Bounti76 wrote:Tell me, am I the only one who has noticed fairly spotty distribution, bordering on awful, since about the middle of Combiner Wars? Nothing from ANY wave of either line has been on the shelf at the same time, and sometimes, only shows up once and is gone. Take for instance, the Protectobot wave. Never saw Hot Spot or the Deluxes on the shelf at the same time, and only saw the Deluxes once. In TR, from the start, none of any wave has really shown up together.
My big question is this: Why is distribution so crap in the last year or two? Is it Hasbro not distributing the figures in a unified manner, or retailers not ordering all of one assortment at the same time, or what? I enjoy TF hunting as much as anyone, but it's gotten to the point where ordering them online, though a bit more expensive, is the easier way to get which figures I want.
Retailers order per product code and each class has its own. For instance here are TRU's MFR# for the different classes:
C0882 Tiny Turbo Changers
C0889 Legions
C0887 Deluxe
C0891 Voyager
They order each individually and Hasbro fulfills the order when they can. When a new line begins, Hasbro has them all ready to give to stores at once and stores want the new product on the shelf so you usually get the first wave or 2 synched up. But as the line goes on, a store will only order and stock what they need. They dont know whats new, its all C0891 to them and not TLK Wave 1 Prime and TLK Wave 2 Hound. A new voyager in Titans Return Wave 6 will look like an old toy to them because its the same class code. The look into their computer, see that they have a bunch of that class code and can thus choose not to order since you have a new voyager class code assiciated to wave 1 of the next line. So technically, the waves mean nothing to retailers, nothing. Orders are made by the corporation to Hasbro when they think they need more, orders are fulfilled by hasbro when hasbro can do it, and then toys are stocked from the warehouse of retailers onto the show floor of individual retailers when stores need more of a certain class. So you have at least 3 big steps contributing to whether a class can be seen on the show floor at any given time. And that class can come from any wave.
Hence why it doesnt look coordinated (because it isnt).
