Remember when I went to a Target a couple of weeks back and found Spidey had been swiped right out of the package?

http://i.imgur.com/yMS0ZNe.jpg

That's right. That's 3 sets out of the four that have had the figure torn right out of the package presumably in store. How does this happen? What makes it even worse is that there WAS a set that had Spidey in it meaning either the thief, out of the kindness of his heart for some reason decided to leave one left, OR an employee came there, saw that, looked at the one in hand, noticed the others were missing a piece and put it on the shelf and left the rest like that.

What makes it even worse is that they're still trying to sell it for the full 60. It's not even on clearance.

And to top it all off, Wal-Mart is like a minute down the road, has 6 of these on the shelf and ALL of them are complete. So what's Target's excuse? I'd be lying if I said they haven't been pissing me off lately.

Talk about horrible staff...that wouldn't fly at the Targets that are in my area...

I'm not condoning theft obviously, but this is a pretty clear result of making Spider-Man exclusive to a $60 pack of repaints. I never walk into a store and see empty single packed Legends, but I have seen the missing Spidey in a few locations. It's not as if you can buy the set and then sell the Cap and Iron Man for $40 to make your money back either. No one seems to want those.

for the ones who collected toybiz figures , did you have scalper issues

I guess I could chime in with my ideal wants, though I doubt many of them would be revealed at NYCC.

X-Men: I hope to see All-New Wolverine as the rumored Wolverine in the Warlock wave. Other X-Characters I'd love to see reveals for include Blink, Marrow (X-Men costume), Nightcrawler, Storm, Beast (blue furry classic) Anole, Rockslide, Surge, Domino, Psylocke, Dr. Nemesis, Exodus, Avalanche, Mystique, and a Nimrod BAF.

Spider-Man: WHITE RABBIT PLEASE! She made it far enough in the polls. Also any or all of the Slingers (Prodigy, Ricochet, Hornet, and Dusk), Stegron as a BAF, and a new Scorpion. Also a full reveal of MJ (provided she's 6" scale)

Avengers: Jane Foster Thor please, and as many Young Avengers, Ultimates, and New Avengers (ANADM) they feel fit to include.

Perhaps, but I think VonPooten nailed it, as a lot of Claremont's work from about 1998 and on felt really... wooden. And this was after he had a lot more control and freedom over his own storytelling. His FF run was incredibly verbose (to the point of distraction from the actual story he was telling), and once he got back on X-Men, he wrote as though he'd never left, and the 10-ish years of stories were, at best, a footnote. Not to mention how much he loved putting other characters in the back seat in favor of more story time for Psylocke (and Psylocke's one of my favorite X-Men, but yeesh). He made Exiles a bit of an incomprehendable mess in the back-end of the series (and his New Exiles was so mediocre-at-best that its stink made the attempted second relaunch suffer, despite the quality), and I don't even know what was going on with his Excalibur run.

I love Claremont, and do feel that he's one of the best contributors to the X-Men lore, but he needs to go do something much more fresh, in my opinion.

A little custom love for Eric "Antman/Blackant" O'Grady.
http://www.toyark.com/members/niteli...mage-3586.jpeg

Checked all of mine this past weekend, nothing new.

I agree, NYCC has never been Hasbro's main event. Though, I do hope we at-least hear more about the release of the upcoming Netflix figures. I want that Jessica Jones' civilian body sooo bad.

I never had too many issues with scalpers when collecting Toy Biz figures, but keep in mind this was also at a time when eBay was still in its infancy, and usually the only time you would run into said scalpers was at a local toy or comic trade show, therefore you were less likely to have as many venues to sell your product back then. Make no mistake though should you find those figures at those shows back then, scalping was a big deal, especially with certain waves such as wave 6 (which featured Deadpool and Frank Miller Wolverine) The Sentinel wave, The Giant Man wave and of course the series 1 figures. The sister lines to Legends, Spider-Man Classics and X-Men Classics also had scalping issues in that these were the only places to get many of the most popular characters not released by legends, such as Iceman, Sandman, Scorpion and Rogue. Those issues were compounded by many people knowing that Toy Biz was on the outs, and the future of Marvel toys in general was very uncertain at the time, as Hasbro immediately introduced the smaller movie based figures, which would eventually lead to Legends being canceled altogether in favor of smaller scales.

Mmmmm......
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...9A459DACC0.jpg

Hey whered ya get the chimichanga? I want one. ;)

Updated the head on armored bruce or armored old frank castle. ;)
http://www.toyark.com/members/niteli...mage-3587.jpeg

There's already a bootleg for this figure. Is it even out yet?

