You can read the full article at this link: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/19/ ... re-orders/
We've quoted some of the most relevant snippets below:
This week, Hasbro, for the first time, has decided to make individual figures available to the direct market and Diamond. This is a pretty big deal. For those who do not know, usually figures like these can only be ordered by the case, which Hasbro controls the packouts to. So instead of buying a case and getting only one of the most desired figure, now your local comic shop for example can order as many as they want of the “short packed” character.
To say their (Hasbro) distribution is “spotty” is an understatement. Pegs sit empty for months, stores get 1 or 2 cases and are not restocked for months on end. Filling the lines and cases with unwanted characters or making the case packouts skew towards reissues of the same characters that are still sitting unsold on the pegs.
It should be noted that big box retailers such as Wal*Mart are somewhat to blame for this, rather than just Hasbro alone. By dictating which Transformers toy lines they'll sell at a given time, for example, movie toys over the Animated line, retailers can have too much power some of the time. Cutting Animated out of sales space was one of the factors that helped lead to the cancellation of the final waves.
Some good examples of how assorted cases instead of direct figure ordering can affect the line can be seen below:
Skrapnel and Tailgate
And Cosmos and Swerve, along with the previously overstocked figures that helped delay their release
Hopefully, this new ordering system will help all of us obtain the figures we desire at an easier rate and for less than we'd normally spend in our sometimes fruitless searches.
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