Let's talk about Metal Cardbot's USA release.
Please do not harass any staff at Agabyss or SAMG for this - I truly believe they want Metal Cardbot to succeed. I'm mostly venting my own frustrations from the perspective of someone who's been invested in this show since day one.
Some context: I'm a fansubber for Metal Cardbot and the owner of the Metal Cardbot SUB site, which has been the go-to method for tens of thousands of people to watch the series. At the time of writing, over 54,000 users-- mostly from the United States-- have used the site to watch MCB since November 2024. I constantly hear it recommended online as the definitive way to watch the show (thank you!).
I fell in love with Metal Cardbot because of what set it apart from Transformers. The designs are new and refreshing, the characters are endearing and well crafted, and the production team behind it is seriously capable. It's why, given the (terrible!!) dub of Season 1 that aired in 2024, I created the sub site to let English speakers access a more faithful translation of the series without piracy. And the show has continued to outdo itself in the seasons following it - I feel like I'm constantly blown away by every new episode of Season 3 that airs. There's a reason it's been extremely popular everywhere it's been localized - in Korea, it's only second to Teenieping, which has 6 seasons and 2 full-length movies of its own!
That's why it pains me to see Metal Cardbot treated how it currently is in the USA. Its American distributor is making some truly baffling decisions regarding the IP, and, unless some major changes are made, I have little hope that Metal Cardbot will hold any weight in the American market against Transformers and other mecha franchises.
So, what's happening?
Agabyss is the company behind the distribution of Metal Cardbot in the United States. They announced their partnership at the New York Toy Fair on March 1, 2025, and since then, they've released 6 toys from Season 1, with another 4 toys arriving in September 2026. (In Korea, there are currently 39 toys released and 1 available for preorder.)
From interviews, it seemed like this partnership was incidental. Agabyss reached out first, and SAMG was looking for an American partner at the time. SAMG has been notoriously hands-off in overseas localizations in the past, so this lines up with how they usually treat international releases.
But since their partnership was announced, Agabyss has been hyperfixated on making Metal Cardbot look appealing to adult Transformers collectors. Why is this, you may ask?
Agabyss is a company that primarily produces and distributes Transformers toys; they've designed quite a few third party toys of their own, in fact. Given this, it's understandable that they tend to gravitate towards their main audience: adult collectors. But that experience in producing TF has turned into forcing TF into an IP that doesn't need nor want it.
Change for the sake of change
There's no better place to see this than in how they present Metal Cardbot to the masses. On multiple occasions, Agabyss has attempted to rewrite the story and characters of the show to be more appealing to a Transformers audience. Just look at what they're naming them:
(The original names are already in English, by the way. They also didn't change all of them; Fleta Z, Shadow X, Buffalo Crush, and Heavy Iron remain the same.)
This would maybe be acceptable if they also redubbed the show with the new names, so it's not confusing to new fans that their favorite characters are suddenly being called something different. But Agabyss didn't redub the show for cost reasons, and only gave vague hints that they might look into it if it "does well"... and I don't know how much affiliation they have with Season 2's English dub (done by a different Canadian studio), so... guys??? Why???
They've also developed entirely new box art that's less colorful and looks much more similar to other Transformers toys:
Agabyss has even gone so far as to try and rewrite the actual story in the past, but they've thankfully backtracked on that. At one point, they started calling Jun's group of Cardbots the "New Star Guardians", which directly clashes with the current plot of the show (and I KNOW they've watched the show, they literally posted a screenshot from my sub site!). Agabyss later quietly edited their own posts to back out of this direction.
I've polled other fans on this, and the sentiment on these changes seem to be "I hate it!" and "I don't really care". I've hardly seen anyone think these names are better (besides Blue Star).
So then, I ask: why the hell are we changing the names if your current fans hate them and you don't have enough money to redub the show that the toys are from so that they actually make sense??
Now, I don't know how much of this is Agabyss's doing, and how much is SAMG. But the person in charge of bringing Metal Cardbot to the US is Jesse Wittnoto, who was previously a TF magazine editor and seems to take pride in naming Transformers toys, so I suspect a lot of these changes are under his direction.
Unfortunately, Jesse seems to be responding to fan backlash by doubling down on his decisions, which is extremely depressing. I mean, c'mon. Which toy do you think looks more show accurate? Left or right?
(The left one was created specifically to match the show.)
To me, all these changes feel arrogant. It comes across like Agabyss is saying "I know the show better than the original creators do", which is just insulting. And given that it seems like Season 2's first toys will be delayed to mid-2027, I have to think these changes are slowing production down for no reason.
Accessibility
Let's say you're a little kid who likes robots. You probably found Metal Cardbot through countless TikTok reuploads of the show, or the English Metal Cardbot YouTube channel. Now, you want more - there's a new season? And there's toys? That's so cool, you need them!
Except, you can't. The only way to get Metal Cardbot toys is on Agabyss's own storefront-- where I assume they have higher margins-- and Big Bad Toy Store, at a 10% markup. You can't even get them on Amazon, which is one of the easiest retailers to get anything onto! Let alone any physical retailers where people actually buy toys.
I know they've said they've been exploring their options on this, but how do you honestly expect people to buy Cardbots if they don't even know you're selling them? A bunch of people are into MCB that don't even know you exist. And if you can't get into Target, Walmart, or actual toy stores, do you even exist for a kid?
