Five weeks ago Hasbro’s only word on the August pre-order cancellations was that there were questions it could not answer yet. Tonight the answer turned up without a word of explanation: no email from Target setting out what happened, no second statement from Hasbro, just a figure back in a cart that was emptied in August.
Two of the three figures caught up in those cancellations are orderable at Target as this is written, and both have been cut by a fifth. The Deluxe Class Prowl is $22.39 against a $27.99 list, with a live add to cart, free shipping and an arrival date of Thursday. The Insecticon three pack of Bombshell, Shrapnel and Kickback is down sixteen dollars to $63.99! Target’s own page reports more than six hundred of them sold in the last month, so the three pack was selling through the same weeks the Starscream orders were being killed.
Bombshell, Shrapnel and Kickback. The three pack stayed orderable all the way through the cancellation mess, and tonight it is $63.99.
What is happening to the cancelled orders
TFW2005 posted at about five o’clock Eastern that pre-orders Target killed in August are turning up in customers’ carts again as available to purchase. This is not a general restock. What the thread reports, over dozens of posts in the first three hours, is that it is reaching the people who ordered in June and were cancelled in August, and that anyone who ordered more than one copy is being offered a single one. Several who checked out this evening say they already have a tracking number.
The reinstated orders are going through at tonight’s sale price rather than at the price the pre-order was placed at. One collector posting as AndreyOfDoom wrote: “it got added to the cart at the current sale price so their whole fiasco basically gave a lot of us this figure and the insecticons at a great deal.” That may be deliberate goodwill, or it may be what happens when a cart reprices itself against a live promotion; nobody outside Target can say, and Target has not commented.
Another poster, T-Hybrid, flagged that Prowl was still buyable online after the first emails went out, and advised watching the listing over the next day. That matches what the page shows now.
Nobody has explained the carts
On August 15 Hasbro brand manager Nate Purswell spoke for the first time since the cancellations started, saying the team was aware, that it was actively working on a fix, and that this was a top priority. He was careful to add that there were questions he could not answer. We wrote at the time that the statement did not say whether cancelled pre-orders would be honoured, whether more stock was coming, or when. All three have been answered by carts refilling, and by nothing either company has said since.
The public Starscream listing is still where it was in August. It reads Sold out to anyone browsing it tonight, with a notify control where the add to cart used to be, and the sale price on file is $34.39 against the original $42.99. The guest rating has crept from 1.21 to 1.23 out of five while the number of ratings went from 594 to 637, so people have kept arriving to mark it down long after the figure stopped being orderable.
If you were never in the queue
This is no route back in for anyone whose pre-order never landed, and posters including sideswipe6520 said as much in the thread within the hour. BigBadToyStore carries no Hasbro listing for any of the three, and carried none in August either. The single MTMTE Starscream it does stock is the Takara Tomy TS-37 import of the same mould at $64.99, sold out with a waitlist.
So: Prowl and the Insecticons are orderable tonight, and the cart is worth a look if Target cancelled you in August. The 1986 film’s 40th anniversary re-release is still in cinemas too, and we counted its first four days this afternoon.
Sources
- Target Pre-Orders for MTMTE Starscream Being Un-Cancelled, TFW2005, September 21, 2026, and the comment thread beneath it, read the same evening.
- Transformers Studio Series MTMTE Collection Deluxe Class Prowl, Target product listing, price and stock read September 21, 2026.
- Insecticon Bombshell, Insecticon Shrapnel and Insecticon Kickback, Target product listing, price and stock read September 21, 2026.
- Transformers Studio Series MTMTE Collection Voyager Class Starscream, Target product listing, stock and rating read September 21, 2026.
- The Transformers: The Movie Studio Series MTMTE Collection TS-37 Starscream, BigBadToyStore, read September 21, 2026.
Product photography: Hasbro, via the Target product listings.