You may wanna check on yours if you pre-ordered
Right after I found out about Hasbro’s upcoming Transformers War for Cybertron: Earthrise Leader Optimus Prime, I searched it up on Amazon and pre-ordered it. I mean, it’s Optimus Prime and it’s a new series of toys, of course, I was going to do this. I pressed the “take all my monies” button, satisfied with my order and went about my way. Since the toy wasn’t set to be released until March 2020, I figured I wouldn’t hear anything about it until next year. Sadly, I was wrong.
Last night, I received notification that Amazon had canceled my order. I couldn’t believe it and thought that it might be a mistake. Except, it wasn’t. I’m still not sure as to what happened either. Upon searching for the item on Amazon, it appears to be missing from Amazon completely – the original link is completely dead.
Frantic, because I know how these situations can give scalpers the leg up on honest collectors, I reached out to Amazon and spoke to several servic reps. None of which knew what was going on. The first two hadn’t realized the item was removed, while the last was adamant I was looking at the wrong link. In the end, all had realized what I had. Which didn’t make me thrilled that my pre-order being canceled with no reason as to why.
With no other recourse, I took to Twitter to see if anyone else had was affected. Sure enough, it seems that a few others were in my position. Including a fellow Transformers collector reached to me on Twitter and clued me in that this is also happening with another Transfer in the series, Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Earthrise Voyager Grapple.
Indeed. Many Japanese say Grapple is also cancelled. So my Grapple may be cancelled soon as Optimus.
I wonder if the other stores follow amazon to cancel them or not.— tf-tf@トランスフォーマー大好き (@tf__tf) December 24, 2019
I also swung past one of the largest and oldest Transformers websites around, Tfw2005.com, to see if anyone knew anything. Sure enough, multiple people are stating that their pre-orders of Prime, Grapple, as well as Star Scream, were all canceled. Interesting enough, while Optimus Prime was completely removed, both Grapple and Starscream show either out of stock or there’s no option to purchase them. At least for the moment, they’re still listed.
All of this so far is weird and likely frustrating for fans of the series. I haven’t seen any official updates regarding this on Hasbro’s website or Twitter. As such, I’ve reached out to find out what exactly is going on. However, since this is the Holidays, I don’t expect to hear back anytime soon.
In the meanwhile, if you find yourself on the receiving end of the cancelation on Amazon, I’ve found another place to snag the Cybertron: Earthrise variants of Optimus Prime and Grapple. My old fallback, Big Bad Toystore is still taking pre-orders, so I’d head over there. That is until they either stop taking pre-orders or Hasbro ends up forcing them to cancel them as well.