Now, let's say you're an adult collector. What you really love is the toys - you don't really care about the show, and you probably found out about it through a toy reviewer (like That Toy Guy) or the TFW2005 thread. These SAMG people have some seriously cool stuff - Blastrain's a sick ass train that combines? Flame Nova is so massive! They even made a combiner that has its own transforming weapons?!
But none of these toys are available in the USA, and it doesn't look like they'll be out anytime soon. Adult collectors aren't just waiting patiently for Agabyss to maybe get around to distributing them in 2-3 years. Why wait for Glober (sorry, Wayfinder) to release at $37.95 sometime in the future when you can just buy it on Amazon right now for $59.60 and have it next week? There are no real timelines for when the toys that people actually want will release, and this seems to come up in the replies every time that they post something.
Setting up supply chains takes time, and the fact that preorders for Wave 1 went "really well" is honestly fantastic. But if Agabyss wants to put their money where their mouth is, they need expansion in areas that aren't just their own store - and they need it fast. We can't have Tachy releasing in 2029, guys.
Communication
For a while, Agabyss only posted Metal Cardbot updates in two places: the official Metal Cardbot Facebook page, and the BotCon (??) Twitter account. They did make an official Metal Cardbot US Twitter account recently, but the 11 real posts it does have are mostly Facebook posts with information removed. When the bulk of the fanbase and all of the production staff are on Twitter, this seems... backwards? They also have no traction on Instagram, BlueSky, or TikTok (the latter of which is where a lot of younger fans are discovering the show).
There is also an official English metalcardbotTV YouTube channel that posts episode clips, but I am not sure if Agabyss has access to this. It seems like they don't, since no mention of toys have ever showed up on this account - and they've been stuck reuploading clips of the same Season 1 episodes since December 2025. (This YouTube account has also made some baffling decisions, but that's a story for another time.)
Agabyss is not very good at communicating things. Ignoring some sloppily-made AI generated advertisements that they only changed after being called out on it - did you know they raised prices on all of the toys by about 5-10% yesterday? Yup-- it turns out the original prices were actually "introductory prices" and not the actual retail price, despite their website not reflecting this at the time of Wave 1's release. The only mention of this is in a Facebook post the day before it happened, and a newsletter sent out two days before. They even made Twitter posts during that time that omitted this information! Is that not insane?
How things could be
I've been very negative in this post, so let me show you what a real Metal Cardbot distributor looks like.
Let's look at JUMPGO, the distributor for Metal Cardbot in China. They started about two years earlier than Agabyss, and in that time:
It's surpassed 500 million cumulative views and topped viewership charts on streaming services
It's ranked #1 for robot-related searches on Taobao (China's equivalent of Amazon)
They've held multiple in-person events for kids and adults
They've created three entire mascot costumes, and post original Metal Cardbot comics on their social media accounts
They're on season 2 of their own Metal Cardbot live-action spinoff that has its own toys
I know this isn't an apples to apples comparison. Agabyss is much smaller than JUMPGO, and JUMPGO has a unique position in that they're also the manufacturer of the toys. But it just shows you how much reach the series can get if given the chance, and it saddens me that Metal Cardbot won't ever achieve this level of prominence in the United States.
What to do
If someone at Agabyss is reading this and somehow sat through my angry rambling, here's what I wish as a completely uninformed crazy man that's mad people can't get their hands on plastic toys.
Put your toys on actual shelves. This is hard, I know, but you get no sales if you don't exist. Most people are buying them on Amazon, so start there. (If I search "metal cardbot mega trucker" on Google after seeing him in Episode 1 of your own dub, I should not have to go to page 10 to find the first real store listing. And it's not even an Agabyss.com listing!)
Meet your fans where they are. Your top priority should be getting toys out, not changing things. Engage with fans on Twitter and TikTok, and understand what they like about MCB. Integrate the show better with the toys you are selling, so people naturally know where to look after watching it.
Keep fans updated. Your current English fanbase is avidly watching the Korean release as it happens, so tap into that hype! (And no, retweeting the MF/MC Development Twitter account doesn't count.)
STOP CHANGING STUFF! We're not 4Kids, guys. Why are you doing this. Stop trying to act like you know the show better than the production team!
I'm glad Metal Cardbot is coming to the USA, in any capacity. But if we want the show to get the recognition it deserves, we need to do more than the bare minimum, and not make it appear like it's yet another Transformers clone.
Conclusion
Metal Cardbot will always have its roots in Transformers. The director, Seoro Oh (aka OSRO), got his start making Transformers animations on YouTube, and you can draw direct inspirations from TF to characters like Heavy Iron.
But what makes Cardbot special is that it's not Transformers. Just look at any toy review online - they'll say that Cardbot is a breath of fresh air with toys that are fun to play with and ripe to compete with Transformers if given the chance.
But Agabyss just isn't giving them the chance. It seems like they'd rather keep trying to fit a Cardbot-shaped peg into a Transformers-shaped hole, and sloppily at that. That's what makes it so frustrating as a fan.
I know they've said in many interviews that they're trying, and global tensions aren't helping them ship stuff from Asia. And I get that - but it's been over a year and we don't even have a release date for the end of season 1. To me, Agabyss seems more preoccupied with stomping on the creativity of the production team rather than releasing toys that fans actually want and giving the show the spotlight it deserves.
If they continue like this, I don't have any hope for Metal Cardbot in the United States.
But that's just my two cents.
