Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Soooooo wheres the toys? I have went to all 6 walmarts, 3 toys r us, 5 targets, 2 k marts,even tried t.j. max and khols for the hell of it and all stores are barren of anything but beast wars and believe it or not a few dark of moon figures. I even went out of state to a few walmarts and a target and got the same results.
The resets have been completed for several weeks now. Actually its closer to a month. The mod sheets are sitting on the shelfs with the date that the resets were completed in most of the stores and two to three spots for the new waves but they just arent there.
Anyone else seeing this trend in their area? I need the new sky warp to round out my new seekers before my mania king arrives!!!
On another note, why are there so few spots alonted to t. formers when compared to other brands? Starwars, bey blades, all the comic book character figures (avengers, batman etc) and even ninja turtles have twice the space that transformers have been given.
Are transformer figures doing poorly in sales? Perhaps this is only the case for my area? I certainly hope they do not go the way of the m.o.t.u 2000 line.
I remember trying to collect those figures but near imposible chance to find the figures due to poor wave assortments and scalper influance kind of screwed that line up.
This is not the case for transformers is it? I myself have not had to hard of a time finding what I need but There hve been a few Figures I had to buy from ebay and even more that I never saw in stores and cannot afford to buy online.
Are other fans having a hard time procuring the figures they need or do you have a pretty easy time finding them?

Megs for pres wrote:Soooooo wheres the toys? I have went to all 6 walmarts, 3 toys r us, 5 targets, 2 k marts,even tried t.j. max and khols for the hell of it and all stores are barren of anything but beast wars and believe it or not a few dark of moon figures. I even went out of state to a few walmarts and a target and got the same results.
The resets have been completed for several weeks now. Actually its closer to a month. The mod sheets are sitting on the shelfs with the date that the resets were completed in most of the stores and two to three spots for the new waves but they just arent there.
Anyone else seeing this trend in their area? I need the new sky warp to round out my new seekers before my mania king arrives!!!
On another note, why are there so few spots alonted to t. formers when compared to other brands? Starwars, bey blades, all the comic book character figures (avengers, batman etc) and even ninja turtles have twice the space that transformers have been given.
Are transformer figures doing poorly in sales? Perhaps this is only the case for my area? I certainly hope they do not go the way of the m.o.t.u 2000 line.
I remember trying to collect those figures but near imposible chance to find the figures due to poor wave assortments and scalper influance kind of screwed that line up.
This is not the case for transformers is it? I myself have not had to hard of a time finding what I need but There hve been a few Figures I had to buy from ebay and even more that I never saw in stores and cannot afford to buy online.
Are other fans having a hard time procuring the figures they need or do you have a pretty easy time finding them?

I think the problem with the lack of TF's on stores is, that they tend to sit on the shelves for long periods of time. Sometimes they sit for years. I think the brand can be a bit of thorn in the side for some of the buyers who purchase merchandise for these big-outlets. Buyers also tend to focus on stocking only what they think people will actually buy. The Movie line was kinda' notorious for it's wide selection of shelf-warming heroes and villains, which was (and sometimes, still is) a major source of frustration for retailers.

Another thing I've picked up on is, that (in many instances) the super-hero action figures (like Spider Man, Iron Man & Marvel, etc.) can tend to sell better than Transformers figures. This seems to explain the general drought in TF figures and the plentiful abundance of super-hero figures in the big-outlet toy aisles.

Since it is early in the new series I recommend hitting these stores the day they restock. Find out from your walmart and target when they put up the new stuff. For my area Walmart stocks Sunday evening and again Thursday evening so i hit them up Monday and Friday if I'm looking. Target is the same (here anyways) but TRU is a little different as three get done Monday and Friday, but one gets Tuesday and Friday.

After these waves are out a bit, they will not rush off the shelves in one day. I've seen them a little, and have gotten them, I do not see them on days other then these initially until most of the collectors have gotten them.

A few stores around me (Baltimore area) have the new wave... Scoop and Skywarp look great BTW...

Can't believe the Skids wave is just gone though...

warzon3 wrote:A few stores around me (Baltimore area) have the new wave... Scoop and Skywarp look great BTW...

