o.supreme wrote:TF-fan kev777 wrote:I think you might be overlooking the possibility of just bad luck in your particular area. Both Target and Walmart have a number for regional distribution warehouses. I have no idea how many they have or how large of an area they each might cover, but I'd say that any stores within an hour drive of you are likely all served by the same distribution warehouse. If the warehouse for your area experiences lower overall sales for each of the different cases of TF's as compared to other warehouses around the US, then your stores will be slower to get the newer waves in stock. If you have a perfect storm type of timing, say like having the newest wave hitting right before Christmas, and your area warehouse still had enough of the previous waves backed up, then your area may in fact not see a certain wave at the tail end if other area warehouses sell through the stock while yours was backed up.
The biggest question I would love for Hasbro to answer would be whether they make the same number of cases for each wave, or if a tail end wave has fewer made in the first place than the earlier waves. That might answer a lot of questions for collectors on tail end waves and how to plan out whether to pre-order or chance finding them in stores.
Or just make
everything available on HasbroPulse. HTS we understand was more of an *outlet* for overstock items, but Pulse is being branded as a premium online shopping site, pretty much every other Siege offering has been made available, (even latecomers such as Crosshairs, Spinister and Astrotrain). Why the last Micromasters and Battlemasters are not there is puzzling. I notice there are no BM's on HP currently, but they had previously been there.
While Hasbro Pulse is being billed as a full fledged online site, keep in mind that are also technically competitors of their regular retail partners and have to walk a fine line.
I also think their share of sales is pretty small compared to the big online and brick and mortar retailers. So if one of their retail partners experience larger sales than anticipated (and I do think that happened with Siege) and need additional product, they are probably going to pull that from stock that was intended for Hasbro Pulse. The only other option is to tell their retail partners, sorry, we're all out and keep them for Hasbro Pulse. If their share of sales from Hasbro Pulse is as small as I suspect, it would not make sense to tell a partner that sells 10/20/30 times as much of Hasbro's product than Pulse they are out while they are trying to sell them directly from their site.
I don't envy them. Pretty much no matter what they try, someone will be disappointed. Overproduce and it cuts into the profits and clogs up the shelves with toys that aren't moving. Underproduce and someone will miss out and be disappointed. If they be upfront about how many they produced to warn fans which ones might be scarce, then the scalpers would jump on that information and the lesser run figures could be even harder to find.