Masterpiece Grimlock confirmed for UK!

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Now, the real question is why do TRU know that they are stocking this, but Hasbro-UK don't know that they are selling it to them

Maybe TRU decided to bypass Hasbro UK and try working with people that know their arse from their elbow?

Ravage XK wrote:

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Now, the real question is why do TRU know that they are stocking this, but Hasbro-UK don't know that they are selling it to them

Maybe TRU decided to bypass Hasbro UK and try working with people that know their arse from their elbow?

Hah, true, but TRU regularly import US TRU exclusives (same with Star Wars line as well) because I've seen many figures and sets in TRU that I never see anywhere else. Obviously the international TRU bases are closer to each other than the Hasbro bases! (Same for Forbidden Planet and Entertainer, actually, but I suspect they import from the source, buying stock-loads!)

(By the way, Ravage XK; Maidstone? I know someone who lives there! )

EDIT: Grimlock in the UK? Already seen him in the London Forbidden Planet and I'm sure I've seen him in a TRU as well!

Ok, now they are positively taking the pi$$ and I will give serious consideration to never buying another UK sourced TF product again;

Following my exchange with TRU, I sent;

Pretender Skywarp wrote:
Dear Hasbro,

As a long time fan of the Transformers Franchise, I often look to try to purchase new products whenever they are available.

I am very interested in the Masterpiece Grimlock figure, but you were unable to answer my query. I have since contacted a leading UK toy retailer who have confirmed they will be carrying the item want. How do they know they are carrying it, but you don’t know that you are supplying it to them?

The state of Transformers distribution in the UK is very poor, we get incomplete lines, and missing waves. It is often easier for UK fans to import the equivalent Takara product or US sourced items form Ebay sellers. Often at a similar price to the RRP.

Why is the UK market treated so poorly?

Regards,

Steve.

They responded with (and I kid you not);

Hasbro UK wrote:
Dear Steve,

Thank you for your recent email to Hasbro UK Ltd regarding our products.

With reference to the comments you made with regards to the item, these have been noted and will be forwarded to our Marketing Department. We would like to thank you once again for taking the time to write to us as we welcome our customers' comments and suggestions, as they are invaluable for future improvements.

May we thank you for contacting Hasbro and if we can be of any further assistance, either now or in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind Regards,
Katharine
ASK HASBRO
Hasbro UK Ltd
00800 22427276

Pretty much a word-for-word cut and paste of what they sent to Mykltron a few emails ago. To say that I am fuming about being treated with such contempt by a company that I am TRYING TO GIVE MY MONEY TO IN A RECESSION, is a fudging understatement

They have not attemtpted to enagage the consumer in any reasonable dialogue and have blatantly put this issue in the "too difficult" box.

You don't want anything to do with me Hasbro UK, well guess what? The feelings mutual. Takara, Ebay sellers and UK-based importers will be seeing most of my businees from now on. I will avoid you wherever possible[-(

Swiftknife24 wrote:
(By the way, Ravage XK; Maidstone? I know someone who lives there! )

Really? Thats wierd cos I know a few too!!

*sigh*
I guess it's back to good old importing.

Ravage XK wrote:

Swiftknife24 wrote:
(By the way, Ravage XK; Maidstone? I know someone who lives there! )

Really? Thats wierd cos I know a few too!!

Haha, I point out because I live up North!

A while back I sent the following email to Hasbro:

Mykltron wrote:Thank you for your reply, but it doesn't even attempt to answer my question. Can you please explain WHY Europe gets Transformers *so much later* than the US? It's not as if shipping them takes a long time like it did 500 hundred years ago. We got the first wave of Revenge Of The Fallen toys at the same time as everywhere else but then later releases in that line have *still* not shown up here. Why is this? It's ridiculous and we, the British Transformers collectors, are *very* frustrated by it. Please explain why we have to wait so long.

The update: no f-ing reply.

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Ok, now they are positively taking the pi$$ and I will give serious consideration to never buying another UK sourced TF product again;

Following my exchange with TRU, I sent;

Pretender Skywarp wrote:
Dear Hasbro,

As a long time fan of the Transformers Franchise, I often look to try to purchase new products whenever they are available.

I am very interested in the Masterpiece Grimlock figure, but you were unable to answer my query. I have since contacted a leading UK toy retailer who have confirmed they will be carrying the item want. How do they know they are carrying it, but you don’t know that you are supplying it to them?

The state of Transformers distribution in the UK is very poor, we get incomplete lines, and missing waves. It is often easier for UK fans to import the equivalent Takara product or US sourced items form Ebay sellers. Often at a similar price to the RRP.

