The Energon Pub

653569237600 call kohls with that number, the number they give you will be all the deluxes in stock. they cannot tell you how many of that one figure they have, for some reason all the upc numbers are linked to the same total.

if they tell u they have move than 50 in stock, ur chances of getting a 08, 74 or barricade are very very good.

every store i have been to has not had more than 4 figures on the floor, yet have 50+ in stock. the store i called sat had 151 in stock, yet not one on the shelf.

Hey, redsaleen, I know just the place where you shove all those BB's and Barricades. It's dark, it's behind you, and it needs at least a 100 good papercuts. Why? Because people like you disgust me.

thats nice, cry to someone else. ive told you how to locate them. use your time better than insutling someone who can give a rats ass what you think.

redsaleen wrote:thats nice, cry to someone else. ive told you how to locate them. use your time better than insutling someone who can give a rats ass what you think.

Oh, I ain't crying. I'm just giving you some advice on what you can do with your ****.

redsaleen wrote:thats nice, cry to someone else. ive told you how to locate them. use your time better than insutling someone who can give a rats ass what you think.

Oh so you give what you are?

Just out of curiousity, redsaleen, but what do you plan to do with all those TFs?

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:Just out of curiousity, redsaleen, but what do you plan to do with all those TFs?

I hope he takes my good advice. But I am guessing that we'll be seeing 30 more BB's up on ebay soon for the low-low starting bid of $19.99...

Sportimus Prime wrote:

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:Just out of curiousity, redsaleen, but what do you plan to do with all those TFs?

I hope he takes my good advice.

...I almost choked on my water. Thank you.

And yeah, hear hear!

In all seriousness though...I doubt we'll see a response to this one. Although, it will be nice to see what he comes up with.

If they were gifts for those around him, cool.
If they were meant for Toys For Tots, friggin' awesome.
If they were for resale (which I'm 99.99% sure of), disgusting and despicable. Evil.

Autobot032 wrote:

Sportimus Prime wrote:

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:Just out of curiousity, redsaleen, but what do you plan to do with all those TFs?

I hope he takes my good advice.

...I almost choked on my water. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And yeah, hear hear!

In all seriousness though...I doubt we'll see a response to this one. Although, it will be nice to see what he comes up with.

If they were gifts for those around him, cool.
If they were meant for Toys For Tots, friggin' awesome.
If they were for resale (which I'm 99.99% sure of), disgusting and despicable. Evil.

[/quote]

Agree completely.

I have my feelings about scalpers, but so as not to swell this thread with spite, I thought I’d add another slant here from what I’ve read:

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:
That's capitalism for you....pay to play, first come first serve, & all that jazz. If you want one bad enough, they're available. They may not be the cozy $10 you’d hope for, but at least you’d have one. If you don't want to pay to play, then, well....sugar-coat it any way you want but it pretty much means you really don't want it as much as you claim to.

I guess what you’re saying is that people want him badly… for USD$9.99. They don’t want him badly enough… for more than USD$9.99.

However…

I recall a while back I wrote along similar lines; basically, that I didn’t think that people really wanted BB per se so much as they want BB for RRP$9.99 and no more.

Let’s say 50% are those who can’t afford to pay more than $9.99, don’t know about scalping, don’t know about e-bay, and basically tramp around from store to store cluelessly.

That leaves 50%. If I remember right, I wrote that there were 3 ways one could get a BB if he truly wanted him badly enough. In order of desperation,

1. Make contacts who can buy BB and willing to help buy and then sell for RRP plus shipping.
2. Buy from an online store or e-bay for slightly more
3. Buy a wave assortment that included BB

Someone pointed out that he didn’t want to buy a wave assortment just to get a BB. Fair enough. But next level down, one could buy from online stores. Still few did because they didn’t want to pay “inflated prices”, even though they were less than scalper prices.

That leaves me with personal experience of number 1.

When I read that so many people wanted BB09, I wrote to quite a few people offering to get him. Now, this guy costs anywhere from USD$18 to 21 in Singapore. Not great, but certainly nowhere near the scalper’s prices that were going for about USD$25-40 during that period. Still, many complained about the price. This was even so when I could get about 30 BBs which would work out to a cost of only USD$15-16, and when I would accompany each order with a receipt proving the price at which I bought them.

