Mr.Bond007 wrote:Seibertron wrote:Patience is definitely something a lot of people in this thread need a great deal of. Especially those of you who are bad mouthing Hasbro (who does more for us than you'll ever know) and the consiracy theorists folks. It's the same thing every time that figures are short on the shelves. The toys stores and manufacturers are preparing for the Christmas season. Happens every. single. year. 85% of the Transformer toys generally go to little Jimmy thanks to Mommy and Daddy. Has nothing to do with scalpers or ebayers or anything. Supply and demand. There just happens to be a ton more demand than there is supply at this time. It's simple business. I assure you, if Hasbro could flood the shelves with these things, they would. They don't make money on scalpers or whoever selling stuff in the aftermarket. Hasbro wants these figures on the shelf just as much as you do. In fact, I'm sure they want the figures on the shelves more than any of us combined. That's how they make money and stay in business.
That may be but yet if hasbro cared as much as u said they would have steped up production on july 3rd. If u look at this forum nobody has found any new deluxes that to me spells hasbro dropped the ball. And if u say scalpers aren't to blaim than why is it i see a youtube with a guy wit 7 bumblebees and ebay auctions with 5 in one auction and selleres with like 10 for sale sorry to sound rude but im fed up lookin for 08 bumble and not finding jack
Ok, quick lesson in how this all works. Hasbro has a sales staff that contacts major retailers. The retailer says "sure, we'd like to purchase X number of cases of varying assortments of your Transformers line." The retailer probably continues to say something like "have these figures available for us to ship to our stores by X date." Toys aren't like groceries. You can't go to a store and buy a figure such as the Concept Camaro Bumblebee like you can a bottle of Heinz ketchup. The retailers only want to buy products when they traditionally feel the figures will sell off store shelves. This is generally around Christmas time which I believe is around 75% (Can't find that article right now to back that up ... someone help me here!) of a toy manufacturer's sales for the year. The summer months, when kids are outside playing, are not the big months for toy sales. I'd be willing to bet that the spring is even better.
I'm sure it wasn't a coinidence that the Transformers movie was originally scheduled for November 2006 ... that would be the toy line's biggest time of the year on retail shelves. It probably would've been better for Hasbro toy wise to have the movie come out around then. Of course, they'll get to profit off this year's Christmas rush when the DVD comes out.
Again, if you think this is scalper's doing this, you've fooled yourself. Scalpers scouring toy stores can't really make a living doing that. The scalper bit is just a myth in my opinion. I'm sure someone around the stores that I visit thinks there's scalpers here yet I'm somehow always able to usually find the figures because I pay attention to when figures are suppose to hit the shelves and I watch the toy sightings that are reported on Seibertron, Unicron.com and sometimes on TFW.
It's not rocket science. I'll even give a few of you some tips from someone that's been hunting for toys for the past 13 years. Walmart and Target are generally the VERY first stores to get new figures. And yes, even in YOUR area. I wouldn't even bother looking at a Kmart or KB initially. Just drive by. Resist the urge. You are wasting your time. When you see a toy sighting for a Kmart show up in the toy sightings section, then by all means, start looking. But the odds of you being the first person to report finding a figure at a KB, Kmart or Meijer is slim to none. Start with the bigger stores first ... that will help with some of the frustration that you guys are having. Heck, if all of the toy sightings initially are for Walmart, why even bother stopping at Target or TRU until someone else reports finding them there? Let other people do the work for you ... use the toy sightings section.
If you don't see them for months at a time, I'd be willing to bet my Fort Max that you simply missed the first case or two that your store got in and then you never saw them in stock until a month or three down the road when the store got their refresh case in. All you have to do is watch the store patterns in the toy sightings section to figure out when and where figures will arrive in your area.
One more thing for the guys who think we need a toy sightings forum (which we really don't need), all you have to do is watch the sightings come into the toy sightings section. It doesn't matter if a figure has been sighted in Chicago or Illinois. I live 40 minutes from Indiana ... if a figure shows up there or in Wisconsin, I better get off my ass and start looking for the figure. I built the toy sightings section on this site so that I could prove my theory about distribution patterns. Watch the toy sightings for a while ... I assure you that you will eventually see the pattern. If you don't see it, let me know and I'll help you figure it out. I've helped a few other people out by showing them the patterns for their area in the past.
I get figures usually within a week or three of when a figure first shows up. I buy a lot of figures online. But I also know how to go find the new figures also. My buddy Paul got his hands on FAB Barricade two and a half weeks ago. We went toy shopping at Targets because I knew that's where those figures were being spotted first. Unfortunately, they only had 1 Barricade. Barricade is released with Bumblebee which means someone was there before us and snagged the Bumblebee or Bumblebees. But he was there. It's not Hasbro's fault that I missed the figure. On the flip side, had that Barricade still not been there, I would never have known that wave was there, not to mention that Bumblebee was there at one point.
Transformers is HUGE guys. There's about 40,000 people a day who visit this site. Think about all of the other TF sites combined. Sure the big sites share people. I visit TFW and tformers.com every day. There's nothing wrong with visiting the competition (gotta see what they're doing so that we can keep up or stay ahead). My point is this: if you think you're the only guy in your area looking for Transformers toys, you are sorely mistaken. There are probably far more people who are Transformers fans that DON'T visit the online fan sites than there are who DO visit the online sites.
He's mad cause his toy's not sellin 
+-+2008_thumb%5B1%5D)
.
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