Why is the UK market treated so poorly?

Regards,

Steve.

They responded with (and I kid you not);

Hasbro UK wrote:
Dear Steve,

Thank you for your recent email to Hasbro UK Ltd regarding our products.

With reference to the comments you made with regards to the item, these have been noted and will be forwarded to our Marketing Department. We would like to thank you once again for taking the time to write to us as we welcome our customers' comments and suggestions, as they are invaluable for future improvements.

May we thank you for contacting Hasbro and if we can be of any further assistance, either now or in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind Regards,
Katharine
ASK HASBRO
Hasbro UK Ltd
00800 22427276

Pretty much a word-for-word cut and paste of what they sent to Mykltron a few emails ago. To say that I am fuming about being treated with such contempt by a company that I am TRYING TO GIVE MY MONEY TO IN A RECESSION, is a fudging understatement

They have not attemtpted to enagage the consumer in any reasonable dialogue and have blatantly put this issue in the "too difficult" box.

You don't want anything to do with me Hasbro UK, well guess what? The feelings mutual. Takara, Ebay sellers and UK-based importers will be seeing most of my businees from now on. I will avoid you wherever possible[-(

They often 'pass the comment to the marketing department'. I think they mean 'dustbin'.

Here's an idea: LET'S ALL TRY PHONING THEM!

According to the reply sent to Pretender Skywarp their phone number is 00800 22427276 although I'm suspicious about the number of zeros at the beginning. Let's give it a shot!

Found some names to ask for too, I'll be interested to see how far I could actually get...

http://www.toynews-online.biz/news/3203 ... management

Hasbro uk/europe has always advertised products which they have not solf, during the ehad master and pretender days they always just threw in the us posters and advertisements thus teasing you with swoop shockwave, fort max etc.


its cheaper to have the same posters put in the packaging in china/vietnam than to create whole new ones for a subline ina different market.

Some tiems its easier just to use people like 3darths and kapow toys to fill the gaps.

I appreciate the problem, I still have gaps in some of my lines and i got a rather large collection for a UK collector.

Just got the new argos catalog, this is what's listed:
-Power core combiners,5 pack and 2 pack
-Battle hooks leader prime
-Voyagers, pic shows long haul
-Scouts, pic shows red ransack, forgot his name
-Not sure about generations, but it's possible that they are under the 'deluxe' category, the pic shows battle blades bumblebee

EDIT: cannon BB repaint, not battle blades. Also,legends ravage and rampage are listed, along with battle ops bb.

The deluxe listing at Argos is very vague. I think you'll be lucky to find anything aside from ROTF stuff unfortunately.

Pretender Skywarp wrote:The deluxe listing at Argos is very vague. I think you'll be lucky to find anything aside from ROTF stuff unfortunately.

That's all that my two stores have. I'm going to try phoning them. I've been forgetting but I'm too tired to do anything truly important today!

Saw (and bought) Drift and Thrust in Smyths in Cardiff today - looks like Generations are slowly making their way to shops.

My plan is to try and get the first few waves in UK shops before resorting to BBTS/Ebay for the later stuff - yes Hasbro UK are crap, but there's nothing quite as exciting as finding the figures in store.

Primacron's Little Helper wrote:My plan is to try and get the first few waves in UK shops before resorting to BBTS/Ebay for the later stuff - yes Hasbro UK are crap, but there's nothing quite as exciting as finding the figures in store.

My local TRU has had the same ROTF stuff sitting on the shelves for about 6mths, no joke.

They even recently re-stocked on Wave 1 Animated voyagers

I don't collect Aniamted or movie-verse, bar a few key exclusives, but do have my finger on the pulse enough to know what is what. Thank god for importers.

Yeah the TRU near me is just as bad - it's still got the early Universe Ultras - Powerglide and Silverbolt, they've must have been out for almost 2 years now.

Maybe no-one's ever explained to the managers of UK toyshops (and in particular TRU), how you get different figures in different waves, it seems to me that the early waves sell well so they order more, not realising that if they just waited a bit for the later waves they'd get repeat customers.

Slightly off topic, Drift is awesome!!!

Where did you pick him up? Bricks and Mortar or on the Web?

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Where did you pick him up? Bricks and Mortar or on the Web?

Got him in person at Smyths in Cardiff - I just had a look at their website, they only have a few stores across the country. Most seem to be in Northern Ireland and Greater London, with quite a few opening soon.

My local one , in Borehamwood has just shut, a forced closure as a supermarket has bought the retail park they were situated in.

I was fortunate enough to get a pre-order in with "Toyz & Gamez" for the whole of wave 1, saving me a lot of fuel in pointless hunting trips!

