After last week’s TFCon, TFW2005 have posted a summary of the Q & A with Hasbro Canada. For Canadians, it makes promising reading, and makes everyone else outside North America feel worse.
- Hasbro Canada will be starting up a quarterly Q&A through Cybertron.CA
- There is a big push to get more exclusives out in Canada – aiming for near to 100% in the next two years. Keep watching Cybertron.CA for release news.
- Specific exclusive news – the Universe comic two packs will be coming to Zellers. Zellers and TRU will be getting the Minicon 12 pack. Zellers will also be getting the Deep Space Starscream very soon. Unfortunately though Movie Ultras Jetstorm and Wingblade will not be making it to Canada.
- More bad news – due to licensing issues, the Canadian release of the 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime will not include the DVD with More than Meets the Eye.
- Some good news – the generic packaging, such as on the first wave of Universe, will be superseded by the individualized packaging around about wave 3 or 4 of Universe.
- Hasbro Toy Store is making progress with setting up shipping to Canada, but it is not quite ready yet.The rest of the Q&A session related to broader questions about Hasbro releases in general.
- Masterpiece Thundercracker and Skywarp at domestic retail – there are no firm plans to do these two yet, but they are being kept in mind, possibly for 2009 store exclusive releases.
- Reviving Alternators – there are no plans in the short term, as it was deemed that Universe would have the broader appeal since Alternators was far more narrowly focused on collectors. It was not completely ruled out, though.
- Computer games – Activision has two in the works, an Animated game for late this year, and a Movie game for next year.
- G1 DVDs – it’s still too early to announce any plans, but Hasbro stated they bought back the rights with the intention of using them so watch this space.
- The Marvel and Star Wars Transformers will not feature Transformers characters as the team do not want to mix the fantasies. So no Iron Man that turns into Starscream, for example.
- 6 inch Titaniums – the finished tools will get released. The unfinished ones unfortunately will not. The finished tools referred to are the War Within Grimlock and Prowl who will be TRU exclusives in the US.
- Transformers Animated – there are no specific plans for guest or one shot characters, however it was stated that the design team like to try to make 100% of the characters who appear in the show.
- Animated Legends – no dedicated line, however, some may be done as Universe Legends.
- No plans to make Animated humans as toys.
- There are no specific plans for a dedicated Universe ficition, although you might see some cameos in the comics or other media.
- There is the possibility for some overlap on the Universe and Animated lines, where the two characters are different – Prowl was cited as an example, one being a black motorbike and the other a white police car.
- When the question of combiners was brought up, the reply was “potentially”.
- Hasbro could not comment on the possibility of getting more Dinobots or Sunstorm in Universe.
- They have no current plans to release the black Arcee repaint from the Japanese movie line domestically.
- Robot Heroes Dispensor is the only version of the Mountain Dewbot that is getting released. There are no plans for Leader Blackout or Voyager Bonecrusher.
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