These two apply to my area as well. The only one that stuck around long was Coronation Starscream.

 

Edit: I removed the part about the 13% sales tax where I live because it was confusing some of you. I'm not complaining about the taxes. I'm just saying that doesn't help when the prices are already higher. My main complaint here is that TRU are charging more than MSRP now and they did not do that in the past.



We still have Toys R Us in Canada but they’ve jacked their prices much higher than Walmart. They used to be similar in price. Note these prices are Canadian Dollars. But hopefully you can still appreciate the sticker shock. Titan Class figures are $350 here now. Leader Class are over $80. Deluxe Class around $45 I think. Prices have gone up everywhere but for some reason TRU are now charging above MSRP on many items. I feel like they’re trying to go out of business here as well.

So TRU tend to have a lot of stuff on the shelves but it’s expensive. Walmart here is pretty crappy in the toy aisle and there isn’t much stock. So it’s not a great alternative. Online stores here charge for shipping and also charge more for some figures if they’re in demand. Amazon seems to sell out preorders very fast. You need to order the day preorders go up for some figures. SS86 Snarl is a recent example.

Because of all those issues if I buy mainline at all these days I’ll order from China because even with shipping sometimes I can get a better price than TRU! But I mostly dropped out of buying mainline. They used to be fun impulse buys for me but the prices and difficulty in finding them has driven me away. I still buy MPs from Asia because they’re easier to order and they’re worth the money to me.

 

I have many happy memories of going to KB Toys every week and seeing all the ample stock of toys of the latest saturday morning cartoon shows. Kids today don't know what they're missing. Now those stores are all gone. Walmart and Target are about all that is left and the distribution is borked. I'm glad that I'm nearing a point where I'm mostly "good" with my collection and now only collect the figure that catches my eye or I would feel pretty depressed over the state of retail.

 

I even miss the recent years of the 07 movie. Even Wal*Mart & Target had tons of product. Heck I even remember RID2001 was pretty well stocked pretty much all the time. Think the Bullet trains were the hardest to find.

Now though, my area echos many previous assessments here. Just a load of Earthspark. Even Megatron and Twitch are starting to gather dust. It's just a cluster foch of distribution. Wal*Mart really needs to clearance out those wave 1 legacy guys that have been on the shelves for over a year rotting. Will they? Probably not. Sad state of affairs today, which is why I buy everything online. I can not even remember the last time I bought a Transformer from a physical store. If I have it was probably Target though.

 

At the store I work at we rarely get TFs. We only get stuff right around the time for the next toy reset. Here’s your BW reissues, or here’s your Earthspark stuff. Besides that, a case might show up occasionally. It’s living reset to reset.

I have all the barcodes saved on my phone, so when I check the dates for the next delivery the dates keep getting pushed back. 2 cases of deluxes on the 28th, awesome. It’s the 28th, now it says the 1st, then the 2nd, and so on. Some of the things that are empty aren’t showing a delivery date at all.

Ever since Covid they told us to stop manually ordering stuff. But that doesn’t really matter because our inventory auto orders stuff. 2 cans left of soup? Here’s 2 cases on your next truck. So the same should apply to toys right? An empty peg or 1 or 2 dust collectors should trigger something and ship out another case. But it doesn’t.

I don’t know why my store won’t get TFs, or why the date keeps getting pushed back. I don’t know if it’s a distribution problem, a warehouse problem, or my store sucks and other stores could be more favorable and they end up with all the stock. I have no idea. I’m just glad online shopping exists. I’ve given up on retail.

 

Local Wal-Marts (3 of them) Only got Legacy Wave 1 Core/DLX/VOY/LDR and Wave 2 Core/VOY

 

Anecdotally I notice that the aisles for dolls generally seem much more well-kept and stocked than the action figures. My wife collects Rainbow High, Shadow High and Monster High dolls which all seem to crank out a half-dozen new dolls a month, but there's rarely a Cosmos scenario with them unless they're high-end online exclusives.

It's not because they don't sell, either. I've spent an above-average amount of time in the doll aisles for a childless middle-aged straight man, and the stuff turns over. The doll pipeline just seems to flow a lot smoother. Meanwhile, the action figure aisles always look like a set from The Walking Dead.

 

I think it's a mix of things.