Out of interest how much were they charging?

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Out of interest how much were they charging?

£9.99

I was particularly happy cos I was thinking I would probably cave in and get one at my local Forbidden Planet (and so pay more), but no sign of them there yet.

Primacron's Little Helper wrote:

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Out of interest how much were they charging?

£9.99

I was particularly happy cos I was thinking I would probably cave in and get one at my local Forbidden Planet (and so pay more), but no sign of them there yet.

There's been a few reports of these at £9.99, I was under the impression that the "RRP" for a deluxe was £12.99? I wonder what the HFTD line will land at.

I'm wondering if H'UK view the Generations stuff as a low seller and have priced it accordingly?

Pretender Skywarp wrote:

Primacron's Little Helper wrote:

Pretender Skywarp wrote:Out of interest how much were they charging?

£9.99

I was particularly happy cos I was thinking I would probably cave in and get one at my local Forbidden Planet (and so pay more), but no sign of them there yet.

There's been a few reports of these at £9.99, I was under the impression that the "RRP" for a deluxe was £12.99? I wonder what the HFTD line will land at.

I'm wondering if H'UK view the Generations stuff as a low seller and have priced it accordingly?

Its probabaly more likely that the shops are having a hard time shifting things due to the glut of ROTF stuff so are pricing to not make things too much more expensive than the main lines they have.

I think hasbro uk did say the SRSP should be £14.99 or £12.99 i think

anyways the PCC's are starting to filter out to the Smyths and Siansburys.

bought the first 2 of the 5 packs, they are god dmaned aweful.

On the Argos issue I checked Forbidden Planet last week and they had Voyager Long Haul as due August 15th. Given that Argos are using his pic in the catalogue you assume they will stock him (!) so I'm hoping they will get him in around the same time.

On the TRU comments, my local one in Leeds is just the same. I asked their "action figure specialist" on Monday why they hadn't had any new ones and he mentioned something about not selling new ones till old ones had gone. By that reckoning they'll never get any in!

If you want Generations try Asda Living if you have one nearby, thats where I got Drift and Thrust on Tuesday. They set me back 12.99 each I believe.

Crankcase79 wrote:If you want Generations try Asda Living if you have one nearby, thats where I got Drift and Thrust on Tuesday. They set me back 12.99 each I believe.

Care to give u a cataloque number that they're under? Is it the same as movie deluxes?

Mykltron wrote:

Crankcase79 wrote:If you want Generations try Asda Living if you have one nearby, thats where I got Drift and Thrust on Tuesday. They set me back 12.99 each I believe.

Care to give u a cataloque number that they're under? Is it the same as movie deluxes?

I think you might have misread that m8

Im off to Vegas in Sept so anything I can't get locally before then I will pick up over there. Mainly after the Generations stuff and maybe Long Haul though I have laid of the ROTF releases in general.

Pretender Skywarp wrote:

Mykltron wrote:

Crankcase79 wrote:If you want Generations try Asda Living if you have one nearby, thats where I got Drift and Thrust on Tuesday. They set me back 12.99 each I believe.

Care to give u a cataloque number that they're under? Is it the same as movie deluxes?

I think you might have misread that m8

What an idiot! I went to Asda today and picked up Drift, passed on Thrust. I was absolutely convinced it would be a waste of time visiting the toy aisle so I was dumbfounded when I saw one, yes ONE, of each.

Ravage XK wrote:Im off to Vegas in Sept so anything I can't get locally before then I will pick up over there. Mainly after the Generations stuff and maybe Long Haul though I have laid of the ROTF releases in general.

Are you trying to make us hate you?

Not many toy shops in Vegas, though itll plug a few holes in your collection as they have some older stuff in the few shops they do have

Neurie wrote:Not many toy shops in Vegas, though itll plug a few holes in your collection as they have some older stuff in the few shops they do have

Cool, there is a TRU I think.

Ravage XK wrote:

Neurie wrote:Not many toy shops in Vegas, though itll plug a few holes in your collection as they have some older stuff in the few shops they do have

Cool, there is a TRU I think.

Don't take any clothes, just hand luggage and an empty suitcase

@Mykltron:Glad you got your hands on Drift!

Pretender Skywarp wrote:

Ravage XK wrote:

Neurie wrote:Not many toy shops in Vegas, though itll plug a few holes in your collection as they have some older stuff in the few shops they do have

Cool, there is a TRU I think.

Don't take any clothes, just hand luggage and an empty suitcase

Thats pretty much what I did a couple of years back when I went to New York!! I even had to use spare space in my 3 friends cases. He he.