Marvel Legends Captain Marvel Carol Danvers Silver Black 6" Loose Action Figure | eBay

...preemptive piracy! lol maybe they'll release the upcoming Hulk before we even see pictures officially released by Hasbro!

Whats the the black n white tv look here?

It's her Shield uniform from the Time Runs Out storyline, which lead into the 2015 Secret Wars event. Several heroes were working for old man Rogers, who was heading Shield at the time. They wore grey, black, and white versions of their normal uniforms.

Found the Strange wave at Wal-Mart today. Picked up Iron Fist. Still no signs of Abomb and Space venom waves.

Same here. I think those two waves are gonna be like the giant man wave ( prior to its reissue ) and the tru xmen wave.

Disclaimer: I absolutely love the fact we are getting so many waves this year and kind of hope it continues. 7 waves is spectacular.

Main comment: I see a problem with having 7 waves retail wise because there simply isn't enough shelf space or turnover for retailers to order the product. You have waves like Red Onslaught and Absorbing Man eating up the shelf space when the next wave comes out, it creates an issue of retailers not seeing the need for new product. And I can't imagine that Hasbro produced less of some waves than others (unless they are retailer exclusives of course), so that tells me that some waves are sitting in the warehouse waiting for openings on stock.

Unfortunately then along comes the next quarter/trimester ads and the retailers order up the new product. Or the X-Men wave was heavily promoted one. So the Giant Man wave gets overlooked in favor of the new waves, and we have X-Men, Red Onslaught and Absorbing Man on the shelves.

Now we are on to the third trimester/last quarter, and the Dr. Strange wave is the last wave of the year. Maybe retailers will order what they consider to be "backstock" waves If the shelves get empty enough. But I'm kind of thinking that we will continue to see mostly Absorbing Man, Red Onslaught (because they have yet to sell out really), X-Men and Dr. Strange waves, with smatterings of the other three.

And then maybe next year or late this year if the shelves are empty enough we will see the stock on those three waves arrive, as we are already seeing a little of with the Giant Man wave. Timed right about time the next Spider-Man, GOTG and X-Men waves hit retail (Jan-April I assume). The question really is how are those going to get stocked and will any get shafted.

It's too many waves retail wise but a great amount if you're not ordering online. It almost makes it worthwhile to just order everything in cases (though I just can't do it with the Dr. Strange bloat.) Something to consider for next year for sure.

To add: Maybe 7 waves is just too ambitious and they should cut it back to 5-6 at most. Released every two months or something, so that there is time for turnover. I dunno. Online buyers lose out that way, but 6 waves would still be a lot.

Not to mention that a lot of places still have older items clogging the shelves. Many of the local Targets around here are still drowning in Allfather-wave and Rhino-wave figures, Walmarts have still got a goodly amount of Hulkbuster-wave figures and the Thanos-wave Hellcat/Spider-Woman figures, and the only reason the TRUs are getting new stock is because that awesome sale they just had helped clear out the old stuff.

I love seeing all these waves, and I want more, but there's clearly a need to address the "linger" problem with these past few waves. And it can't be narrowed down to 'oh, X characters don't sell, or Y characters sell too well, or Z case ratio bogs down the pegs,' because none of those actually stay consistent. We've seen double-packing of characters, double-packing of BAF parts, and 8-unique-figures-with-no-parts-doubling waves, and they all seem to just chill on the shelf regardless.

I'd love to just order cases online, but 1) My wife and I love the thrill of the hunt, and 2) we're not always in a position to drop $160+ on toys in one shot, especially if it's a preorder situation (things will undoubtedly come up that require we use the money set aside). Hell, we had to keep the money for the X-Men wave in my Paypal account so we wouldn't accidentally spend it, and we still had to dip into it for a couple sudden expenses that came up (again, thank you TRU for having that sale and having the whole wave).

In the end, I know I'm gonna have to go for a mix of online ordering + hunting to get what I want to add to the collection, but the pegwarming makes it harder to anticipate which way I'll have to go for which figures.

So yeah, I think knocking the wave count per year down to 5-6 is a great idea. Maybe find a way to make every case a set of eight different figures, because even at five waves a year, that's 45 new ML (counting BAFs), and that's not even getting into store/convention exclusives.

