Fellas, fellas, we shouldn't be at each other's throats!

We have to band together and clean out the toy aisles before any children can get their grubby little hands on OUR figures!

 

I'm not sure I can get behind the "it was us all along" thing. Past a certain point, we don't matter. These corps are far larger than what we used to know as a company decades ago. Without going too deep into my thoughts, they have entrenched poltical roots dug into our government through lobbies. They succeed and fail for a reason, and it probably doesn't come down to whether I buy a Transformer or whether someone else steals. Walmart stocks useless product all year long to sell to no one, and they have for a long time.

I think the biggest point to be made about Walmart and Transformers is that not many people on the inside probably care that much about this stuff. If GS is an online only item? What's it matter? People barely know who Galaxy Shuttle is in this fandom. At most, these employees know now they need to make floorspace for a movie tie-in line. Besides that, it's all the same toys all year to the untrained eye. They buy whatever assortment is available, and they sell over time.

 

I really love this guys look, the space shuttle colors, the head sculpt.
Frankly speaking it's not perfect, but cool. 

 

Walmart cancelled all mine and the $85.85 one I bought off eBay never arrived. /bitter

 

I'll drop kick a kid!

 

Yeeeah, I don't know about all that. It's really not some sign of the economy and evil corporations and pointy fingers. Galaxy Shuttle was just a victim of bad timing.

 

How'd you get Fuzer to stick onto the chest?

 

I don't know about RISING theft.

They like to tout that $3 billion a year in retail theft as a problem but the numbers I can find suggest that's ALWAYS been roughly the amount of retail theft, for the last decade anyway. It just didn't go down when they shifted to self-checkout. Which... why WOULD it?

If I were implementing self-checkout, I'd personally expect higher shrinkage as an expected cost alongside the benefit of lower labor.

In all the bellyaching from them about how HIGH retail theft is, I can't find much to suggest it's increased and I can't see why they would expect less of it with fewer cashiers.

Personally, I think they used the pandemic as an excuse to cut hours of operation (which conveniently never came back as cases lowered, like McDonald's all day breakfast) and that they're using theft as a boogeyman against things like pushes for wage increases to match inflation and to explain their rising prices -- and more crucially to justify closing underperforming stores without having to admit that they're underperforming.

I tend to think Walmart is just plain hurting from competition and bad decisions and that they're making boogeymen out of the pandemic and retail theft rather than admit they're losing ground to competitors.

I think it's blame shifting and if I were a major investor, I'd be taking on management's narratives aggressively.

 

So is this thing ever coming back in stock or

 

"Outlook not so good?!" Awwww! (*slams Magic 8 Ball onto desk and it rolls onto a crack between the desk and the wall*)

Spoiler: Context

It's a variation of that scene in Toy Story when Woody asked a Magic 8 Ball if Andy would take him to Pizza Planet and it told him "don't count on it."

 

Sorry, sir, but I have to clean the aisle with this push-broom. Store manager’s orders. I’ll only be a few minutes.

 

It wasn't so much an excuse as convenient timing. After the pandemic was over, there was no reason to reimplement being open 24 hours. Walmart lost a lot of money being open overnight.

In any case, it didn't fit into their long-term goals which is to go full online warehouse by the end of the decade. The plan for awhile has been to build customer databases and online infrastructure through OGP and eventually close the stores to the public basically eliminating theft/shrinkage. Covid moved up their time-table when everyone switched to online ordering and pickup.

Your choices will (reatively) soon be pickup, delivery, or shipping without ever setting foot in the store.

-SS (this has been the plan for at least the last six years if not longer)

 

 

Hb just didn't expect this fig to get so much demand just like Greenlight among others (Cosmos). Let us hope somewhere down the line he'll get reissued again or repurposed into his more accurate show design if Micron Legend Optimus is an indication. Updated Superpants Jetfire with GS head  

 

How does that work with items like toys with assortment SKUs?

 

Or they block off the whole action figure aisle.

 

I think a lot of it had to do with theft as well. One thing I have noticed is a lot of stores now stock during the day. As for Victory Shuttle we would have seen him by now in stores. I find it funny that Transformers is have problems being stocked.

 

You can't stock what hasn't been made enough of or distributed enough.