Can't believe the Skids wave is just gone though...

Yeah, Skids is totally popular right now.

I have found the Skywarp wave but have seen the skids wave once randomly while Christmas shopping in dec. I agree w you Megs, I've noticed the lack of TF stock as well.

I don't think the Skids/Waspinator wave ever really made it to retail, at least not in significant numbers. I got mine through HTS.com, but have never seen them in any stores.

This very issue has been driving me nuts for weeks. It's like when I was trying to track down wave two of Power Rangers RPM figures and Zords (the frustration of which actually put me off PR after collecting them for over a decade)and the afore mentioned MOTU 2000 figures. I've been stumbling onto the new waves a piece at a time, but more often than not I leave stores grumbling and wishing I had the power to levy a 2 million dollar fine on each store for every instance I waste my time going into them.

And Skids? Not going to find him any time soon, I'll bet. It's like Hasbro's played some asinine short-pack game with that one. Oh the douchebag scalpers (may they be staked out on the spice sands between four very loud thumpers)on Ebay and Amazon are having a field day with this one. And forget places like my favorite "Big Bad Always Out Of Stock Toystore" who only have stock for people clairvoyant enough to KNOW which figures are going to be a nightmare to find and pre-order them months in advance. And Hasblo Toy Shop isn't any help either on that particular count.

I used to have a lot of fun collecting TFs. I've been doing since it all began in the 80's. But It's gotten to the point where it's more frustration than fun, which is the same reason I quit playing video games long ago. During say, the Energon era I could go into Target and score an entire wave of TFs easily. No shipping charges, no waiting for packages, just stop on the way home from work and voila---wave collected. Next!

I'm sure I'll get a lot of snarky "you dont know how business works" comments, but I've worked retail for 25 years and I know incompetence when I see it. I'm tired of their excuses. Some stores like Y'All-Mart I ONLY visit to shop figures. It's gotten so exasperating that I've taken to punching little scraps of paper onto the empty Generations pegs upon which I have written "why don't you morons try filling these, or don't you want to actually sell stuff?!"

Okay, rant over. I feel slightly better.

It feels like 2011 all over again.

But seriously, if you expect new toys in your store before 8 more weeks are up and the movie toys are everywhere, you're gonna have a bad time. Maybe another Generations wave will hit and maybe some Beast Hunters Constructbots or something, but that's all for awhile guys

Do you think that in 1984 you could walk into a toy store and expect to find every Transformer that had been released? This is nothing new.

We now have the internet and access to a global marketplace. If you're expecting to find every figure at your local Walmart, then you're just limiting your options. You're not taking advantage of the tools you have. The figures aren't going to come to you; you have to seek them out and find them.

GuyIncognito wrote:Do you think that in 1984 you could walk into a toy store and expect to find every Transformer that had been released? This is nothing new.

We now have the internet and access to a global marketplace. If you're expecting to find every figure at your local Walmart, then you're just limiting your options. You're not taking advantage of the tools you have. The figures aren't going to come to you; you have to seek them out and find them.

I wish we had upvote buttons, or something similar, so I could upvote this twice. Stone cold solid advice.

Same place the beef is.

In all seriousness, I haven't noticed this problem. While Wave 3 has disappeared, they were at TRU upon release and in full. I've also been to two Targets, both having Wave 4 (in which I snagged Starscream and Scoop).

thedistinctroom wrote:

warzon3 wrote:A few stores around me (Baltimore area) have the new wave... Scoop and Skywarp look great BTW...

Can't believe the Skids wave is just gone though...

Yeah, Skids is totally popular right now.

Hell if I know why. I have Skids, and he's got a pretty lazy design in robot mode.

ScottyP wrote:

GuyIncognito wrote:Do you think that in 1984 you could walk into a toy store and expect to find every Transformer that had been released? This is nothing new.

We now have the internet and access to a global marketplace. If you're expecting to find every figure at your local Walmart, then you're just limiting your options. You're not taking advantage of the tools you have. The figures aren't going to come to you; you have to seek them out and find them.

I wish we had upvote buttons, or something similar, so I could upvote this twice. Stone cold solid advice.