Gah yes, I didn't even get into the glut of Hulkbuster, All father, Rhino and Thanos waves out there. I can practically guarantee you that in at least 1 out of 3 stores I go into I could find a Thundra or Hellcat. And for waves that are now well over a year old, that's really not such a great situation.

And I agree, it's not a situation where you could say that certain characters are not selling. The above examples are just that, examples, there are plenty of other characters from last years waves still easily found. Granted there may be one figure a wave that is harder to find, but that, not the lone shelf warmer, is the exception.

I feel like with the huge amount of waves the last two years brick and mortar have reached a serious overstock problem. I'm not even sure my suggestion of scaling it back to 5-6 waves a year would solve the problem, not at first, maybe by 2018. Because I think it's already going to be an issue for next year, at least at first.

Maybe the solution is (and I'm gonna duck here to avoid spitballs and flying vegetables) cut the waves back to 5/6 AND make 1 or 2 of those waves exclusives, maybe even online exclusives. Harder to find? Yes. Potentially knocking out some of the overstock product in a couple of years? I think likely. If I had to order waves by the case because that was the only way to get them, I'm going to do it if I want certain figures bad enough. And most of the time cases online aren't that much more than retail, maybe a 10% markup, which is really not that bad, considering the time/effort wasted in finding the new stuff at retail.

That or, like the Ant-Man wave, it's time for Hasbro to give the okay to retailers to clearance last years stuff at the very least, or however that works. Not sure it's hasbro or a retailer decision. At some point though, they gotta move out.

I think this would be a better solution. There's a number of figures I haven't bought because, despite the fact that they're older, they still command full price. I only bought Tiger Shark because he was knocked down to $5, and you'd better believe I'd go crazy on the older waves if they went down in price. The fact that the closest Walmart still has a couple of Boomerangs from the UGG wave at full price, when they already cleared out the Ant-Man wave to deep (like, $2-ish) discount a while ago, really chafes me - because I want Boomerang (Superior Foes go!), but I'm hard-pressed to pay that much for an older figure when I've got newer ones that I'm going to need to actively hunt for.

We're at the back-end of 2016. It's time to let the 2015 figures head to the clearance section (or, hell, send 'em to TJMaxx, Ross, and the like - they'd likely hit a slightly different audience from the standard big-boxers).

I'm no expert, but I think you all have the business model incorrect for who can say or dictate what.

Hasbro sold retailers cases upon cases of figures and were paid based on whatever agreement they had. Now Hasbro is completely out of the equation when it comes to pricing or discounting. They give MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price), but the store can sell them for whatever price they want.

So can Hasbro, I love that Hasbro has such a large ebay presence now and if you were looking hard enough you could have had the entire Hulkbuster and Ulton wave for $6 each, with free shipping! Plus they discount items quicker on ebay than HTS.

Also part of the problem is shared SKUs the store carries Spider-man legends at a $20 price point, they can't discount Boomerang without discounting all other Spider-man waves because the SKUs are the same.

Some retailers discount items based on how long they have been in stock Like Gamestop. They actually discount so aggressively that some manufacturers don't appreciate them since they quickly discount an item and the perceived value is then lessened since it can be purchased for less than the MSRP.

Just some food for thought

That was the "however that works" part. I wasn't sure if the distributor or the retailer makes thoese decisions, but that's quite possible it's on the retailer end. The SKU factor is definitely a problem, as you're right, they wouldn't want to discount Green Goblin figures and Absorbing Man figures at the same time (not yet for AM anyways.) Still, with the glut of backproduct there's gotta be something they can do. It feels like at times I will take weeks between going hunting, and when I do, I feel like I'm seeing exactly the same figures at the stores, which would make me think little or nothing is being sold.

Kind of the downside to so many waves. Retailer stock probably worked much better when it was 3-4 waves a year, but then, as collectors we are left with nowhere near as much to choose from.

Way back when ( 98 ) when i worked at target we would pull old stock down after x amount of time to work in the new then as the new would sell or discontiued items removed the old stock would be worked back in (the idea being that those seeking the older stock would be apt to buy them, the old stock having been removed so the demand would be somewhat back). Anymore nothing new is ether ordered or put out ( as evidenced by the heinous amount of old crap especially in the starwars and wwe crap still hogging space at full price) unless everything is sold....so it seems.

Wish brick n mortar stores would do this mor, especially walmart with teh wrestlers and that the women would quit being shortpacked. I hate the fact that if i want a becky lynch figure i have no recourse but to pay 24+ for her from a dickbag scalper... ( more than double the f&$king price)