The Energon Pub

News Credits: 56 · Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:47 am

Absolutely. You actually have Kingdom Toys at a U.S. Walmart. A Rarety as of late.

News Credits: 56 · Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:23 am

Wow...so Black Friday must have been a total bust (*at least as far as Transformers go) at my local Target. The Walmarts have been decently stocked, and I have to admit I haven't been out as much because I've been super busy with other things. However...

At my closest Target about a week ago, they had no Actual Hasbro TF product. Just some Super 7 Primes, and those $50 statues. I went in there Yesterday (a full 48 hours after Black Friday), and the shelves looked EXACTLY the same. The only difference being that they must have received two cases of T-Wrecks, because they had 4 of them, but that was it.

News Credits: 4877 · Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:01 am

Hasbro really made it their mission to minimize empty shelves this holiday season. They kept talking ad nauseum about doing whatever they could as countermeasures to whatever supply chain issue may arise. Retailers did the same on their end, and it seems it has worked out for Target in the end. At the start of the holiday shopping season, fans posted images of Target end caps filled to the brim. And they include Slag and Galvatron, toys most fans want to add to their collection and great gifts for any Transformers fan.
These photos come from our own Nemesis Primal and TFfankev77. How are your local shelves? Are you seeing lots of stock too? If so, share a pic!

News Credits: 56 · Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:06 am

william-james88 wrote:How are your local shelves? Are you seeing lots of stock too? If so, share a pic!

My local Targets look nothing like this. Must be nice.

Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:56 am

Haven’t checked out Target yet, but I will say my Walmart has better TF stock than I’ve seen all year. So everyone can keep their eyes out for that too.

News Credits: 388 · Wed Dec 08, 2021 5:09 am

My Target is full to the brim with everything EXCEPT Studio Series Voyagers. They've had Origin Bee in stock for at least a month, and have even restocked the Worlds Collide set multiple times. The last one (at the moment) sold just a few days ago.

News Credits: 42 · Wed Dec 08, 2021 7:39 am

Bounti76 wrote:My Target is full to the brim with everything EXCEPT Studio Series Voyagers. They've had Origin Bee in stock for at least a month, and have even restocked the Worlds Collide set multiple times. The last one (at the moment) sold just a few days ago.

Same, except one of the Targets near me got stocked in the summer with at least 15 Thrusts all at once. There are still 7-8 left.

News Credits: 30 · Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:13 pm

Not sure about Target, but the Walmart near my realm is packed with Kingdom Beast Megatron figures. There's lots of figures on the shelf that I don't want, and very few that I do

.

Seeing all those leader Slag figures is a welcome sight, to be sure. Just a couple months ago, you couldn't find any.

News Credits: 4877 · Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:27 am

o.supreme wrote:
william-james88 wrote:How are your local shelves? Are you seeing lots of stock too? If so, share a pic!

My local Targets look nothing like this. Must be nice.

Some are complaining that this stock is "old" even though it's respectively the latest waves of leaders. Pretty nuts to complain about that when I know that people like you, and others, are not seeing the same thing. I would much rather there be lots of stock then there be no stock at all.

News Credits: 42 · Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:23 am

o.supreme wrote:
william-james88 wrote:How are your local shelves? Are you seeing lots of stock too? If so, share a pic!

My local Targets look nothing like this. Must be nice.

Not sure if it helps, but seek out a Super Target (full grocery store and typically longer hours) if there is one around you. I have 3 Targets close to me house and another 3 close to my work. Of the 6, only 1 is a Super Target and that is the one that had the endcap and that level of stock.

News Credits: 56 · Thu Dec 09, 2021 11:48 am

I'm not sure if such a thing exists near me. There are certainly stores that are Larger than others, but none of them are advertised as "Super", (A few were Target Supercenter, but that was 15+ years ago, they have long since dropped that branding). All the 20 or so stores in my area have a full grocery section. Oddly though, I've noticed that several are remodeling, and they are changing their logo from Red font capital "Target", to white font lower case "target". Again, this is happening with larger stores, and smaller ones, so I am not sure what the reasoning is.

Still, despite all of this, I may get your meaning. There are a couple of really large outlying stores, I may check them out this weekend.

