Date: Monday, May 2nd 2011 10:28pm CDT
Categories: Movie Related News,
Toy News,
Company News
Posted by: DevastaTTor |
Credit(s): Hasbro, ROARBO, ubertenorman, DavidT
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Views: 99,217
Several members of Seibertron.com including ROARBO, ubertenorman, and DavidT have let us know about updated information on
Hasbro.com's Transformers site, specifically about Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon characters. While most of the update relates to existing movie characters or new characters we already know about, there are some very notable pieces of information. The following contains spoilers so read no further if you're still trying to preserve the element of surprise for DOTM.
First off, Hasbro's update confirms that Soundwave's alt mode in the new movie will be the Mercedes Benz SLS AMG. Last year during filming, images of this car with Rosie's character Carly appeared online and there was some speculation that this vehicle could be Soundwave but the
rumor was dismissed by Michael Bay himself on his ShootfortheEdit website. However, this appears to be some classic Bay misinformation as Hasbro has included Soundwave's
alt mode description on their site.
Also of interest, Hasbro's list of characters includes
Steeljaw. Not only is there a bio for Steeljaw's character but we get our first look at him. In typical Bay-verse fashion, he's not longer a
cassetticon lion but now a bio-mechanical, Bulldog-looking creature. His bio says that he's a sidekick of the Wreckers but since this is the first we've heard of him tied to the new movie, there's no way to tell at this point whether he's a toy only character or if he'll actually appear in the movie.
EDIT: As many of you have already pointed out, it appears that Steeljaw will be included as a companion " targetmaster" with Leadfood. He appears on Leadfoot's arm in the photo below.
And finally, new news about DOTM Autobot Wrecker Leadfoot. The other day,
it was rumored that Leadfoot may be a Target store exclusive in the US and may be in limited release overseas. Now, Hasbro reveals that Leadfoot will be included in the
Human Alliance lineup. The new figure includes a race driver with matching Target red uniform and helmet.
To check out the entire site update, click
HERE.
Date: Friday, April 15th 2011 11:48pm CDT
Categories: Toy News,
Site Articles,
Company News
Posted by: DevastaTTor |
Credit(s): Hasbro, amtm
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Views: 154,665
Let's take a trip back in time, shall we.
Flash back to nine months ago: 2011 held so much promise for Transformers fans. The dream of new figures that we'd been begging
Hasbro for since the introduction of the
Classics line five years ago was finally being realized. In presentations and press releases, Hasbro revealed some very exciting new figures would be added to the
Generations line and that a new line,
Reveal the Shield, would be introduced at the end of the year. Both lines would have some very significant releases as well as popular repaints and would carry fans and collectors through first half of 2011, up to the release of the
Dark of the Moon toy line. The first looks at the figures we were getting were downright exciting:
Wheeljack,
"Special Ops" Jazz,
Scourge,
Windcharger,
"Sergeant" Kup,
Perceptor,
"Solar Storm" Grapple (well Grappel, but hey, no one ís perfect),
Blurr, and
Wreck-Gar just to name a few. Some of the staff even named the introduction of the RTS/Generations figures as the
most exciting event of 2010. It really felt like Hasbro had been listening to us and what we wanted and was finally turning our feedback and requests into glorious plastic that would bring us that much closer to completing our neo-G1 displays. All was right with the Transformers universe. It seemed too good to be true.
There was only one problem: for many fans, it
WAS too good to be true.
Fast forward to the present: the
Hunt for the Decepticons line still lingers on, the controversial
Power Core Combiners figures have proven to be slow movers, and the big release of the TF3 toy line is little more than a month away. Most retailers seem unwilling to restock shelves with the good stuff in order to clear out lingering figures in anticipation of the onslaught of new movie toys.
HasbroToyShop.com is in what seems like a perpetual state of "
OUT OF STOCK". Gas prices have shot up to near record levels making the once fun "toy hunt" a very costly endeavor. And in the midst of all the shelf-warmers, empty store pegs, and gas pump agony, we're left standing there asking one very simple question:
Where are the new Transformers, Hasbro?
