Just thought of something, I have personally seen a lot of the Hasbro Classics figures i.e. CHUGs stuck shelfwarming on pegs in toy stores I've visited, and have read a lot of posts on this board stating shelfwarming in their area. Now, is it the same with the Takara figures? Really curious if it's the same for the Japan market or any other market that gets those figures.
i don't know where you're finding classics shelfwarming, but when henkei alert was scarce, he was plentiful in japan
Over here in Japan things like WFC BB and CJ shelfwarm, everything else usually gets bought instantly. In other words if you want something here you better prepare to stand in line an hour and a half.
If i can ask you a semi-related question: What do Japanese fans think of Hasbro, and the way they do business?
Japanese people don't really have to worry about hasbro because they deal with Takara Tomy, Takara can really give fans things diffrent from Hasbro because they target adult collectors and not just kids.
I have to ask is scalping really bad in japan then? I have to ask because I can see toys like Astrotrain going for crazy money like $70 these days I gotta wonder how many of these go to kids and collectors and how many end up on ebay
Scalping shouldn't really be an issue in Japan, because figures ship as solid cases of one figure. So if the store runs out of Astrotrain, they just order more Astrotrain. If the toy is really popular and the stock dries up entirely, well, that's another matter.
Usually those are given out on either a lottery or a "one to the first hundred customers"-type basis. So if they're being "scalped", that's because one guy is buying them off of a bunch of other people (or getting a bunch of his friends to help him), which is not exactly true scalping, either. It works in Japan. But the system requires the retailer to actually give a damn about micro-managing their inventory. It works in a country that's become pre-dispositioned to encourage the collector's market. Doesn't work in North America, where the collector's market is marginalized.
the flaw with that is the the average wage is higher. much like in the UK we pay about $23 per deluxe but out average wage is higher so it really feels no different its only when toys are sold to a global customer base rather then a national one do we notice these things
Yeah, because Japanese fans can easily buy Thunderwing, Windcharger and Skullgrin locally and can buy individual EZ Collection toys knowing exactly which toy they're getting, right? I mean, why exactly do Japanese hobby magazines have to compare their domestic versions to their Hasbro counterparts when Japanese fans don't care for them foreign toys anyways?
You can always buy the whole box there, which IMO is better than trying to find legends Bumblebee (not Goldbug) in the USA.
