User:Nevermore/Sandbox/Wave
A wave is a lot shipment of several different toys released under the same price point that differs from a previous shipment of the same price point.
Rather than selling every single product separately to stores, retailers instead offer them as standardized price points, or size classes, which are referred to as an "assortment". The manufacturer will then pre-select how many of each figure will be packed in a shipping case, which is based on estimates, past experiences with previous lines, and focus test groups. Over time, the manufacturer will change the exact composition of a case by changing the number of copies of the individual figures included in a case relative to one another, but also by adding new figures that weren't included in the previous shipments, and eventually phasing out older figures in favor of new ones. Every time the composition of a case changes, this is considered a different "wave".
There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding the "wave" system, with the adult fans' idea of a "wave" often differing drastically from the actual established concept used within the toy industry. However, the official system isn't flawless either, and there are many inconsistencies, discrepancies and oddities that complicate things further.
Why waves? A history lesson
Although the original Transformers toy line (also known in retrospect as Generation 1) already had assortments, the "wave" system as we know it today didn't exist yet back then. In part due to its origins as imported toys from existing Japanese lines (primarily Diaclone and Micro Change), the early years of the Transformers line featured a plethora of different price points, many of them gimmick-specific.
Instead of waves, Hasbro would release the same toys under multiple different assortments, sometimes even within the same year. For example, the Autobot Cars were released under the assortment number 5750 in 1984, while in 1985, Hasbro distributed them under the assortment numbers 5765 and 5766, each of which contained some of the previous year's figures alongside some of the new figures that debuted in 1985. Likewise, the Mini Vehicles (or "Autobot Minicars" during the first year) were released under the assortment number 5700 in 1984, whereas they were re-released in 1985 with an additional Mini-spy figure (assortment number 5709) before yet another assortment (5710) added the new figures that debuted in 1985. Many other figures such as the Decepticon Planes, the Mini-Cassettes, the Triple Changers, the Dinobots or the Combiner limbs and torsos were also released under multiple assortment numbers, which the stores had to order separately. This system continued all the way to the end of the original line's United States retail run in 1990, by which point the line was divided into the two major sublines Micromasters and Action Masters.
The Generation 2 line brought with it the first change: The Go-Bots and Cyberjets assortments, both of them released in 1995, were the first price points that retained one singular assortment number (80181 for the Go-Bots, 80182 for the Cyberjets) despite adding and swapping out toys in subsequent shipments. However, like its predecessor, Generation 2 still featured a plethora of different gimmick-specific price points, many of them only consisting of a handful of different figures. Stores still had to order each price point separately, resulting in very complicated logistics for Hasbro's distribution department, vendors and retailers.
This complexity was significantly simplified in 1996, when Kenner took over the Transformers brand and launched the Beast Wars line. Kenner streamlined the output of products into a smaller number of price points (Basic, Deluxe, Mega and Ultra), with all toys being designed to fit into one of these price points. Like the Go-Bots and Cyberjets before them, the new assortments also continued to ship throughout the year and into the next one, and every once in a while, Hasbro would change the case ratios by adding new figures, changing the number of copies per case for the older ones and eventually phasing out older figures entirely in favor of new ones. This was also the time when redecos and retools started to become a much more regular occurrence than they had been previously, including same-character redecos: Releasing a different version of an existing figure helped to increase the variety in a new case just as much as an entirely new figure would. Essentially, this marked the birth of the "wave" system as we know it today, and indeed, not a lot has changed since then, other than the introduction of new price points (or renaming existing ones) fore subsequent lines.
What is a wave? Fan misconceptions versus reality
When adult collectors think of "waves", a common misconception is that all the new toys released under different price points roughly at the same time constitute one wave. Basically, in this perception, a "wave" is a huge bulk of toys of all sorts of different sizes that all ship together. The absurdity of this misconceptions often becomes more and more apparent as time goes on, because it's not uncommon for the larger price points to have a lower turnover rate than the smaller ones, resulting in fewer distinct case assortments for the larger price points. This would occasionally result in perceptions such as "there are no Leaders in wave 4".
In reality, however, each price point has its own waves, which are numbered independently for one another. Sometimes Hasbro aims for synchronicity between different price points, which helps fuel this misconception (even though it doesn't always work out flawlessly in execution, which waves of different price points that are intended to ship at the same time materializing at retail months apart), while other times, there is no "larger picture" at work, and eventually, the number of distinct waves between the price points will diverge more and more as time goes on. This misconception was fuled in particular by the Combiner Wars line, which aimed for a wave synchronicity between the Legends, Deluxe and Voyager Class price points in order to have all members of a combiner team available at retail at the same time.
Another common misconception is that a wave by its very definition only consists of new figures. This was true for the European market for over a decade, and has been adopted by Hasbro on a global level for the Combiner Wars and Titans Return lines to some degree, but for the most part, waves can and will always feature additional shipments of unchanged existing figures (sometimes unofficially referred to as "repacks" by some fans) alongside redecos, retools and entirely new figures.