Here’s the bonus: Those who got me to buy them all received the Takara version, a fact I deliberately didn’t mention when I made my offer.

Only a handful took me up.

So I’m forced to conclude that when lots of people say they want him, they really mean, they are desperate to get him for $9.99 and not a penny more. I certainly don’t agree that people who really want something should be made to pay scalper’s ridiculous prices of $25 to 40 n even more (see the “What’s the Most Ridiculous Price…?” thread for more hilarious examples.) However when they won’t even pay USD$5 to 10 more, then I would say that they don’t really want him.

Autobot032 wrote:
I do find it hilarious that the market will drop on these sooner or later and he'll be stuck with them. (The prices on eBay are already dropping.)

There are already clear signs of this happening. Like on e-bay as you say, and elsewhere too. Hasbrotoyshop.com has him as “Coming Soon”. Will scalpers buy them up? Probably they will buy a lot. But hopefully with Christmas coming soon after the release of the DVD, and Hasbro therefore deciding to overcorrect for their undersupply of months past, they are going to have to buy a sh!tload of BBs in order to reduce the supply significantly. And they won’t be able to make the same exorbitant profits as they did before. I think the ease with which one can get G1 repaint Jazz is a good sign of things to come.

Finally...

I believe that anyone who lists how many of BB or Barricade or whatever he has on this forum is inviting responses, whether deliberately or not. Some like it, others didn't expect it. But I take consolation that Redsaleen at least, isn’t like many scalpers we have here locally. He’s more civil and gives useful advice. None of the grandstanding and incessant gloating we have on some local forums here. Some of these b-----ds and what they do to rub it in you have to experience to believe.


As he writes, many of these stores are pretty slack with their stock, and can’t be bothered to help much unless you really go for it. Dishonest employees also play a part, hoping that they won’t be asked so they can do their dirty work with the figures. Do so politely but firmly, but when they’ve done their jobs and put it on the shelf, please, don’t buy them ALL!

Bonecrusher27 wrote:I guess what you’re saying is that people want him badly… for USD$9.99. They don’t want him badly enough… for more than USD$9.99.

However…

I recall a while back I wrote along similar lines; basically, that I didn’t think that people really wanted BB per se so much as they want BB for RRP$9.99 and no more.

Let’s say 50% are those who can’t afford to pay more than $9.99, don’t know about scalping, don’t know about e-bay, and basically tramp around from store to store cluelessly.

That leaves 50%. If I remember right, I wrote that there were 3 ways one could get a BB if he truly wanted him badly enough. In order of desperation,

1. Make contacts who can buy BB and willing to help buy and then sell for RRP plus shipping.
2. Buy from an online store or e-bay for slightly more
3. Buy a wave assortment that included BB

Someone pointed out that he didn’t want to buy a wave assortment just to get a BB. Fair enough. But next level down, one could buy from online stores. Still few did because they didn’t want to pay “inflated prices”, even though they were less than scalper prices.

That leaves me with personal experience of number 1.

When I read that so many people wanted BB09, I wrote to quite a few people offering to get him. Now, this guy costs anywhere from USD$18 to 21 in Singapore. Not great, but certainly nowhere near the scalper’s prices that were going for about USD$25-40 during that period. Still, many complained about the price. This was even so when I could get about 30 BBs which would work out to a cost of only USD$15-16, and when I would accompany each order with a receipt proving the price at which I bought them.

Here’s the bonus: Those who got me to buy them all received the Takara version, a fact I deliberately didn’t mention when I made my offer.

Only a handful took me up.

So I’m forced to conclude that when lots of people say they want him, they really mean, they are desperate to get him for $9.99 and not a penny more. I certainly don’t agree that people who really want something should be made to pay scalper’s ridiculous prices of $25 to 40 n even more (see the “What’s the Most Ridiculous Price…?” thread for more hilarious examples.) However when they won’t even pay USD$5 to 10 more, then I would say that they don’t really want him.

Autobot032 wrote:
I do find it hilarious that the market will drop on these sooner or later and he'll be stuck with them. (The prices on eBay are already dropping.)