Looking back at what's happened in the past four months, all the figures we were promised last year are, at best, trickling out to stores and retailers. While some fans have report seeing new figures at retail such as
Wreck-Gar,
Scourge,
Tracks, etc., these sightings are inconsistent. Some stores and regions have seen several of the new waves of
Generations and
Reveal the Shield repeatedly stocked, while others haven't received any of the new waves at all. Every time one of these new figures is introduced to the Seibertron.com galleries or is reported on the
sightings forum, we see
comments and
complaints from fans desperately searching for them. And to make matters worse, in the midst of all the frustration, rumors of partial cancellation of certain releases such as scout-class
Windcharger have left collectors scrambling for the handful of figures that have been released-and for answers.
The staff here at Seibertron.com has also been feeling your pain and asking the same questions too so we set out to try and find some answers. We tried the obvious route: go to Hasbro and simply ask the question-where the heck are all the new figures? Why have so many new releases from the
Reveal the Shield and
Generations lines not made their onto store shelves? Is this a Hasbro problem, a global economy issue, of are stores not ordering other lines in preparation for the
Dark of the Moon toys? Are all the newest figures being shipped overseas due to the weak dollar or is this lack of product just the toy gods thumbing their noses in the collective face of Transformers fans everywhere? Needless to say, we're still waiting for a response.
But, interestingly enough, the answer may have actually come to us in the form of a forum post in response to yesterday's s
tory about Hasbro's huge first loss last quarter. Seibertron.com member
amtm posted a very revealing excerpt from Hasbro's annual report that was published earlier this year. Here is that post again for those who missed it yesterday:
Revenues from the Company’s top five customers, all retailers, accounted for approximately 50% of its consolidated net revenues in 2010 and 54% and 52% of its consolidated net revenues in 2009 and 2008, respectively. In recent years certain customers in the retail sector have experienced economic difficulty. ...
The Company’s revenue pattern continues to show the second half of the year to be more significant to its overall business for the full year. In 2010, approximately 65% of the Company’s full year net revenues were recognized in the second half of the year. Although the Company expects that this concentration will continue, particularly as more of its business has shifted to larger customers with order patterns concentrated in the second half of the year, this concentration may be less in years where the Company has products related to a major motion picture release that occurs in the first half of the year. In 2010, the Company had products related to the mid-year major motion picture release of IRON MAN 2, while in 2009 the Company had products related to the mid-year major motion picture releases of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA and X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. The concentration of sales in the second half of the year increases the risk of (a) underproduction of popular items, (b) overproduction of less popular items, and (c) failure to achieve tight and compressed shipping schedules. The business of the Company is characterized by customer order patterns which vary from year to year largely because of differences in the degree of consumer acceptance of a product line, product availability, marketing strategies, inventory levels, policies of retailers and differences in overall economic conditions. The trend of larger retailers has been to maintain lower inventories throughout the year and purchase a greater percentage of product within or close to the fourth quarter holiday consumer selling season, which includes Christmas.
Quick response inventory management practices being used by retailers result in more orders being placed for immediate delivery and fewer orders being placed well in advance of shipment. Retailers are timing their orders so that they are being filled by suppliers closer to the time of purchase by consumers. To the extent that retailers do not sell as much of their year-end inventory purchases during this holiday selling season as they had anticipated, their demand for additional product earlier in the following fiscal year may be curtailed, thus negatively impacting the Company’s future revenues.
What can we take from all of this? In a nutshell, no matter how great Hasbro's products are, if they're released in the beginning of the year, the retail sector is just not going to be very interested. They're too busy cooling down after the Christmas boom and waiting for the summer/fall toys to carry them back into the holidays again. So perhaps the latest
Generations and
RTS figures are simply the victim of bad timing. No matter how good they are or how many of us want them, the business philosophy of the Walmarts, Tescos, and Targets of the world is to is to buy and stock as little new product as possible first half of the year. Which lead us to our last question of this article...
If the stores aren't stocking these amazing figures, for whatever reason, why can't we ever find them on
HasbroToyShop.com? This is the question we've already posed to Hasbro and it's the questions we're going to continue to ask. And we want your help! We want to hear from you. We want you to sound off to us about your issues finding figures in your area. Are you seeing a lot of empty pegs at stores in your area? Are you seeing tons of old stock on shelves,
Hunt for the Decepticons figures or older? Do you feel like you have to purchase figures at a premium price just to assure you'll get them? Have you missed out at
HasbroToyShop.com when the new figures are reported as being in Stock? We'd like to hear from you, your latest experiences in stores and online, and if you're having any success now finding the newest and most sought-after from the
Reveal the Shield and
Generations lines. Send us photos of what the sorry shelves or pegs look like at your local retailer. We'll collect your comments and photos and share them with Hasbro so they can get first hand accounts of what you're seeing (or what you haven't seen) in stores and just how bad the new figure drought is in some areas. Please keep it clean and civil though-over the top or nasty comments won't be included.