AMEN

Looks like that's what it's gonna have to be. Internet purchasing. The slow death of brick and mortar and the accompanying loss of jobs slowly inches its way towards completion one toy (and one appliance in my case)at a time.

Another part of the problem with buying figures on the internet is losing the ability to choose your figure. At Target, or any other store, you many times have the ability to reject the figure with the huge scrape on it's face or the smeared insignia, or the obviously broken part rattling in the package, and dig for one in better condition. Internet sellers will throw anything at you as long as the name on the blister card or box is correct. Then it's the irritating and time consuming process of shipping it back and waiting even longer for the figure to arrive.

Internet makes for a lot of advantages in terms of convenience of purchasing and gas savings, but seriously lacks in service, and a convenient way to deal with defective or goofed up merchandise. And let's face it, this stuff happens more times than we would like to think given the level of QC nowdays.

Still, it looks like this is the only way I'm gonna be able to have a solid guarantee of getting this stuff without tearing my hair out looking for it locally anymore. It's a sad age.

Cobalt Prime wrote:Looks like that's what it's gonna have to be. Internet purchasing. The slow death of brick and mortar and the accompanying loss of jobs slowly inches its way towards completion one toy (and one appliance in my case)at a time.

Another part of the problem with buying figures on the internet is losing the ability to choose your figure. At Target, or any other store, you many times have the ability to reject the figure with the huge scrape on it's face or the smeared insignia, or the obviously broken part rattling in the package, and dig for one in better condition. Internet sellers will throw anything at you as long as the name on the blister card or box is correct. Then it's the irritating and time consuming process of shipping it back and waiting even longer for the figure to arrive.

Internet makes for a lot of advantages in terms of convenience of purchasing and gas savings, but seriously lacks in service, and a convenient way to deal with defective or goofed up merchandise. And let's face it, this stuff happens more times than we would like to think given the level of QC nowdays.

Still, it looks like this is the only way I'm gonna be able to have a solid guarantee of getting this stuff without tearing my hair out looking for it locally anymore. It's a sad age.

While I completely agree with guyincognito I do also agree with being able to see the toy on the shelf and comparing two together and picking the better one. I always pick up multiple of the same figure if there are more then one and compare. I grabbed two hardshells and one had the paint on his eyes scratched, which isn't major but...............

For that reason I do like seeing them on the shelf, however you do have to resort to some online shopping at times

I literally can't believe that you found Beast Wars figures in stores in this day and age. I mean, I've had my share of odd finds in later years (I once found a Cybertron Metroplex in 2010), but considering Beast Wars was out as early as 1996, that's crazy to see that they're still on pegs eighteen years later.

thedistinctroom wrote:

warzon3 wrote:A few stores around me (Baltimore area) have the new wave... Scoop and Skywarp look great BTW...

Can't believe the Skids wave is just gone though...

Yeah, Skids is totally popular right now.

I was very lucky to have found my Skids at my local Wal*Mart. Thank God I had the cash on-hand too to pick him up; I've yet to see another Skids, or Waspinator, Dreadwing, and Goldbug, since then. Which is fine by me, since I have them all except Goldbug, who I was originally going to pick up until they revealed Nightbeat.

Cobalt Prime wrote:Looks like that's what it's gonna have to be. Internet purchasing. The slow death of brick and mortar and the accompanying loss of jobs slowly inches its way towards completion one toy (and one appliance in my case)at a time.

Another part of the problem with buying figures on the internet is losing the ability to choose your figure. At Target, or any other store, you many times have the ability to reject the figure with the huge scrape on it's face or the smeared insignia, or the obviously broken part rattling in the package, and dig for one in better condition. Internet sellers will throw anything at you as long as the name on the blister card or box is correct. Then it's the irritating and time consuming process of shipping it back and waiting even longer for the figure to arrive.

Internet makes for a lot of advantages in terms of convenience of purchasing and gas savings, but seriously lacks in service, and a convenient way to deal with defective or goofed up merchandise. And let's face it, this stuff happens more times than we would like to think given the level of QC nowdays.