There are already clear signs of this happening. Like on e-bay as you say, and elsewhere too. Hasbrotoyshop.com has him as “Coming Soon”. Will scalpers buy them up? Probably they will buy a lot. But hopefully with Christmas coming soon after the release of the DVD, and Hasbro therefore deciding to overcorrect for their undersupply of months past, they are going to have to buy a sh!tload of BBs in order to reduce the supply significantly. And they won’t be able to make the same exorbitant profits as they did before. I think the ease with which one can get G1 repaint Jazz is a good sign of things to come.

Finally...

I believe that anyone who lists how many of BB or Barricade or whatever he has on this forum is inviting responses, whether deliberately or not. Some like it, others didn't expect it. But I take consolation that Redsaleen at least, isn’t like many scalpers we have here locally. He’s more civil and gives useful advice. None of the grandstanding and incessant gloating we have on some local forums here. Some of these b-----ds and what they do to rub it in you have to experience to believe.


As he writes, many of these stores are pretty slack with their stock, and can’t be bothered to help much unless you really go for it. Dishonest employees also play a part, hoping that they won’t be asked so they can do their dirty work with the figures. Do so politely but firmly, but when they’ve done their jobs and put it on the shelf, please, don’t buy them ALL!

I agree 100%

Something else I might add, too.....while a lot of us collectors have been running around p*ssing & moaning about how we can't find this figure or that figure, redsaleen has gone around from store to store working the system to his advantage & has managed to snag several of those same figures we as collectors have been complaining about. But here's the thing: anybody, not just a scalper(if he is indeed one, which even if he is....if he can find the figures more power to him) could have done the same thing & snagged the figure. So if you can't find one, it's really because you don't want them bad enough.

Me? I've gone from store to store on a regular basis....any store that sold TFs in my local area....for the past 2 months....hell, I even got in a wreck that totaled my car going to K-mart to see if they had any '09 BBs....& yet I still kept looking....& eventually I found one.

Speaking of which....small piece of advice: try stores that are out in the middle of nowhere to look for these figures. More often than not these stores don't have the rabid fan base the bigger ones do in the bigger cities, & so kids wanting them are more subject to parents that have no intrest in anything unless it has to do with hunting, & scalpers are nowhere to be seen, so despite their smaller stock, for lack of a better way of saying it....the customers are ignorant of the demand of the more sought-out figures.

I saw him at the supermarket, the 79 version, I should see if its still there to buy....of course though, canadian retail prices are more so...he can be found, if you know where to look.

yup, just got off the phone with our local kohls and did exactly what redsaleen said. I gave an employee the item or sku # and she said that that were completely sold out of the large shipment they got in and weren't expecting to get any more. Oh well...

wait it out.

if they told you there was zero in stock, than they have zero deluxe class figures, which i find hard to believe.

they also might have not known what they were doing and used the wrong computer. to check the upc numbers they have to use a seperate comp, which i had to tell several employees. you would think they teach them how to look up a upc number.

Redsaleen, I can't help but to repeat the question that's been asked. What do you intend to do with all of those figures? If you're not intending to sell them on Ebay then saying that would definitely help dissuade the scalper impression that alot of us are under.

But this is a capitalist economy and you have every right to buy up alot of figures and sell them on the secondary market. Alot of collectors are now waiting it our for the 08' BB to be in stores so I don't know how easily you'll be able to off load those figures. And you're admitting to your purchase in a collector's forum. I hope you aren't too suprised or insulted at the responses you're getting.

Ultra Prime wrote:But this is a capitalist economy and you have every right to buy up alot of figures and sell them on the secondary market. Alot of collectors are now waiting it our for the 08' BB to be in stores so I don't know how easily you'll be able to off load those figures.

Yeah. Its a right to do so, but its still a douchey thing to do.

redsaleen wrote:if they told you there was zero in stock, than they have zero deluxe class figures, which i find hard to believe.

they also might have not known what they were doing and used the wrong computer. to check the upc numbers they have to use a seperate comp, which i had to tell several employees. you would think they teach them how to look up a upc number.

