Marvel has felt just as scant at stores beyond a few of those. Is there a distribution issue going on with Hasbro in general?
I see an over abundance of House of X ML. The whole set, not just the typical peg warmers from waves. Now I swear to God almighty that I’ve seen the vintage 5 point Daredevil but passed it up as I didn’t want to collect another line. Haven’t seen it since. Hulk, Spidey, torch, Cap, Ms Marvel, Magneto, Iron man. Did I have a stroke? Did I stumble into an alternate reality briefly? I’ve tried looking online and can’t find proof of it existing. I’ve seen sale stickers for $50 worth of toys and get a gift card. Also leader class TFs for $45. Yet nothing new at the five targets near me in weeks. So I’m guessing they are trying to clear out what’s left before putting out the new stuff.
Walmart is getting the movie TMNT figures and Target is getting the 80's cartoon TMNT stuff. The movie stuff is almost done, but the cartoon stuff...still so many characters to do.
Bloomgton Walmart has 2 Warpaths and a Wave 1 Cheetor placed in a Netflix box. I mean, whatever liar decided to lovingly slip the bands back over the wrists and ankles... just pay $20 you friggin' dweeb.
Seriously. If you can't pay $20 for a figure, get out of collecting. Sucks that prices keep going up, but whatcha gonna do? Transformers is still easier to collect here than G.I.Joe Classified. I've all but given up on the line given all the exclusives, and terrible distribution mixed with people waiting outside of every Target store it seems right at opening to snatch them up. Which also makes me think how I'm glad I don't collect Pokémon cards. LOL
I gave up on G.I. Joe. I managed to get Destro, Cobra Commander, Amazon Storm Shadow, and Beachhead. Beautiful detail in the sculpts but in spite of all the articulation they are incredibly difficult to pose. Ended up giving Destro and Commander to some good friends. I know there’s a lot of the community who say they’ll only get 3.75” joes but it’s obvious Hasbro underestimated how many wanted the 6” ones. I think covid really hurt production runs and distribution but at this point you’d think they’d have ordered more and ramped things up to supply the demand. I gave up Star Wars too. Can’t even blame that one on covid. I’ve seen less and less since Disney purchased the franchise. Just a couple handfuls of figures each year and impossible to find most on store shelves. kinda feels like you have to preorder everything online at this point to guarantee it and usually a whole wave. Transformers are the only exception but I’m seeing that change too. might be a new business model to base production on preorders and cut waste.
I think COVID screwed up more than we realize. If you think about it, the whole supply chain is boned at the moment from production to distribution to stocking, and then they went and got a freighter stuck in the middle of a major supply route. And then stores are likely slow to stock/restock toys if that's not where the supply and demand is at the moment. Meanwhile they're racing to keep TP and hand sanitizer on shelves. It may be a while before anything feels back to "normal."
The Suez Canal being blocked shouldn’t affect North American distribution, most of those ships head to Europe for the most part. The only thing that would be affected is the oil that comes from the Middle East, but America should have a decent stock pile. But ya the thing that affected distribution the most is COVID, that’s why we didn’t really see waves 2 and 3 of earthrise (deluxe) in stores.
I finally have MP Hound arriving today*. Can someone remind me what QC / breakage issues to look out for. *I bought him from Chosen Prime, labeled “second batch.” Did he get revised or fixed at some point?
Oh boy. QC issues with Hound. Where to begin? There's hairline cracks that start everywhere there's a pin. Literally everywhere. Plus places there aren't pins. The plastic he's made from is worse than most clear plastics I've come across. The only reason mine has remained intact is because I've been superglueing every microscopic crack as I find it, and it kinda takes away from the experience when it takes that much work and ugly superglued spots to keep him from crumbling to pieces. I usually never buy knockoffs, but I am desperately waiting for a solid offering from another company so I can swap some parts around. It's a real shame too, because his engineering is absolutely genius.
This is honestly the main reason half the MP's I buy ARE KO's at this point. I try to buy 1p when I can, but no way I'm gonna drop 200+ on a figure that I know will turn to powder in my hands. That said, gimmie more priced like Skids and Reboost and I'm in.
Not to mention most of the KOs are actually painted. Many of the MPM Masterpiece have a much better KO that's either cheaper, or fixes issues or just has more premium paint. I got official Ratchet and Ironhide super cheap or else I probably woulda went KO. Although Ratch is actually pretty good, which is a surprise, given how bad Ironhide is. On a separate note, I sold my misb Haslab Unicron to TFSOURCE. They paid me 1,000 and paid for the shipping too. I can only imagine how much they'll price it for if they end up putting it on their website. 2,000 bucks?
First point - Man, paint--like die cast--is something I don't care a ton about. That said, the updated decos on the retro headmasters look real neat, so I think for me it's icing but not cake. Engineering, price, and quality trump all. Second point - Good heaven, opened or unopened? I've never sold any of my collection (and prolly wont) but man, that's a BIG jump up.
I wonder how much Unicron would actually cost to ship? I’d think around $100, but I may be underestimating.
I wondered that too considering everybody who backed it got theirs shipped free from HasLab. No matter where in the world they were. That couldn't have been cheap for Hasbro or the 3P retailers who helped distribution outside the US. How much of that had to baked in to the actual price?
I almost think the shipping was in the cost of the actual figure, that way they can say free shipping when in reality you’re actually still paying for it.
For what it's worth I ordered one from Japan when it released and my copy has been fine through at least half a dozen transformations. I know lots of people had cracking issues with the plastics and I thought I read that even Takara Tomy acknowledged issue with the plastic mixture somewhere. I think there was supposed to be a new batch at some point with corrected plastics mixture, perhaps the one you got is it. Let us know what you find with your MP Hound. Someone who sold his Unicron noted in the Unicron thread that the shipping cost via UPS was pretty much right at $100.
They were going for 1500 + on eBay. I'd seen it sell for as high as 1800. Last year I used to sell on eBay but they changed a bunch of their selling policies since they no longer use Paypal. It definitely woulda been listed on eBay if I still was selling on there but this wasn't a bad deal, especially since they paid for the shipping, which they said they normally wouldn't do.
