I wouldn't give that post the time of day without more information surfacing. Asian distributors have had US store exclusives with different availability (but usually at a premium) for at least the last decade, because the exclusivity contracts are generally for the US market and the Everywhere Else market has grown enough that they don't want to leave money on the table by not offering to them. This isn't a matter of "here, Asian market, you can have this thing I won't be bringing to the US anymore".
But if this were true, why is it only affecting this specific production run, this handful of items, and ONLY Transformers (what are the "other Hasbro product lines"?), and why is only Target making this key financial decision? Is there something about Target specifically, and exclusives specifically, that ticks all the boxes?
Every reasonable avenue of follow-up inquiry dead-ends at "oh, I can't talk about that". Good old-fashioned Awesome Inside Sources, He Tell Me.
Iirc Hasbro's initial solicit and eventual prices for some Transformers stuff also changed/jumped recently. Not as often I think, but there were a few cases.
But as is discussed in the other thread on Hasbro concerns, that's almost certainly due to the volatility of costs in production and transport (just the cost of ending the war with Iran 200 times). Which is something that would affect all retail channels to an extent; if this cost-to-profit rationalization were a thing, other retailers would also be making cuts, other lines would also be affected, or Target would at least want to make SOME money out of this.
www.target.com
