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According to Bleeding Cool News, Hasbro is planning on allowing Diamond and the direct market to order the specific figures they want, instead of an assorted case! Perhaps now, gone will be the days of shelf/peg warmers and hard to move stock being priced to the point the sellers lost all of their initial investment to begin with.

You can read the full article at this link: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/19/ ... re-orders/

We've quoted some of the most relevant snippets below:

This week, Hasbro, for the first time, has decided to make individual figures available to the direct market and Diamond. This is a pretty big deal. For those who do not know, usually figures like these can only be ordered by the case, which Hasbro controls the packouts to. So instead of buying a case and getting only one of the most desired figure, now your local comic shop for example can order as many as they want of the “short packed” character.

To say their (Hasbro) distribution is “spotty” is an understatement. Pegs sit empty for months, stores get 1 or 2 cases and are not restocked for months on end. Filling the lines and cases with unwanted characters or making the case packouts skew towards reissues of the same characters that are still sitting unsold on the pegs.

It should be noted that big box retailers such as Wal*Mart are somewhat to blame for this, rather than just Hasbro alone. By dictating which Transformers toy lines they'll sell at a given time, for example, movie toys over the Animated line, retailers can have too much power some of the time. Cutting Animated out of sales space was one of the factors that helped lead to the cancellation of the final waves.

Some good examples of how assorted cases instead of direct figure ordering can affect the line can be seen below:

Skrapnel and Tailgate


And Cosmos and Swerve, along with the previously overstocked figures that helped delay their release


Hopefully, this new ordering system will help all of us obtain the figures we desire at an easier rate and for less than we'd normally spend in our sometimes fruitless searches.

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Through Diamond? They'll jack the prices up no doubt. Talk about Wal-Mart and other retailers having too much power, so does Diamond.

Whaaa? Someone at corporate is actually at least talking about doing something about this ongoing problem? I am amazed.

I guess I now know why I've not seen Legends Swerve and Cosmos yet, but the pegs are newly full of Legends Starscream, Megatron, Optimus, and Bumblebee. Even http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com never had a listing for Legends Swerve and Cosmos, but they've got a listing now for Tailgate and Skrapnel.

BTW, the wave of Deluxe figures containing Waspinator, Dreadwing, Goldfire (Goldbug), and Skids... was that a limited release? I got three of the four from http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com (not surprisingly their IT department forgot to add Skids to the listing at the same time as the other three) a while back and missed out on Skids when he was finally listed. Now none of the four are listed at all. So, limited release?

In the case of that particular wave, since they are working of the Individual Figure Ordering System, they need to fix it where certain waves could be ordered as well. Of course, just ordering an assortment of individual Skids and perhaps a few Waspinators (he'd make a great Deluxe Insecticon Venom repaint) would be great too.

i dont think this is going to help, most people have to shop mass retail for tansformers and they dont know a damn thing about their individual departments these days. The person in charge of the boys section isnt going to have a clue which figure is more wanted or popular and the store is just going to order a default case like normal or order one or two of each. Only way this will work is if you can go into a store & have them order the figures that you want if they dont have them in stock. Nice to see them addressing the issue but in typical hasbro style they're far from fixing it.

well since walmart only seems to carry the big hunks of plastic with paint on them and the dino rider sparklers, I guess they wont care.

Seriously, this is only good news. I don't buy Transformers from walmart. I can't because they don't HAVE ANY.

Megatron Wolf wrote:i dont think this is going to help, most people have to shop mass retail for tansformers and they dont know a damn thing about their individual departments these days. The person in charge of the boys section isnt going to have a clue which figure is more wanted or popular and the store is just going to order a default case like normal or order one or two of each. Only way this will work is if you can go into a store & have them order the figures that you want if they dont have them in stock. Nice to see them addressing the issue but in typical hasbro style they're far from fixing it.

well...I see your point but...an improvement is still an improvement. If Target, ToysRus and kmart can get a better selection that only helps them. Walmart simply does not care.

But that's fine. Kids who want Transformers will get them from stores that carry them. Some people will not know that's true. But most kids do. My boys don't like non-transformable transformers. So I think there is hope. And this helps.

Well this is a hypothetical double edged sword. On the positive, this could mean a somewhat more direct way to find shortpacked figures, or ones that the mass retailers forgo. For example the figures always lost between the transition of a previous line and the upcoming movie's, like Cosmos for example. On the flip side, in the not to distant future, if mass retailers were allowed to order individual figures as well, this could lead to another glut of figures retailers think well sell, and will only shelf warm, because they're nothing but primes and bumblebees. Cynical thought I know, but it's a possibility.

It should be noted this is NOT affecting Transformers or regular retail.

And I'm guessing, since it takes months to manufacture/ship out the actual toys, this might mean pre-ordering.

Still, should be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't at all expect this to be completely revolutionary, wiping out scalpers or all distribution woes or anything, but any little help is a good thing.
And I really doubt regular retail will ever pick this up, otherwise they may just go with BB and Optimus...

Okay I have lurked for years here but actually made an account to comment on this. I am so glad to see this happening. It's discouraging when my son and I go from store to store and see the same shelf warmers. He is 8 and doesn't even really want to go on our Saturday hunts anymore. He always says "dad, they aren't going to have anything new" I think Masterpiece Grimlock may have been the final straw for him.

It would have been great had Mattel done this back during the 2002 Masters of the Universe run. That line was a nightmare to collect.

Okay, nevermind. Reading some of the comments that came after I started writing my post it would seem this isn't going to help in retail. Well, there goes that I guess. Part of the fun is finding them on the shelves not ordering online. But that's just me. At least someone is trying to resolve the issues and that's a good thing.

Noideaforaname wrote:It should be noted this is NOT affecting Transformers or regular retail.

And I'm guessing, since it takes months to manufacture/ship out the actual toys, this might mean pre-ordering.

Still, should be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't at all expect this to be completely revolutionary, wiping out scalpers or all distribution woes or anything, but any little help is a good thing.
And I really doubt regular retail will ever pick this up, otherwise they may just go with BB and Optimus...

Precisely - big box retailers won't see a change. They still need to order case assortments (I doubt they would want to change that actually; the buyers don't have enough specific knowledge to want to parse individual characters).

This is more targeted to Diamond & BBTS to help smooth out volatility in the collector market. It won't completely alleviate the pain, but certainly, if the plan becomes a reality, it will lessen it.

Autobot032 wrote: for example, movie toys over the Animated line...

or Animated line over Movie toys, for example

BERSEKAEL wrote:

Autobot032 wrote: for example, movie toys over the Animated line...

or Animated line over Movie toys, for example

Huh?

I think he's suggesting that the Animated line was the reason for the cancelation of that 2010 Target Exclusive box set that never saw the light of day. I have no idea if that's true or not. However, it is a shame that 3-pack of legends class Arcee sisters and correct colors Sideways never got released. I'm making due with the HA versions of the bikes for my "as in scale as possible" Movie figures display, but the smaller legends sizes would work all the better.

Well, this is definitely a step in A right direction, if maybe not THE right direction. Even if this fails, at least it means they're thinking of new ways to combat shelf-warming and understocking.

hopefully i wont see anymore skipped over waves like fredmeyers does all the time