News Credits: 42 · Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:52 pm

o.supreme wrote:I'm not sure if such a thing exists near me. There are certainly stores that are Larger than others, but none of them are advertised as "Super", (A few were Target Supercenter, but that was 15+ years ago, they have long since dropped that branding). All the 20 or so stores in my area have a full grocery section. Oddly though, I've noticed that several are remodeling, and they are changing their logo from Red font capital "Target", to white font lower case "target". Again, this is happening with larger stores, and smaller ones, so I am not sure what the reasoning is.

Still, despite all of this, I may get your meaning. There are a couple of really large outlying stores, I may check them out this weekend.

I should also add that by full grocery store, I mean real, full produce, bakery and deli sections, not just a small selection of baked goods and produce crammed in by the dairy cases (all 5 other Targets near me are like this). I think the Super Target near me is a relic of times past. I think they used to be called Target Greatland ages ago, then Super Target. I don't think any new stores built within the past 5 years have used the "Super" part of the past really big Targets, but yeah, those are the ones you will most likely find an endcap.

News Credits: 4877 · Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:04 pm

I think shelves have been empty for so long that fans don't remember what it looks like to have a fully stocked Transformers section. Never has it ever meant that it's only the product that just came out. Never. You get some boxes of new product, it gets snatched up right away, you get more and more as the months go to eventually end up with a diversified shelf of the left overs for whoever wants a Transformer toy at the moment (for a birthday or whatever). With online, people can guarantee getting the toy when it comes out, even if they aren't the first to get it. So I really don't get why someone would complain about going to their Walmart and seeing a shelf that looks like this (which is what people are complaining about right now on TFW).

In many cases above, what we are seeing are the latest wave of figures (Kingdom and SS plus exclusives) that were expected to be found in Q4. I think it looks great and I figured this is what people have been asking to see this whole year when posting their empty shelves.

News Credits: 4877 · Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:06 am

I went to 2 TRUs in Ontario in a recent trip to Toronto. These were stops along the way as the Tesla charged. In Belleville and in Brampton. Brampton had a really cool display of random figures fighting eachother. Belleville had a middle aisle display filled with TFs.

MyFigureCollection.net collection · Tue Dec 14, 2021 7:40 pm

Keep forgetting to post this. From my local Augusta, Maine Walmart on 12/9.

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No Leaders, but four full pegs of Studio Series Deluxe (more on the top shelf, FIVE pegs of Kingdom Deluxe, it's hard to tell but there's actually 4 SS Sweeps between two shelves for whatever reason. Three Rhinoxes so they probably had a bunch of Tigatrons as well. So packed full of Beast Wars reissues they're filling the top shelf. They've got so many of those big Cyberverse Bees that they had to put more of them off in the aisle where they keep the bigger ticket toys for Christmas. Don't tell me Cyberverse doesn't sell well!

Haven't been back since, I hope it's been decimated, I want these to sell well and I'm not hunting for anything at the moment.

Emerje

News Credits: 4877 · Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:50 am

Emerje wrote:They've got so many of those big Cyberverse Bees that they had to put more of them off in the aisle where they keep the bigger ticket toys for Christmas. Don't tell me Cyberverse doesn't sell well!

Haven't been back since, I hope it's been decimated, I want these to sell well and I'm not hunting for anything at the moment.

Emerje

Cyberverse sells very well, it's just that it adheres to the business model of old where the bulk of sales will be for birthdays and christmas rather than also have collectors hunting down the latest release. We know more of that line is produced and there is more product available and yet every year all the Optimus Primes from that line vanish by Christmas.

News Credits: 56 · Wed Dec 15, 2021 11:26 am

I went to a couple of the larger Targets in outlying areas this weekend. None of them had those larger endcap displays with all the Leaders, but curiously, one Target looks like they got a single case of deluxe wave 3 in...which is a bit odd, but its my first time seeing it at retail, so a small victory I guess, considering Wave 4 has pretty much saturated all the Walmarts and Targets in my area.

I'd love to see wave 5 in a store near me before the end of the year, but somehow I doubt that will happen. I got my Slammer on pre-order with Amazon, and whatever happens; happens.

