by ScottyP » Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:10 pm
- Weapon: Battle Blades
So these came in stock at Robot Kingdom earlier this week/late last week (don't remember exactly), and they came in early. Weren't expected until August after being delayed from May. I found that out by cruising through my Twitter feed, where literally tens (ok, probably more like five) of the random Japanese TF fan accounts that I follow, plus their retweets, contained pictures of these in-hand. As these are "GDO" figures, aka probably not intended to ever hit the US, I wondered where they got them from, but immediately checked RK. There they were, except there was only Grimlock (thank goodness!) and the big Bee. Got 'em ordered, and once NYC customs processes it they'll be on their merry way down here to NC.
Then they hit BBTS today. I didn't think anything about it at first. They have a direct Hasbro account and can probably order whatever they want. But then they sold out of some of them really, really quick. Just like RK did.
These can't be in that much of demand, right? If so, Hasbro needs to take note and get their money printers going (aka, these molds) and get them on shelves here pronto. If not, and these are only at this level of popularity due to lack of availability (you know this amplifies demand, it's just how things go and I'm super guilty of this myself so, you know, not knockin' it), then, well, I realized something.
I think BBTS got their stock from RK and is re-selling it at a markup (which, honestly, with international shipping and what they're charging, it'd be a tiny markup, so that's probably the biggest hole in this theory). I ain't mad, and I have no proof of this, but I'm just sayin'.
Doesn't matter really, got 'em all on the way to me and I'm going to have fun, so cheers to that and I'm glad that they weren't a total headache to get!