Estimated July arrival
http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/prod ... m_content=

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I'm tempted to actually preorder one. Since Hasbro can't seem to put out enough product to even allow me to buy one of each figure at retail.

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Thanks for the heads-up!

I have no idea if these will be coming to Canada, so I pre-ordered 2: 1 for display, 1 to customize. Forty five dollars is more than fair for such a great vehicle. If it comes to Canada, it will probably be 50-60$ + 15% tax. So even with shipping and duties, it comes out to about the same price to order from BBTS and I don't have to hunt for it.

OB

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Not Hasbro's fault. You should have seen DePriest at con in the Hasbro booth on his phone at con trying to get to the bottom of some distro issues in real time, in front of a group of guys. I just kind of wandered into the conversation so I don't know how it came up. But he said he had no idea that certain waves or certain figures were not showing up in places as they should have. Somewhere between the factory and then the warehouses, with the retail stores to top it off.... there's too many hands involved and then too many circumstances backing everything up. Not to mention that the film moving around made things worse. It seems to be like a domino effect that starts at both ends. Retailers make some decisions which hold things up or just simply keep things out of stores and then the film gets three release dates on the other end... and then in the middle the warehouses and distro have to do what it is they do.

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For can't miss items like this I go ahead and do the preorder. BBTS is one of the few places that lets you cancel a preorder. I hate to do that, but if you start seeing these in Walmart in June it is kind of hard to wait even longer.

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I have an MBA and am of the opinion that a company is responsible for everything that happens with its product. If they have distribution problems, they need to take control and fix those problems. And its not just the Retaliation delay debacle and toy line, its the Dollar General line as well. I spent so much time tracking down wave 1 to get a full set, I'm not doing it again with wave 2. If they want my money they need to make it easier to find their product without resorting to ebay.

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We've talked about this before, but retailers have a large part in the distribution problems. They typically over order on the early waves (because those will be out when the movie is actually hit), and then don't have a reason to reorder for later waves (because there is still plenty of stock on the pegs).

Do I think the case assortments/figure selection could be better to get the figures to move more? Sure, but part of that is also dictated by retailers.

I'll give this advice 'til I'm blue in the face, but order from online retailers (especially GI Joe promoting online retailers like SmallJoes and Kokomo Toys) if you're at all concerned about not finding figures and vehicles in stores . The amount of time you save on driving around being disappointed more than makes up for the shipping costs (and frankly shipping has been cheaper than gas lately, so it's a double win.)

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I say Hasbro has a fair amount of blame in this. There has been next to nothing new available for Star Wars, Marvel Universe, or GI Joe at every single Target, Wal-mart, Toys R Us, Kmart, and other smaller chain stores I frequent for over a year now. You can't tell me that every single retail chain all have the same distribution issues. I'm not seeing pegs overflowing with old product, I'm seeing empty or sparcely filled pegs They have no problems restocking Legos, or Kellog's cereal, or Dial soap - just Hasbro products.

I have spent a lot of money with smalljoes.com. A lot. I have also bought from Hasbro Toy Shop when they had the 3-packs and for a couple vehicles I could not find in stores. I have bought from BBTS many times. I guess this is my point. If there are multiple online outlets for GI Joe, why can I not readily find some of these toys without getting completely gouged on ebay or sometimes paying $12 to $15 plus shipping for a figure with online retailers? Here is what I have to say to the Hasbro guys: If stores don't want to stock Joes, work with your internet outlets and put it online and make it so every item is available to be purchased at retail store prices. I'm really starting to hate the fact that newly made GI Joe retail toys are harder to find and sometimes more expensive than vintage collectable Joes.

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So... Preorder huh? Good thing. I'd hate to miss out on this the way I did the Skystriker.

Oh wait, that was, and still is, literally everywhere.

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This is an interesting point. The Skystriker was put out in force. I'm not sure how it worked out financially for Hasbro and the retailers, but I personally bought 8 of them at brick and mortar stores. Only 2 of which were discounted. If they had been scarce and I had to resort to ebay for an outrageous amount or an online retailer for $50 or $60 plus shipping, I probably would only have bought 1 or two. If the new Vamps (Mark II and Ninja Combat Cruiser) were easily found where I live I would have multiples of each version as well. As it stands I have bought only 3 combined of the two types, 2 of which have been used on a custom. I have only seen 1 Ninja Combat cruiser in person. And I frequently find myself in Target and Walmart shopping and I always check the toy aisle.

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The reason the figures cost more at online retailers is because they're not ordering enough items to get a price break. Most likely Target and Walmart are, which means they can charge us less.

Plus online retailers typically increase the price on more desirable figures to cover for figures that will sit around for a while and not sell. Not many people are looking to buy that Wave 1 Retaliation Duke by himself from an online retailer compared to the Joe trooper.

Unfortunately the current retail environment isn't great for boys action figures as we currently know them. And it's probably not going to change for the better.

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Publicly Published Production Numbers would be Very Helpful. It would be good to know what waves are produced in what quantities so people know what product is legitimately rare, and what is artificially rare via popularity and distribution issues. Honest Information is never a bad thing.

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This is just my opinion and I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, but toy companies like Hasbro need to adapt. I would like to see what pecentage of their sales go to adult collectors and customizers if that is even possible to tell. If a significant enough portion of toy sales is going to us, they really should develop some type of smarter online sales system geared towards us. There is no reason why they should not be able to release figures in cases of a single type to online retailers so figures that are highly sought after can be readily found and purchased. The online retailers will tell them which ones are sought after by ordering that figure in quantity. For retailers to get stuck buying waves and then having to try to makup for the fact that they can't sell certain ones is foolish.

If a meat supply company only sold chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, and beef in certain ratios with no regard for what is selling at the supermarket, what would the meat section look like at the supermarket? I tend to think there would be a glut of one or two kinds of meat sitting in the cases with a massive loss of potential sales walking past wishing what they wanted was there. When I was in grad school, if I had known this was how toy companies conducted their business, I would have requested one of my professors to explain why they sell their product in this fashion. And I would have asked does this make any sense as a business tactic.

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I see two issues with this approach:

1. The end result in cases like this is that some figures will never get made. There won't be enough overall demand to justify the production of certain figures. And, more often than not, those are the figures that are geared towards collectors. So, you would end up with more cases of major characters over and over again.

2. This actually leads to a more boom or bust situation. If dealers get it wrong and order a fig that, for whatever reason, doesn't click with collectors, they're screwed. There's not 5 other figures in the case they can sell. Think how many times you've seen a figure that looked awesome in preliminary photos but was incredibly disappointing once you got it in hand. If that's the only stock a dealer got, they're stuck with case after case of unsold figures instead of a smaller subset of a diverse case.

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