Another Rant about Takara Tomy Transformer Distribution.

After my last post about the distribution of Transformers for Earthrise and my concerns about the amount that appear to  be Takaratomy mall exclusives rocking up, a new, perhaps interesting turn of events has reared its confusing head.





Looking at the TT Transformers news posting, they had this little bit of information plastered up:


The highlighted purple bit says “WFC, War for Cybertron series presented.”

Just a minute, War For Cybertron is a trilogy right?  We’ve got:

• War For Cybertron; Siege.
• War For Cybertron; Earthrise.
• War For Cybertron; (*something unknown*)

However what we have now is War For Cybertron; War For Cybertron.
Um, Ok.  Lets click on the side panel to see what is going on.

After clicking on the white War for Cybertron, it ends up taking us to a page with two toys on it, aaah, now it makes a bit more sense!











What we’re dealing with here is the Netflix toys. Okay.  Great.  We have Ultra Magnus, Mirage and Hound there.  Looking at their numbers, with just the WFC-01/02, I can see they lack the EX notification indicating regular store release.

Right

Okay

Right

Hmmmmm.



These guys are recolours of their Sege pals.  Lets quickly have a look at the Siege page.


*Click*


Okay, Hound was released in March 2019, Mirage was released in September 2019.  Incidentally, Mirage is still on many shelves at the moment.

When are the WFC-WFC versions coming?

*Clickety click*


Both are due in September.  There seems to be quite a lot happening in September.  So one year after being general release and very easily available, they are going to release re-colours that may or may not be worse to all shops.

Meanwhile, new figures, such as Snapdragon, Allicons, Quintesson, Cliffjumper and others are TTmall exclusives (but regular release in the rest of the world.).

What the hell?  This makes no sense.  At least the WFC versions are cheaper I guess.  I don’t get it though, are the Studio series doing that well that they are taking the place of standard G1 toys?  I don’t think so.  So far most Studio series toys have been bloating the shelves, except for the BB Prime of course.   There has to be something I am missing.   Is Cyberverse steamrolling all other TF lines into oblivion(unlikely)?  Even so, why release recolours that are going to be just a year apart from the first one? 

Surely one would want to keep the limited potential sales to the online stores and sell the ones everyone wants to the general shops.  Unless they believe that the TFMTMTE  Movie figures are going to flop (surely not though).  Wouldn’t Snapdragon be popular, especially with the upcoming Scorponok coming out?  They were pals in the Headmasters cartoon right?

Or do Japanese Transformer fans get a huge boner for Decepticon Mirage?  Maybe they do, the black colours are cool (Black Rodimus, Black Prime etc).  Doesn’t explain Hound.  Although without the poop marks and at a cheaper price I may get one. 

Oh, but my money is going to the not-at-all-discounted guys on TTmall… Welp, that sucks.