I've done the same at the two Kohl's locally. It seems that certain stores got more stock than others. One store got at least two cases of the latest wave, and several wave one cases. I had them check the back for any others and was told that they did not have any more except what was on the floor.

The other store has never had any on the floor, nor did they have any when I called with the SKU.

In my experience, Kohl's has some of the more competant retail workers out there. Target is a close second.

Has anyone else's targets put up signs by the TFs saying that they will not check the stockroom for figures anymore? I'll have to snap a pic next time I'm there. Funny and sad at the same time....

this is why u have to go in person and really do it. cause when the guy on ther floor tells u there are no more in back, and the customer service says they have 50 in stock, than they are just to lazy to check.


one place told me what was out on the floor was all they had, yet thee comp said they had 65. so after doing the math, 65- ( 5 on the floor) that left 60 missing figures.


so one person finally went and looked and found 3 sealed cases. the number in the computer dont lie, i was also told that number can satnd for the amount onder order also, but than found out from a manager that , that was not true.


so if they say they have a certain amount in the comp, there in the store somewhere, just have to find a willing person to actually look.

Tisk, Tisk redsaleen. You're still not answering the question. What are going to do with that many Bumblebees and Barricades?

Ultra Prime wrote:Tisk, Tisk redsaleen. You're still not answering the question. What are going to do with that many Bumblebees and Barricades?

As I stated before. He won't respond to that question. For sure.

Autobot032 wrote:

Ultra Prime wrote:Tisk, Tisk redsaleen. You're still not answering the question. What are going to do with that many Bumblebees and Barricades?

As I stated before. He won't respond to that question. For sure.

Of course not. You'll surely see them on ebay though. There, I answered it for him. I mean, with redsaleen's busy schedule making his rounds to every store in sight, buying up all the figures he can shove in a shopping cart or two. He's doing us all a great service, providing us with the opportunity to have the privilage of buying from him at 2 or 3 times the retail price and all...plus shipping.

Sportimus Prime wrote:

Autobot032 wrote:

Ultra Prime wrote:Tisk, Tisk redsaleen. You're still not answering the question. What are going to do with that many Bumblebees and Barricades?

As I stated before. He won't respond to that question. For sure.

Of course not. You'll surely see them on ebay though. There, I answered it for him. I mean, with redsaleen's busy schedule making his rounds to every store in sight, buying up all the figures he can shove in a shopping cart or two. He's doing us all a great service, providing us with the opportunity to have the privilage of buying from him at 2 or 3 times the retail price and all...plus shipping.

Would you rather those figures that you want so desprately for retail price of $10 & not a penny more continue to sit in the back of stores collecting dust untill the stores finally send them back to Hasbro so they can send them to the nearest landfill??

Nemesis Cyberplex wrote:Would you rather those figures that you want so desprately for retail price of $10 & not a penny more continue to sit in the back of stores collecting dust untill the stores finally send them back to Hasbro so they can send them to the nearest landfill??

Actually I'd rather someone with Redsaleen's smarts and experience do what he did, but then maybe leave some of it on the shelf after he's bought a quarter of the figures. Consider it a public service if you're positive, or if negative, an affront to the mechanism of natural selection

redsaleen wrote:this is why u have to go in person and really do it. cause when the guy on ther floor tells u there are no more in back, and the customer service says they have 50 in stock, than they are just to lazy to check.

Two points in response to the above:

1. In the first case, I did go in person - twice. The first time I went, they pulled an 09 BB, Arcee, and Dreadwing for me. Keep in mind, I only asked for one.

The second time I went back it was to see if they had Longarm. That's when Customer Service checked (both by CPU and physically, as best I could tell) and came back with nada.

2. Why do you assume that the floor reps are lazy? Maybe they are more concerned with doing their job, which is more involved than many of us realize.

They have to monitor for shoplifting, monitor for customers in need of assistance, ensure that the store is orderly and that the stuff we decide we don't want but are too lazy to take back to the correct spot gets back to where it is supposed to go.

Generally, the floor reps aren't supposed to go into the back to check for stuff. Check out the attached pic that I took at my local Target. I mentioned this in a previous post, but thought I should offer proof.