Yes, they did, because Walmart is Hasbro’s customer. They didn’t “give” them anything, it was purchased from them. If WM didn’t purchase Cosmos as an exclusive we simply wouldn’t have got him.
My point is that's a choice Hasbro can make: simply don't do it until it gets picked up as mainline. We don't know that.
We do know that, because Hasbro told us. We even saw the initial concepts of Cosmos as an Origins Bee retool. Yes, Hasbro could've waited to put him in mainline, but he wasn't going to be in mainline any time soon, hence being an exclusive. If Cosmos wasn't released in Velocitron he simply would not have been released at all in Hasbro's plans at that time. (there's also nothing stopping him from being released/redone, say, two or three years from now anyway) It was WM exclusive or nothing. (same with Override, who was also a planned retool before being picked up as an exclusive) And again, Cosmos being exclusive wouldn't be a problem if Walmart's assortments and distribution weren't shit. Nobody else in Velocitron is hard to get, Override clogs shelves at my WM, only Cosmos is hard to find. That's Walmart's fault, not Hasbro's.
So Hasbro can choose to just not do it until it can be mainline. That's all I'm saying, and would prefer that option.
We might not have gotten him last year but we absolutely would have gotten him. They are clearly working their way through all the minibots in deluxe scale.
You can’t conflate silence with a majority, Mr. Nixon. Many of your vast silent majority won’t have any problems…until they do. Pristine today can be yellowed tomorrow (I know this from experience) and past lack of yellowness is no guarantee of future performance.
I'm just gonna say Armada Sideswipe is the worst of 2022 because he's so bad his shittiness reverberates through the decades.
And then, maybe it won't. Since the true cause of these issues has yet to even be pinpointed, we can't be sure it isn't caused by environmental factors in the homes or vicinity of the people having the issues. It could be that some of us will never be affected and it turns out it happens because you use Febreeze in your house, live near a coal-fired power plant, have a specific brand or model of light bulb in your display room, eat a certain type of food, have carpets made from a certain polymer, or any other highly specific thing. Point is, without lots and lots of empirical evidence, there's very little factual that can be said about this yellowing issue, yet very many people act like it's a known and ubiquitous factor and it most certainly isn't.
Most of what you say is true, of course, but it doesn’t take into account that these often times arrive from the factory yellowed. Many of the potential factors you’ve outlined above wouldn’t be (as/very) applicable in an industrial and retail environment. Are there things people are doing at home that’s possibly speeding this up? Sure, I buy that. Are there copies that arrive at Target before a living consumer soul has touched them and are already yellowed in the sealed crate? Of course, it’s been documented from Grimlock to Motormaster to SG Soundwave. It’s a 50/50 flip of the coin, I hope that the toss always goes your (and everyone’s) way.
My personal "feeling" is that it's happening in the factory\factory town, or on the container ship, via exposure to something nasty in the air.
This stuff has interested me since I first read about it, likely because I paid good aftermarket money for some of these (Nemesis/Soundwave) or because they were just really cool, almost perfect, versions of the bot (Cyclonus) and it would just a shame to see them go to ruin. In my own personal experience, my collection is kept cold and dark, almost perfect conditions (I don’t even get hand oil on them hardly, they literally are untouched unless getting cleaned) and yet Nemesis and Soundwave have both started going. (Don’t smoke, not spraying anything around that room, etc) Only thing I can think of is that the groundwork was indeed laid at the factory/factory town and that something helps to trigger it later down the road.
Another year and most of my issues is with getting figures as opposed to any actual problems with those figures. maybe I got lucky again just like 2020. I managed to grab Cosmos/Shadowstrip/Clampdown/Crasher from Velocitron inspire of Walmart’s best efforts at shitty distribution. stil to this moment, the Voyagers are clearances to 25 bucks but the Deluxe peg warmers are full price. No one outside one Target and independent shops got anything past Wave 1 mainline. Even online buys could be headaches for just mainline releases if you weren’t on the ball with preordering.
