of 2024, only packed one per case and won't be found in any other case after that, even though you need it to complete the 2024 set (it's numbered 8 out of 250). So that's a chase.



These Bumblebees will get repacked in the following case. So even if they are 1 out of 72 in each of their two cases, they are at least two times more easy to find than any of the chase releases this year (below is a list):

https://hotwheels.fandom.com/wiki/2024_ ... nts_Series

I don't know, it sounds insane to me that 1 out of 72 is a chase, but 2 out of 144 isn't. It makes even less sense when a particular store could put out one of the two Bumblebee cases and two of the police car case and your own odds are exactly the same regardless. Their benchmark for what is a chase and what isn't razor thin because it assumes every store gets every case when some stores go many months without restocking. I've been watching the Hot Wheels aisle at Walmart since these were first announced and they haven't put any new stock out since and the selection was already very thin.

Emerje