Got to give props to Mattel...
 

So I've done my share of bitching and moaning about Mattel and their 3.75 - 4" lines. But yesterday at Walmart I realized something very important. While the articulation on the Green Lantern and Young Justice 4" lines is nothing short of stupid, Mattel absolutely has Hasbro beat on distribution.

Compare for example distribution on the three big movie toy lines this summer:

Thor - Wave 2 is just now showing up here and there! There are a number of characters that are virtually impossible to find at retail and often quite expensive on line. With the deluxe packs good luck finding anything past wave 1.

Cap - Better than Thor, but I have yet to see any single pack Hydra goons at retail. And while not impossible to find, Red Skull and Crossbones have been challenging for some people to get a hold of. What I mainly see at stores is still a lot of wave 1 and 2 peg warmers.

Green Lantern - I have seen four full waves of single packs, store exclusives, vehicles, etc. in large quantities at retail. There has yet to be a character released that I couldn't find at retail. And new product continues to flow! I just found the new four pack with Salaak at Walmart yesterday. There also tends to be multiple ways to get most characters (single pack, four pack, two pack, etc.) Now look at the Young Justice line. It's only been out at retail for about a month and they have already released two or three waves! Good grief.

So for quality of figures there is no doubt that Hasbro is king of the 3.75 to 4" world. But in terms of distribution and availability at retail...sorry Hasbro, Mattel clearly wins the prize.

Discuss.

DCUC distro here still sucks goat, so no distro props from me, that's for sure.

I dont agree with this. The Mattel brands that nobody is buying will be shelfwarming as much as the Green Lantern and Thor lines. I cant give props to them for distribution purposes when doesnt it mainly have to do with the ordering of each particular retail store or chain?

Yeah, but for partially that same reason large amounts of Green Lantern and Young Justice crap is going to rot on shelves and eventually be clearanced. That's bad for the lines. Harder to find Hasbro stuff moves fast and let's the lines continue for a long time.

Mattel gets no respect from me for flooding the market with trash. I would like Hasbro to find some middle ground, though.

Edit: Sorry, Omega. You posted that before I got done typing. I think we're saying the same thing.

Hey, I'm not arguing against the fact that the product is crap and will shelfwarm. It is and it does. What I'm saying is that new stuff comes out on their lines at a very regular interval and in large enough quantities to always be found at retail. Hasbro on the other hand has longer times between waves and there always seems to be portions of their lines that are brutal hard to find.

The reason why those products from Hasbro are hard to find is that there is more of a demand. I dont know too many people clamoring for the Mattel lines that you mentioned while most Hasbro lines are heavily collected.

Well, I do agree that there seems to be more demand for the Hasbro stuff, but Mattel is a bigger company. They probably have much larger production runs and that's why distribution seems to be better.

This sometimes has more to do with stores than distribution. While Hasbro and Mattel are both victoms of godaweful distribution, a lot of it also comes down to the way stores like the box retailers order their product (POS it's called, and it is indeed a P.O.S. system).
POS kills many popular lines, and decimates unpopular lines.
In my area, Green Lantern toys were *the* hot item. Screw Cap, Thor, DotM... all those lines were rotting on the shelves. But GL was flying. However, within two waves, all the stores had reordered and reordered and restocked and restocked. Until it seems everyone had all those figures. Now they're clogging the shelves and almost nothing from the newer waves has been able to make it out. I've never seen a single packaged Tomar Re, and I've only seen Gallus Zed once. No one's restocking anything newer than second wave, because it seems they've sold all they're gonna sell from the first two.
And I've seen nothing from the Movie Masters past the first wave. (Those sold decently for the first couple weeks)
For my area, POS killed this line.

I don't really collect anything DC (Batman and Superman, but that's it) so I'm not in tune with Mattel's distribution, but I think a lot of distribution issues have to do with store managers (or who ever is ordering that store's stock) not knowing anything about toys. I don't work in retail, but I'm pretty sure what stores get is not quite the guessing game most store guys will claim it is,.. "i'm not sure when we'll get more MU in,.. the computer knows when we're low and auto-orders for us" is what TRU guy told me recently. I have two degrees; I'm no fool (just very immature), if they wanted to do whatever work was needed to get certain stock in, I'm sure they could.