People mentioned electronics. I agree.
People mentioned retailers changing gears. I agree.
People mentioned kids don't play with toys. I agree.

It's OUR fault, though. We can blame retail, the pandemic, electronics, but it's absolutely OUR fault.

Too many broken families and households, too many multi-worker families leaving children alone or in the care of someone who doesn't get paid enough to give a damn. Too many parents (this generation) left with scars from their Generation X parents. (Being a Gen-Xer, I see it all too often.) We pushed too hard because our parents pushed too hard. Over compensating to compete with their boomer parents and being the next Gordon Gekko.

Well, now it's blown up in our faces. People are worked to the bone for minimal wages, the current generation isn't having it, the kids are smarter and far more intelligent than they've ever been, and we're pushing them through school and forcing them to grow up faster than they can, should, and could. They're miserable adults by the time they hit 18, jaded by 21, reserved to give up and die because they can't afford anything by 25. Not a car, not a house, heck...not an apartment. And if they do have kids, they can't afford 'em.

Toys are such a non-issue because we've turned our children into a commodity and work 'em like dogs. Every time I hear a boomer say "Bah. It's good for them, teaches them the value of a dollar. I was working 3 jobs when I was her age." Yes, that's right, Bob. It's also why you've had a quadruple bypass, and you're just now getting to enjoy the spoils of your battles at 75. But wait, what's this? The Reaper has plans for you in about 5-10 years? Guess you better get busy livin' or get busy dyin', but you best figure it out soon.

You can teach your child the value of a dollar without turning them into another cog for the machine you so willingly built. And we wonder why people are so repressed and angry and bitter and want all of us to "die angry". FFS.

Get rid of the screens, don't live in a mansion so you can afford to live like a normal person, actually give them toys and play them with them, let them be kids, don't push them through the meat grinder, don't work all the time and actually spend time with your children, raise them. If you can't do it, don't have them. Close the legs, take pills, wear the parachute before jumping, but don't have them and then regret it and let the children carry the burden.

We screwed up so badly. We can still fix it, there's time. We should've known something wasn't right with screens when Silicon Valley companies have analog schools and won't let their own children have smartphones/watches, or anything digital beyond certain video game consoles and even then...strict. Because they know how all consuming it is. And we keep shoving these screens in their faces.

It's all on us. Shame on us. Amazon, Target, and Walmart will bounce back without us, so will other retailers, but we're the ones who end up hurting the most.
It's time to fight back and raise our kids the right way. Let them be kids and be there for them.

 

Long post but worth reading, I was poopin' anyway. And yes... doing it "right" is a lot harder. A lot lot harder. My wife and I are trying to break the cycle for our babies. But it's very tough. It's a big world out there with too many people willing to oil the machine with their blood and feed it with their babies. It's regrettable that in some respects we are forced to live apart from others, they are too addicted to the chemicals and the foolishness and especially the teevee. We have had too many visits where we keep saying we don't own a TV, we don't watch TV, we don't sit our kids in front of cartoons and it's like we never said anything and they just keep autopiloting to turn on the cartoons until we end up confusedly making some excuse to leave, while their eyes glass over as they actively watch every commercial.

 

I have said for years that the Television & Smart Phones have ruined us as people. Even computers! People get addicted to them. I know I was until I decided to put down the phone and look at the world around me.

I go to my job do what's expected and that's it. I did salary management for almost 10 years and that is for the birds. Working 80+ hours and really no reward other than wrecking your body. I will stay an hourly employee. It pays my bills and I don't live over extended over what I make. People are too hypnotized by all the celebrity lives out there trying to imitate them. They all think they ar rock stars.

 

Well spoken. But have you every tried watched over a young rowdy child by yourself, cuz your spouse is out having a girl's night. And you have to take a dump? I sit her in front of coco melon so I can have enuff time to relieve myself. Otherwise, the house would be destroyed or she would have ate some dog food or some shit. Coco Melon puts her in a hypnotic state.

What would you suggest? My friend said take her to the bathroom while I shit. I LOL'ed in her face.