Still, it looks like this is the only way I'm gonna be able to have a solid guarantee of getting this stuff without tearing my hair out looking for it locally anymore. It's a sad age.

It's also a lot less fun for me to pre order everything before I know what actually is as opposed to being able to find it in store and decide if I want it. The hunt was fun. Browsing is/was fun too. When I browse on the internet - looking at over priced items (because they cant be found easily in the stores) I feel like I'm just looking to spend money where I shouldn't. I used to enjoy browsing a section in a store and maybe finding something I didn't know about, or looks better than I thought in person....I also miss browsing record/cd stores and discovering new music the old fashioned way.
It's a sign of the times...up to the individual whether it's a good thing or bad thing....kinda along the same lines of whether or not you enjoy the Wally Mart-izing of America. Big business shutting down the little guy, so you can get crap cheaper, gone is customer service, gone are jobs, and gone are your choices....Oh well, I've gone too far...but that Grimlock 2 pack has got me thinking 2014 is gonna be about filling in the gaps in my G1 TFs and my Masters of the Universe Classics collection, which I'm thrilled about.

BTW - I was lucky enough to find 2 Skids at retail....bought the second one to replace the first one that I broke trying to fix the leg misassembly. Robot mode looks fantastic, but he still prefers falling over standing.

GuyIncognito wrote:I don't think the Skids/Waspinator wave ever really made it to retail, at least not in significant numbers. I got mine through HTS.com, but have never seen them in any stores.

I saw the wave about 3 times at retail. (TRU) I assure you, they were out there. The wave seems to be seriously shortpacked. I'm not seeing repacks of these figures either. I'm not sure why they shortchanged it so badly.

Autobot032 wrote:

GuyIncognito wrote:I don't think the Skids/Waspinator wave ever really made it to retail, at least not in significant numbers. I got mine through HTS.com, but have never seen them in any stores.

I saw the wave about 3 times at retail. (TRU) I assure you, they were out there. The wave seems to be seriously shortpacked. I'm not seeing repacks of these figures either. I'm not sure why they shortchanged it so badly.

I just saw this complete wave (again) at Target on Tuesday, but I agree they are not in huge volumes by any means. And it is weird by the fact that the voyagers for FOC is all over the place again. Even the old Kreons and current wave with skywarp are out in force. But this wave is rare.

The only thing (with few exceptions) that I can find around here is constructo-bots and Prime Legends. Some places have Rise of the Predacon figures. That's why I've been getting most of mine Generations thru BBTS. I get mine weeks earlier than when they come to the local stores. I just recently saw Gen Rhinox and Doubledealer. I got Rhinox in December.

ScottyP wrote:

GuyIncognito wrote:Do you think that in 1984 you could walk into a toy store and expect to find every Transformer that had been released? This is nothing new.

We now have the internet and access to a global marketplace. If you're expecting to find every figure at your local Walmart, then you're just limiting your options. You're not taking advantage of the tools you have. The figures aren't going to come to you; you have to seek them out and find them.

I wish we had upvote buttons, or something similar, so I could upvote this twice. Stone cold solid advice.

Amen. Who cares where you get the figure from as long as you can get it. I don't think I pay any more for figures when I buy them online, especially when you consider the time hunting for figures and ga$ money. If your local big box store doesn't want to stock the latest waves of Transformers toys, screw 'em! Buy the figures from Amazon.com, BigBadToyStore.com, TFsource.com, RobotKingdom.com or any of the other slew of online retail options than enable you to get even that tail end wave of figures that often doesn't show up at retail (which has been a trend all the way back to 2001's Beast Machines tail end).

Seibertron wrote:

ScottyP wrote:

GuyIncognito wrote:Do you think that in 1984 you could walk into a toy store and expect to find every Transformer that had been released? This is nothing new.

We now have the internet and access to a global marketplace. If you're expecting to find every figure at your local Walmart, then you're just limiting your options. You're not taking advantage of the tools you have. The figures aren't going to come to you; you have to seek them out and find them.

I wish we had upvote buttons, or something similar, so I could upvote this twice. Stone cold solid advice.

