Walmart.com, Target.com, and Walgreens.com

The Unholy Trinity

 

It's not the human traffickers fault, it's the clientele's fault.

 

Make it three. I was able to get one right before they nuked the listing. What’s odd is that my order says it won’t be shipping until October. Which I thought was when the regular release was coming out? And Walmart’s original listing said nothing about it being numbered or limited, so I’m not entirely sure the one that went up yesterday was literally just an early preorder and nothing more.

 

And in all three cases it was made clear what was different about the three versions at the time they were revealed.

The argument isn't that Hasbro never does variants, it's that Hasbro has always made it clear what was different between variants and the regular release.

Which they did here.

 

Well, that's dramatic.

Human trafficking is an actual crime.

I don't think toys are being abused. eBay isn't forcing anyone to pay their prices. I think your anger is a tad misplaced.

 

Is scalperbot a program? I think I need that in my life to get a set of seekers on Target.com?

also Walmart should have limited the item to 1 per person with only having 1985 or so.

 

I dunno. I just called them scalperbots since they were bots belonging to scalpers.

Agreed. That was the biggest oof on their end.

 

It's okay. I can wait.

Now to see how many sheeps will pay the ebay compulsive stupidity disorder tax.

 

Beyond how gross of an exaggeration this is, it's not even accurate.

The toys aren't people, they're not being victimized, and the "clientele" in this situation would be anyone paying the eBay price. And they absolutely are to blame, as without a buyer there'd be no market.

Good job guys, you've kept the momentum going for 24 hours. Gotta pace yourselves though, still three full months of indignant rage to go before the main release.

 

And the only reason live events try to curb scalping is because if those tickets go unsold they lose a ton of money in concessions, parking, merch, etc.

There is no incentive for this kind of thing, because the items sell out and that's that. They can try to curb it, but how do you even begin to regulate?

 

This was a disappointment event of the year, they gathered us all together to announce that the new Gigawatt would go on sale late and then they were selling only to scalpers.

Why are they waiting till October to start preorders???

 

Too soon?  

 

1 or 2 per customer and not 12, also methods to ensure that a person is buying and not a bot.

 

There is incentive on Hasbro's end to curb it because it creates collector burnout and weak distribution of products creates less publicity.

But this is part of WHY you have outlets like Pulse in the first place. It isn't strictly about cutting out retailers for high margins but is also about having a channel with some care put into it in a post-TRU world.

I don't think there's incentive for Walmart to improve here though. The only incentive there would be if they could charge more or get more payment processing fee/data like having a Pulse Premium membership for collectibles or a Target Red Card style payment processing option with exclusives. If you needed not just an account but to pay with a Walmart credit or debit card with 2 per account limit, they'd still have sold out I bet but you and I would be likelier to have a shot at the item because burner accounts with bots likely wouldn't EACH have a Walmart card.

 

The thing about scalpers is they suck the joy out of this thing that should be a simple joy for us all to have and turn it into some joyless capitalistic enterprise (possibly at the cost of their soul, IMO).

And yes, the people that buy from them are part of the problem.

Don't bother with any "but it's their right", or "That's just free market economy" comments, please. We all know the arguments, blah blah blah.

The point is, Transformers are supposed to be fun. And scalpers ruin some of that fun.
That is an irrefutable truth.
And that's why scalpers suuuuuuuuck

 

I guess @B-Fox feels like a victim. Not sure of what though.

 

Hopefully the online stores like TCP and company will be able to get pre-orders as well since they were able to do so with Ectotron.

 

Ectotron wasn't upsized from the mold he was based on, there's no reason to believe this one will be. And besides, this figure is listed at 5.5 inches tall, which is the same as Sideswipe's listed height

 

Yes. This.

It's even worse for those of us without access to certain store exclusives - I was fortunate enough to grab the Target Seeker 2-pack from a board member for $85, but on eBay they're listed for $120 or more - and my Target is a pain to get to, not to mention the retail monkeys often have no idea what toy you're after if you call the store.

If a toy is out-of-print and its aftermarket value has risen due to rarity, that's one thing; but trying to get double the retail price of current toys? It's a dick move. IIRC scalping was a big problem with certain movie toys during the original runs, especially Premium Series and the G1 redeco of movie 1 Jazz.

 

Ah so I got it for 20 by pure speed keed