I am not opposed to the logic that may have possibly been behind this situation.  

 

NO WONDER I COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING GOOD....all was left was 2 of the same crap toy..lol

 

Ugh. I once saw two Ironhides in those Energon 2-packs once.   A desperate parent must’ve snatched it up during the last minute Christmas shopping rush last year.

Back to the topic, it’s not stealing since you paid for the toys. At worst it might be unethical since a kid or another fan may be looking for the toy you swapped for. It would probably suck if a store employee or guard were to catch you. They might think you’re stealing.

 

Folks:

I disagree with practically everybody here on this one, it seems. I think it's unethical
to cherry pick 2-packs like this unless you have asked permission of store personnel,
and let me tell you why. You remember the Energon 2-packs? It seemed that there
were a lot of Signal Flares there, and this makes sense. He wasn't as popular as, say,
Sky Blast, or Arcee.

Now, these were just taped on to the cardback, so people kept cherry-picking, taking what they wanted, and leaving Signal Flare, until, inevitably, there was nothing BUT Signal Flare. Store personnel gathered up those that the more lazy cherry-pickers hadn't bothered to re-card and THAT, my friends, is how we end up with cards of 2 Signal Flares or 2 Thundercrackers that stay on the shelves forever. This negates
the purpose of these clearance sales anyway, and since two-packs of the same
figure don't sell well except to oddballs who collect Signal Flares (I did, heh) it is
possible to see the cherry-picking that caused it as a form of stealing, since it
removes value from the 2-pack.

Seriously, if you want to save money that badly, wait to buy anything until it comes
out in 2-packs, and don't clutter up the shelves by cherry-picking.

 

The stores don't care, hell; they may like it better because they may make more money selling them individually later, after they have been picked. In Canada ours are wrapped in plastic so it would be hard to do, but if I need one, I will buy the two packs and give the other one to my son, who likes anything, and I get the guy I need. I would have bought him for full price anyway. I suppose you could buy the two pack, take the one you want and return the other for store credit, but that may be a little more dicey.

 

You might if you already had two of them. Or unless you had some sort of unnatural compulsion to buy Divebombs, like Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory had with the book "Catcher In The Rye."

 

I wouldn't consider it stealing at all. You're still paying the same amount of money.

As far as two packs go, you're lucky. All I ever see around here is Basic size two packs. I was starting to wonder if they stopped making them...but I see that they haven't...so, I guess it's just my stores around here. They used to have crap loads of them when they first came out, though. Now they don't restock 'em.

 

I concur that it's at least unethical, if maybe not "stealing". Some of you say you'd do this or you have done this, tell me would you do this in front of store personnel? If not then there's obviously something to feel a little bit "guilty" about.

If there was a 2-pack with Thundercracker and Sideways and another with Thundercracker and Downshift, but some else was there before you and cherry picked Sideways and Downshift how would you feel about that? This'll just make distribution and shelfwarmers worse.

 

All Wal-Mart cares about is that the 2pack has 2 deluxes, or 2 megas, or 2 basics, etc..... anything else is fair game

 

Its not stealing.. only toys.... but.. if you had twin boys at birth.. and switched one out at the hospial for a girl... would THAT be stealing??? lol

P.S. Id switch out the toys too!

 

SB:

Yeah, there you go. Id would switch them out. The
Id, meaning the part of the mind that knows only what
it wants, with no regard for anybody else. Freud ate
your apostrophe.

Seriously, there is such a thing called fair play.
Cherry-picking like this may not be technically illegal
(1 deluxe is worth the same $9.99 as another in the
warehouse) but there is no denying that is shows
very little regard for the next fan or parent to come
along. Whether it is toys or any other type of
merchandise does not change the underlying principles.

So please show some consideration for others,
okay?

 

I find it mildy amusing that the opposite problem exists with the latest Star Wars two-packs at TRU. Lots of them reportedly have the elusive Tactical Ops/501st Clone and you know people are out there switching around two packs so they get 2 clones for $9 (keep in mind that they're hard to get on Ebay for less than $15 each), theoretically creating a less desirable two-pack for the next person.
Annoying as that's bound to be to some, it'd be hypocritical to say that that's wrong but TF bogo-switching is not..but then, between retail, KB.com and HTS, I managed to get 25 Tactical Ops clones, so I wasn't likely to buy more anyway.

I army build in fives so if I did find any, I'd likely try to make one 501st 2-pack, make one or two 501st/Wookie 2-packs and one 501/dupe of somebody useful (Padme/Shaak Ti/Tarkin), if the latter two combos weren't already present. If there were only two or three packs with Tac Ops clones left, I wouldn't even bother buying them separately or combining them as it would throw off my numbers.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you're probably not married.

After I got married last year, my wife saw my box of MISP Stormtroopers from the orange/green carded SE releases and asked why the hell I had so many of them. She actually loves SW, but I admitted I did have a problem at the time those first came out. I just couldn't stop myself from buying them. I wanted to create a diorama reenacting the escape from the Death Star prison scene in the SE version.

I used to say you can never have too many Stormtroopers.

And then I got married.

 

I agree to a certain extent. These are two packs that are available in by themselves, not just exclusive to the two packs. Consider that retailers have sold these for full price, individually, and in a lot of cases are still selling them on the same shelves as the two packs, for the same price. In Canada we only have (so far) the scout 2paks, and to my knowledge there is no short packed scout figs, so if some one wants to re-arrange a 2 pack to fit the desired combo that they want, why not. In a lot of cases the collectors are just switching the figs because they want to get the great deal on two figs that they don't have, not to get 20 versions of the rare figure. I really bothers me when retailers do this because for the most part, people like you and me will buy the doubles to get the one guy we need. I would have a problem if it was packed with a exclusive figure, but other wise, go for it.

 

 

No, but I live with my girlfriend of five years, who has always been incredibly tolerant of the whole toy thing, even the army building. She kinda rolls her eyes sometimes..but will also check whenever she goes to Target by herself for "blue clones" or now, the "orange clones."

Between Episode II and III stuff, I probably have 200+ clones total.   Not all are on display though as there's currently not enough room. Most of the 4-packs from the EE Episode II case are still unopened, and almost all the OT stuff, including another 30-40 Stormtroopers, is in storage.

 

well...its still dishonest. Also, you destroyed another package that will be put with damaged or deffective merchandise. So the store will not make a potential sell on that item.

I used to do that with battle beasts when I was a child.

 

Dude, nothing gets damaged. The two pack cards are designed so the toy's packaging slides right in and out.

 

what about the other person who buys the toy and gets the card you, and perhaps they did not want?