Initially, it does, mainly because of supply and demand. If you look at the Marvel Legends Guardians of the Galaxy on Amazon, the harder to find figures (Nova, Rocket Racoon) are going for double the MSRP. Letting retailers re-order only those figures and not those that are currently shelfwarming will allow the prices of the rarer figures to come down.

Of course, once the wave is discontinued, it's going to be a free for all again.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. Not a moment sooner.

 

Could this be a move that coincides with Hasbro acknowledging collectors' purchasing power back at Toyfair, allowing them to make collector-oriented characters and releases more easily available at avenues that collectors will shop at (online and/or smaller retailers like comic shops)? They can maintain the wave-based approach for B&M retailers like Walmart/Target and the kids and general public that won't care as much about certain characters that collectors do.

 

Agreed. This is awesome news for etailers and specialty shops that deal with collectors.

Horrible news if applied to B&M stores. They will stock that with prime & bb til the cows come home then wonder why nothing is selling.

 

And in that case you'd still have the option to purchase the fan favs from an online store which most of us already do because as it is now there no finding the likes Carnage at Target or Walmart or TRU because he's so stupidly shortpacked.

EDIT: less the irritation of a mark up that many etailers put on short packed figures.

 

I really doubt B&M stores would want to be able to order individual characters. There's no way they'd want someone on staff that could actually analyze a line to that fine of detail. I think they have a hard enough time analyzing how many to get of the case assortments tossed out now.

I do think it could be a huge boon to the online retailers though. They already tend to know what the fans want.

 

What is Direct Market?

 

if true this could be epic. but i agree it could be problematic for Brick and mortar stores.

 

this is great news for me....I refuse to mark up figures on my site because they are short packed...but the downside is I sold out of rattrap at 20 shipped in like 30 seconds  

 

This is actually brilliant. Not holding my breath...but brilliant all the same.

It all comes down to strategy vs execution.

 

I expect the big brick-n-mortar stares would generally stick with the case assortments, as they were a primary force in setting up the assortment system in the first place.

I could see (conceivably, if not actually) prices go down for high-demand figures at E-tailers like BBTS, since they wouldn't need to amortize the cost of the rest of the case when selling the 1 or 2 figures everyone wants to buy.

 

Yeah I think the know better than to offer this style of marketing towards big stores they know they don't have a clue, or there idea is just to market bee and prime to retailers since they know it's all they will order.

They wouldn't have to waist money on making anything else aside from those 2 and then would just sell the other stuff to us.

I could see it making figures more expensive that way if they did that with large stores it would mean lower runs on every other character.

 

Smart move, and should have been done years ago, if it had been done in the early 2000 Imagine how much better sales of some of the movie figures would have been.

 

Yeah, the big guys will amost certainly 'let Hasbro do the work for them' and take the standard case packs, smaller specialty guys like me on the other hand will be able to keep my inventory much more manageable.

For most collectors this is going to be a VERY good thing. I'm not 'one of those guys' but if your local toy and comic guy has NO excuse to raid stores for the short packed figures when he can order them by the caseload if he wants there SHOULD be more variety on the pegs.

 

Should have been done this way since the beginning. I suggested this numerous times & got booed off the stage.

 

Starting when? I need someone to restock Cosmos and Swerve ASAP.

 

About Damn Time

Good figures will sell more units, rather than just becoming more expensive.

 

This is good news. I only have eight Vehicons.

 

Diamond Distributors, more or less. Online etailers, local comic/hobby shops, basically any place that specializes in "geek stuff" and not a mass market chain retailer like Walmart or Walgreens or TRU.

While I think this will help collectors, this will have ZERO impact on mass retail. So that scalper (or more likely, fellow collector) will still hit Walmart a 6 am and clear out that ONE case of Marvel or Star Wars that store has gotten in several months.

As is, I'm not even sure Transformers would be THAT good a candidate for this system anyway: the line remains fairly decently packed, and decently distributed (at least through collector venues), and I believe most of its sales (even Generations) come more through mass market venues than the 6" lines at this stage.

For example, Swerve and Cosmos were readily available several weeks ago from BBTS for roughly retail, but still sold out. I've yet to even find a case assortment listing from anyone, which points to me these guys shipped alone and in equal numbers. In which case, they were popular and so whether it had been a whole case of one or the other, they still likely would have sold out due to popularity and this won't change that.

 

Hasbro has not indicated ANY prior product as being available in this situation. Only for select products going forward.