MP-43 Masterpiece Beast Wars Megatron Delayed? Is TakaraTomy Having A Masterpiece Problem In 2019?

Originally solicited for a release window at the end of January 2019, it seems MP-43 Beast Wars Megatron will be taking some extra time to get to collectors. Amazon Japan sent an email update this morning alerting preorder holders to the status change and advising of the new expected delivery window. Amazon now expects Megatron to be released on March 30, two full months after the original plan. The upshot of this for many interested buyers in the US is that most people should have their tax refunds in by then and can devote some of those funds to paying for the big purple tyrant.

It does begin to make one wonder, however. MP-43 being moved to an end-of-March release date does close what seemed like an oddly long gap between its release and when MP-44 is expected in late August. But it's hard to imagine TakaraTomy being content with making their customers wait and sitting on stockpiles of inventory for eight weeks solely to even out the release schedule. We've seen full color samples of Megatron over and over at exhibitions in Japan over the past several months, which would also lead one to think that the retail units ought to be right on schedule. But apparently they're not anymore.

And now we're left to wonder. Did Megatron turn up with some design flaw or a mistake on the factory's part that reoccurred through a production sample batch that required changes to be made and rescheduling production? Or is the factory just having trouble managing with Masterpiece production? From the look of thing we might see only three new Masterpiece molds released in the entirety of 2019. Redecos can't be ruled out, but this number still sounds low. And when you consider that the testshot for MP Hound was nowhere to be seen since its debut at Summer Wonderfest, it's hard to help but question what the status of that future release might be now.

We can't know what's going on at TakaraTomy right now when it comes to Masterpiece, but the signs that we can see don't seem to be pointing in the best directions for this long-running line.