 

It isn't solved quickly, conditioning your kids to behave takes time and repetition and active input over a long period. Establishing expectations and mystifying them with your ability to detect and react to misbehavior when they think you aren't watching them. It's a bit of theater and magic. It's good for your kids to think you are a bit of a wizard, they will attend you and crave your education and knowledge, and most importantly they'll learn to obey your edicts when you aren't around and stay within boundaries that you set. But I will also tell yoi that physical barriers can really help in situations like you're talking about. You don't need to bring her in the shitter but confining her to a safer room is doable using a gate or whatever. when my boys were small I used my heavy Transformer bins to block the door and made sure to put a stop to any climbing attempts until they stopped attempting it.

Most importantly, understand that you're not wrong and you don't suck--it is very challenging to do it without TV. I'd recommend letting them watch hand-selected programs with no advertisements on your laptop or whatever else you've got when you need a screen to keep them steady for you.

 

Never thought I'd seek parenting advice on TFW2005. Thanks!

 

Perfectly put. We're looking back fondly at the halcyon days of yore which are gone now, never to return. It's not like it was and never will be. Even the good old days weren't that good. Anyone remember trying to collect green card POTF2 figures? Sure there was an entire wall of them, 98% of them were pegwarmers.

I said it a decade ago, eventually toy stores will be seasonlal pop-up stores like Spirit Halloween, only showing up before Christmas. If this trend continues Target and Walmart will just stop carrying toys, especially with all the shoplifting and head theft.

 

More than once, we've told my 10 year old "no VG's for a week. It's not a punishment, you've not made any bad choices, but you have had some trouble remembering certain responsibilities this week, and difficulty pulling your head put of your... screens."

This is normally predicated by an event of pain or disappointment to which they react with excessive emotion and start basically grasping at straws of what the problem is. A week of less screens, more manual play (i.e. Transformers or building Lego/Gundam), increased time with books, and more conversations about what's going on with the family as a group... self-regulation re-established.

But on the other side of that coin, it literally hurts me to be forced into acquiescence of increased screen time because we now have twins who need essentially constant attention. If our 10 was any less awesome of a caring sibling, I would be confident the jealousy and resentment would be scarring. Just getting the availability for them to spend some time at a friend's house seems so stupidly difficult to arrange.

More on-topic to the thread:
My 10 year old is already to the point in being a Collector that interest in "Hey, we're right by a Wal-Mart / Target, you wanna go just look?" is severely dwindled.

 

I actually know that feeling all too well. And using a screen for that small period of time isn't the issue. It's the hours+ that are the problem. It's not a 10, 15, 20 minute problem, oh no. It's a "Give it to them, they'll shut up!" problem that we've all intentionally created.

Too many latchkey kids, not enough "oh, my parents actually raised me!" kids. And now, it's turned into a screen addiction. TV isn't even nearly as bad as a computer/tablet/cellphone/video game screen. There's something about the interaction that makes it intoxicating.

 

To be honest, advertising is mental sewage being pumped directly past your filters into your mind. I wouldn't recommend anyone consume any amount of it through any medium...

 

While your point is valid, I'm not even talking about content in the post you're quoting. I'm saying that simply giving them a screen seems to trigger something. I don't know if it's the light, the flashing, and motion, or whatever, but people seem drawn to screens regardless of the content. I mean, it's gotten so bad that Apple, Google, and Samsung all created watches that you could futz with in addition to your phone, tablet, and PC.

It's kind of weird, honestly, how the human brain gravitates toward bright, shiny things. People make fun of cats with Christmas trees all the time, but honestly? I see humans with the same big eyes when their faces are plastered to any type of screen. It could be a screensaver, selling nothing, doing nothing, someone will sit and watch it.

Dafuq is up with us?

 

Maybe it's that same thing unique to humans that instaed of fleeing the sight, we approached, became obsessed with, and ultimately benefitted from fire. But now the danger is gone, it's just a warm-looking light that promises gentle biochemical nudges of positivity.

... and this is how we finally get burned after all. Trying so hard to live like there is no dark, no cold, and no discomfort permanently beyond our control...
And the ever-increasing amount of screen-born interaction in our world (ordering delivery to homes instead of being able to go somewhere to get what you want) is a symptom of this dream we live.
There are already ... 'stores' ... that really do use their buildings to "just store" the products they sell. Order online, the warehouse workers pick it, delivery people do their part... and as a non-employee, you wouldn't be allowed to enter the premises where it came from.
Toys, being objectively less essential than clothing (or food) are going to be one of the first to disappear from in-person purchasing completely.

 

...alright, Dead End. Thank you for the depression. lol