MyFigureCollection.net collection · Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:39 am

Sure didn't expect this at Walmart today.

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That entire section to the left is supposed to be Jurassic Park stuff, but they must have decided they wouldn't get enough new stuff in and didn't want people walking into an empty toy aisle so they filled the shelfs with all the Transformers they had, completely wiped out the overhead shelf to do so. I've never seen this much Transformers allotted space at Walmart outside of a movie launch. They didn't simply move the Transformers to the JP area as overflow, they changed all of the shelf tags as well. Aside from the empty peg space (that's still JP) and a couple Ghostbusters items, everything in this shot is currently the Transformers section, all the way up to the Core figures on the far right.

Emerje

News Credits: 4877 · Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:49 am

Emerje wrote:Sure didn't expect this at Walmart today.

20211219_190734.jpg

That entire section to the left is supposed to be Jurassic Park stuff, but they must have decided they wouldn't get enough new stuff in and didn't want people walking into an empty toy aisle so they filled the shelfs with all the Transformers they had, completely wiped out the overhead shelf to do so. I've never seen this much Transformers allotted space at Walmart outside of a movie launch. They didn't simply move the Transformers to the JP area as overflow, they changed all of the shelf tags as well. Aside from the empty peg space (that's still JP) and a couple Ghostbusters items, everything in this shot is currently the Transformers section, all the way up to the Core figures on the far right.

Emerje

This seems to go against what our friend was saying about Walmart always sticking to their planograms

News Credits: 4877 · Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:50 am

o.supreme wrote:I went to a couple of the larger Targets in outlying areas this weekend. None of them had those larger endcap displays with all the Leaders, but curiously, one Target looks like they got a single case of deluxe wave 3 in...which is a bit odd, but its my first time seeing it at retail, so a small victory I guess, considering Wave 4 has pretty much saturated all the Walmarts and Targets in my area.

I'd love to see wave 5 in a store near me before the end of the year, but somehow I doubt that will happen. I got my Slammer on pre-order with Amazon, and whatever happens; happens.

I am not expecting to see wave 5 at my local stores until 2022

MyFigureCollection.net collection · Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:20 am

william-james88 wrote:This seems to go against what our friend was saying about Walmart always sticking to their planograms

Don't think that thought didn't cross my mind when I saw the aisle like that, especially when it was said after I posted that picture of my other local Walmart where they just threw whatever figure they could on any peg that happened to say "Transformers" on it regardless of line or price point. Neither case was customers putting stuff back in the wrong place, that's for sure!

Emerje

News Credits: 4877 · Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:22 pm

Just to follow up on Toysrus opening their 1 store in the US (again), any collector hoping to get TFs would have been dissapointed. They mostly had stuff aimed just for kids. The only thing that collectors may have wanted (years ago) are some Siege Micromasters

MyFigureCollection.net collection · Sun Jan 02, 2022 4:14 am

Man, I seem to have juuuust missed Slammer and Pipes after a post-Christmas restock.

December 9

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December 26

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January 1

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For those that don't know Wave 5 is 2 each of Slammer, Pipes, Airrazor and Blackarachnia, the later two being all that's left of what seems to be 3 cases.

The hunt continues.

Emerje

News Credits: 56 · Sun Jan 02, 2022 7:26 am

Probably scalpers unfortunately. I went to 2 of the larger Targets in my area yesterday. They had no Kingdom product, just tons of Cyberverse and Buzzworthy. Walmarts continue to have tons of classic BW. They are going to have to make the in store prices match the online ones ( being 50 % off or more) to get all that to move.

SS BB Soundwave is the only New thing I saw Friday morning, and was just 2 of them at one location. But now that I know Kingdom wave 5 seems to be at Walmart rather than Target, that is where I'll focus my search.

My Amazon order got delayed yet again to January 15, I just want Slammer so I can be done with the line.

News Credits: 1646 · Sun Jan 02, 2022 6:39 pm

My sections, despite the holidays, are still clogged with Kups, Blurrs, and now Sweeps and Wreck Gars. No sign of BB Soundwave here, nor signs of new Kingdom deluxes. I did secure amazon preorders for them though, so I am secure there