Let's all unite and let Hasbro know what's going on in the retail trenches we wage our collecting battles in. We might not be able to change the world or get more figures on store shelves, but together, maybe we can at least get Hasbro to acknowledge the problem, understand our pains, and get more stock up on
HasbroToyShop.
In the meantime, while we're all waiting for a reply and hopefully some action, take a look at what we've all been waiting for. Check out some of the Seibertron.com galleries of some of the best figures from the
Generations and
Reveal the Shield toy lines by clicking the links or images below.
Warpath
Wheeljack
Scourge
Wreck-Gar
Perceptor
Darkmount
Date: Friday, April 15th 2011 9:48am CDT
Categories: Toy News,
Company News
Posted by: Mach |
Credit(s): Takara Tomy
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Views: 46,161
Takara Tomy has revamped their
Transformers website, with better webpage design and categorization of the products and features.
Basically the webpage are divided into 3 main categories:
a)
Information - Convoys/Supreme Commanders of all generations, Cyber Missions, TV advertisement archive.
b)
Products - Various categories such as Masterpiece, Transformers United, Dark Of The Moon toy lines etc.
c) Games - Still Work In Progress
Seibertron, Ultimate Transformers Resource!
Date: Thursday, April 14th 2011 2:55pm CDT
Categories: Toy News,
Company News
Posted by: El Duque |
Credit(s): Reuters, Yahoo
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Views: 37,173
Hasbro is reporting a 71% drop in profits for the first quarter of 2011. That figure sounds worse than it actually is, as there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. First quarter sales for toy companies usually take a hit due to following the holiday season, Hasbro has made a sizable investment in getting The Hub off the ground, and due a reduced demand for toys in the first quarter many retailers have decided to focus on clearing out leftover holiday inventory rather than ordering new product (sound familiar?).
There is however a silver lining, boys products were actually up 25% while girls, preschool, and games showed a loss. Despite their weak start Hasbro's Brian Goldner remains optimistic for the remainder of the year and states they are still on track to meet their full year's sales plan. Hasbro has a huge entertainment line-up for this summer, which includes toy lines for "Captain America: the First Avenger", "Thor", and of course "Transformers DOTM" to help bolster sales. To read more follow these links:
Reuters or
Yahoo
Date: Wednesday, April 6th 2011 2:10pm CDT
Categories: Site News,
Comic Book News,
Toy News,
Event News,
Company News
Posted by: Seibertron Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 77,244
Thank you for participating in this year's Hall of Fame process. We have sent the nominees chosen by you, the fans of Seibertron.com, to Hasbro. The next step is for Hasbro to tally the results from all of the other participating websites to determine who should be in the official Hasbro poll which will launch next week. Stay tuned for further details!
Seibertron.com wrote:---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ryan Yzquierdo
Date: Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 1:52 PM
Subject: TF HoF - Seibertron.com - Ryan Yzquierdo
To: Danny Palestine
Results:
1) Grimlock - 65 votes
2) Shockwave - 64 votes
3) Waspinator - 50 votes
4) Jazz - 43 votes
5) Hot Rod / Rodimus Prime - 31 votes
Total votes : 374
Please note for #5 that I wasn't sure how to list this character's name. Some of the sites might have this character listed as Rodimus, Hot Rod or Rodimus Prime. Please take this into consideration when tallying up the results from the other Transformers fansites.
--------------------------------------------------
Grimlock
Shockwave
Waspinator
Jazz
Hot Rod / Rodimus Prime
------------------------------------------------------------
For all of you fans of Rodimus, I already received a message back from Hunter PR about the Hot Rod / Rodimus / Rodimus Prime name issue.
Hunter PR / Hasbro wrote:---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Danny Palestine
Date: Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: HOF name discrepancy
To: Ryan Yzquierdo
Cc: Joseph Moscone
Good call, Ryan. We'll absolutely keep this in consideration.
Thanks for participating!
Best
Danny & Joe
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