Amen. Who cares where you get the figure from as long as you can get it. I don't think I pay any more for figures when I buy them online, especially when you consider the time hunting for figures and ga$ money. If your local big box store doesn't want to stock the latest waves of Transformers toys, screw 'em! Buy the figures from Amazon.com, BigBadToyStore.com, TFsource.com, RobotKingdom.com or any of the other slew of online retail options than enable you to get even that tail end wave of figures that often doesn't show up at retail (which has been a trend all the way back to 2001's Beast Machines tail end).

Because trails of boxes on my doorstep is not a convienent thing for me.

Here's the thing, I watched a Walmart by me in Indiana (West Side Indianapolis) stock a 2013W2 Beast Hunters case. That's what the cardboard box said on the side. That tells me, that we're still burning through excess eary stock, and not that I've missed a scalped wave. And its been really interesting, how I can be only 2-3 hours from Seibs and a seemingly abundant souce of B&M sightings in Chicago and yet the 15 stores I check in Indianapolis (about 8 fairly religiously) are all hung up on old stock. Even Terre Haute, which is an hour and change, is more up to date than the rest of the world when I make it out thatway to see friends in college. I could care less about DoubleDealer and Rhinox is not a must have for me, but we're still stocking Soundwave and SoundBlaster, and Springer.

Teh Skywarp/Centurion/Armada Scremer wave ust showed up around me. Came and went, I saw Scoop once. Screamer twice, the minicons 3 and I think Skywaro 3. Never had an urge to compleete the FoC Seekers, so I didn't keep track of him. Ony ocnce did I see them as a complete case, every other time was iterally one or two physical toys left on a cleaned out peg. That was a week ago.

Flashwave wrote:Because trails of boxes on my doorstep is not a convienent thing for me.

That is a fair statement. Packages arriving at someone's home isn't always a good thing. Some people live in apartments so it's quite a pain to get packages that way. Some people don't live in good or bad neighborhoods that have to worry about package theft. Some people might not want their significant others to know about all of the Transformers they're getting. There are lots of reasons why people collect the way they do.

For those of us who have switched to buying most of our figures online, it's become toy hunting in the 21st century in a world where gas runs $3 to $4 a gallon and where retailers seem to not understand how to properly stock toys in general (not just Transformers). The strong emergence of the toy collector in the past decade has probably changed a lot of the toy hunting phenomenon as well in a variety of ways. The incredible amount of new product we get every year has also changed the landscape. Retailers can't keep up. Fans that remember products being regularly available are probably remembering back to the early days of online toy hunting where we were only getting approximately 25 figures a year. Times have changed. My toy hunting ways have changed. If I find something in a store before I can get it online, more power to me. I don't care where I get the figure, I just want to get it from wherever I can get it first (and at a reasonable price).

Flashwave wrote:how I can be only 2-3 hours from Seibs and a seemingly abundant souce of B&M sightings in Chicago and yet the 15 stores I check in Indianapolis (about 8 fairly religiously) are all hung up on old stock.

I think this is a case of the grass is always greener on the other side. In the last two days, I stopped by my local Walmart, Target and Kmart. Nothing new at any of those stores. If you were to make the drive all the way up here, you'd think that we had the same problem.

And we do, just on a different scale. I have at least 8 Targets within a 7 mile radius of my house. 8 Walmarts within a 12 mile radius. 9 Toys R Us stores within a 15 miles radius. We have that many stores around here. It's crazy. I've lived here for 12 years and I still am in awe of the toy hunting abilities in an area like this.

But like in most cases, the grass isn't always greener. If you aren't on the ball and aren't following when new figures are coming out by watching what people are reporting online, you'll miss your chance and our stores end up just looking just like yours. With that many more stores come that many more collectors looking for the same exact products.

There's also something to be said for the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of catching your prey. For me, the challenge of finding the figures I want is part of the overall enjoyment of the hobby. I wouldn't enjoy collecting as much if I could walk into a single store and buy every figure.

Yes, the thrill of the hunt is half of the fun of our hobby! I used to love riding around with my dad searching for figures for my collection. Now, the hunting grounds are the virtual landscape of e-commerce. In many respects, the hunt goes on. It's just a very different beast now.