What a shitty morning. Got ready before 8 to order. Was going to go for each individually since red card gets free shipping but didn’t even have a chance. Hit order on trooper and it wasn’t available as I went to check out. Went by a Target to see if they had them. They have on order but not received yet. I did notice a large number of them available on the top screen. Might be stock at distribution center cause the Cobra Trooper was higher than the others. On the way back got into a car accident that tore up the front end of my car. Just gonna hide out for the rest of the day
They deserve what’s coming to them... It’s likely just that deco that’s exclusive. Problem is, that Cobra Trooper looks to be one of the best, most-ARAH-ish painted Classified figs yet, and the standard release will probably have some dumb paint apps.
Well, first off, I don't think anyone here is coming off as entitled. I'd need for you to point out those examples. There has definitely been disappointment; that I'll give you. But I don't think there has been any sort of overreaction. There has been some discussion about how to improve the experience. Maybe Hasbro Pulse has it right in this instance. Granted, they don't always do it, but maybe Target should let people pre-order what exclusives they want on-line (maybe limit of two per item, or whatever) for a limited time (say a week or two), and forward that order to Hasbro to actually produce. Longer lead time, but less disappointment that way for customers. And if, say someone cancels after the production order to Hasbro goes through, send those items to B&M for people who may have missed out. The current system seems really bad when Target's creates an incentive (free shipping on orders over $35) and don't allow for people to try and combine items in cart, to actually redeem the incentive. Since the point that nobody is disagreeing with you on: is that (excluding arbitrary street dates) unlike in a B&M location, having an item in an on-line cart means absolutely nothing when you want to actually buy something.
I don’t know Gung-Ho seems to be light on paint apps too. I bet the standard Cobra trooper has different weapons or no arm band or something.
I’m not denying disappointment as I’m in the same boat as everyone else. But the solution merely shifts the disappointment further ahead in the process to not even being able to add it to the cart farther than adding it to the cart, which an infinite amount of people can do versus checking out which only a finite number of people can do. the result of what you are suggesting would simply result in people not being able to add it to the cart if more people do so ahead of them rather than adding it to the cart but not checking out first. The end result is the same — you don’t get the item if you didn’t click the add button first. If the result is the same, there’s no need for a new system.
Two stores in my general area are showing Beach Head and the Trooper...too far to drive just to get turned away due to street date issues, though...lol...
the top one for sure, i stop buying the dart nerf guns, i let my wife daughter try to shoot with those, i got the big rival ball nerf guns battery op, but yeah now that i'm thinking about it, Duke's gun is a nerf modules ecs-10 with a mix of the upgrades you were able to get you've never been shopping on Black Friday huh? or watched the videos of the Tickle-me-Elmo fiasco in TRUs 20yrs back. You have to go to the extremes since this is an online extreme, but i see this issues with shoes and other wants, ever tried to get a SB ticket?
Well, getting Super Bowl tickets is a lottery and you have to typically have a season ticket (i.e. subscription) to even get in the mix, so I don't see how that applies. But, yes, those other examples are typically feeding frenzies. But in terms of black Friday deals, stores typically offer them to get people into the store, in the hopes they fill their cart with other discounted items. But you can't fill your *cart* online, because inventory is never allocated to you until you make your purchase, so it's a little different. Tickle-me-Elmos (and the like) are typically mass-produced, and available way before the holiday season, so there would be a chance to buy them before the madness starts. Knowingly dropping an on-line, (limited) exclusive, and selling out of said item in seconds after whipping up potential customers in a frenzy could be easily avoided, if the retailer showed a little initiative and foresight.
the sad part is i see this in my other hobby sneaker, we can't beat the bots, though sometimes we get lucky and sneak pass them, but yeah this isn't just a "toy collectible issue", this is a "collectible issue"
This is how the majority of model train companies do it now. With few exceptions--everyone gets what they want. They open up orders for a month or two, then make "that many plus 5-10%". (or sometimes, down to like "actual orders plus 2% for replacements/parts") If they way underestimated demand initially---not a problem, because they don't tell the factory how many to make of each variant from that wave, until the pre-order window is closed. They know it'll sell out, since they've got the name and address of every person who wants one. There's no worrying about shelf-warming. And no limits for collectors. You want 1 to open, 1 to display, 1 as a backup, and 1 for "collecting as an investment"? No problem, buy as many as you want---they'll make them. Want to fleet-build? (or, troop-build)? No problem, they'll happily make entire cases of just the one you want. Scalping is minimal, since---everyone who wanted one, pre-ordered one, and has one coming to them. You can't dump them on ebay, since every potential customer already has as many as they want, coming to them right from the manufacturer. In fact, they often even give discounts for troop-building, since it's easier for them to do. "This guy wants a dozen of the same thing? Easy, ship him a solid case of them, 10% off". It's *actually* pre-ordering, not "a frantic scramble for already-produced products that they took a wild guess on how many could actually be sold". They're not concert/sports tickets, where there is literally a limited number of seats---they are MAKING these products, so they can make as many as they want. There's very little difference between "plastic toy train made in China, and plastic toy soldier made in China". But one industry has figured out "how to sell as many as possible, to all the customers who want one".
Preordering is ordering something before it is physically available for purchase. What you are describing is made to order. There is a difference
They're both ordering before physically available, but anyways... Ok, then why not do the Classified line made to order? The target audience IS adult collectors, might as well sell them as many as possible for $$$$. Imagine if they said something like "well, we COULD have re-issued the Night Raven, but only if we got 10,000 orders, and nobody thought we could possibly get that many, so we didn't". But if they would just open up the POSSIBILITY for pre-orders---they might see what the actual demand/profit would be. This is how a lot of model train stuff is done---the manufacturer can't know exactly what schemes/variants will and won't sell. What molds should be re-used, or all-new molds created. So you offer it up, and see how many people order. If you only get like 64 orders from the entire world---the project is cancelled for lack of demand. But if something you weren't sure about, gets thousands of orders? Well, now it's not just viable, but very profitable. Hasbro, is plenty large enough a company, to do it this way with their factories. They're not a mom and pop shop.
Both are methods of preorder, but again what you described is made to order, which is an entirely different business model. Hasbro is starting to dabble with that via haslab, but it's unlikely that they will ever do entire lines that way, and if they do the figures will probably increase in price
Or they'd take the MattyCollector route where instead of a per figure basis they had to get so many people subscribed to the line each year... and we know how happy the MOTU Classics fandom was each year when it came time to pitch resubscribing.
And then people will also bitch about the figures not being in stores anymore, which also kills the impulse buy market as well as any potential influx of new fans.