You're very close.
Most box retailers like Walmart, K-Mart, Target have a computer blindely ordering their stock. Can't speak for Target or K-Mart, but Walmart takes this to the extreme in that POS even orders perishable things, like Grapes.
All items are entered into the computer system, and as they pass through the register and are scanned, that item is taken out of inventory.
And as such, the computer sees that they're sitting on 50 Deluxe Transformers, and will not order a new shipment from the warehouse. It doesn't care that those 50 deluxe transformers are 32 Mudflaps, and 18 Wheelies, and absolutely nothing else.
It also doesn't matter that a figure may ring up by it's specific name "Hal Jordan." The computer still only registers it as GL Movie Masters" and sees there are 10 other GL Movie Masters in stock, but will only reorder when the stock deplenishes down to say, four (Pulling that number out of my ass).

That's the biggest problem.
Mattel/Hasbro distribution plays a part. But that only matters when it's getting newer waves out to the retailer warehouses. But it's the POS that kills us.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense.. use the technology. And since Walmarts and Targets are wiping out malls, shopping centers, and specialty stores, all across the country, they're doing something right. I'm just saying that IF they wanted to get specific stock of something in particular (whether it's a food brand or toyline), I'm sure there are ways. And back to business, I don't see a big reason for Walmart or Target managers to get more hands on with something like this, but I think TRU should,.. since that's their specialty (toys), AND because I think it would help keep them relevant. Let's be honest, the only reason anyone would buy at TRU over Target or Walmart is because of selection; certainly not because of price tags.

Having worked with it on a personal level for nearly five years straight (Going from two previous companies that hand ordered everything), I can say POS causes way more trouble than it's worth. *Especially* when it decides you need 50 more cases of grapes when you're already sitting on 100 in your backroom, and just threw away 20 cases that turned rotten before you could even get them onto the floor.
Toys really isn't much different than food in some ways. It has a shelf life now, and the older something is, the less desirable it is to buy. POS works fine though for non-perishable items, like paper plates, cleaners, light bulbs and stuff like that.

Other than that, I *completely* agree with you. TRU definately should be different as this is their specialty (Unfortunately my local TRU seems to care even less than their competition).
Also managers do have some say, though not as much as you might think.

This makes sense. That would explain why most to the Wal-Mart's around me seem to stop carrying MU together. If they are ran by the same Manger and that Manager feels like that toy line isn't selling. He prolly just took it off the system for the stores he runs.

Yea, shitty distribution here to. No props from me either.

I dont think a movie line should get Kudos for distribution. It was for a movie, and Mattel only had 1 movie line when Hasbro had 3. The fact that Hasbro was able to put Thor, Captain America, AND Transformers in its Giant Abundance in stores outranks anything Green Lantern ever did.

The POS is the problem currently at my Target with Joes. With 10 Arctic Destros sitting there basically the system only sees a case worth of Joes sitting on the shelf not needing reorder. Hasbro needs to be more proactive with either issueing RTVs (return to vendor) for shlef warming product or ... especially in the case of over ordered movie lines setting a limit or distribution guidline for retailers to follow so that the life of a line doesnt die with horrifically over ordered initial waves.


As far as believing your average store associate knows more then he is letting on ... Generally he doesnt. Most stores dont know what they are getting until a few days out when the truck manifest drops into the system and even then generally just recieveing managers have acces to that unless its a huge set and the the dept manageer are given a heads up to be prepared.

But you forget about all the other stuff those companies make. How's distribution for Transformers, GI Joe and STar Wars for Hasbro? How's distribution for DCUC, WWE and Batman for Mattel?
Or with that, how do you know your area hasn't already gotten future waves of Captain America and Thor unless you are at the store EVERY SINGLE DAY?

In general, unless tied to a major push like a movie, Mattel distribution is laughable. And that's assuming they remember to actually SHIP the toys to retailers to begin with.

So I'm not going to give Mattel props for doing their job and getting toys on shelves.

It may not be so much a problem with manufacturer distribution as it is with the retailers procedures.

1) Retailers buy a bunch at the start of the line and/or at the start of their seasonal setup. They get a bulk discount this way (I mean, did you see how much TF:DOTM stuff was at Walmart when it first came out? They bought a billion tons of the stuff; and by doing so they could offer the Deluxe figures at $9.88 instead of the $11.88 they are asking for the Generations stuff)
2) They "skim sales off the top" by trying to have their stuff first-to-market and in abundance.
3) The Point-Of-Sale (POS) system tracks where the stuff is being sold. It sends more product to that store to at least cover what was sold (maybe more. . .if it thinks it is selling well at a particular location, why not send it even more?).
4) The store gets whatever is in the distribution center. Say, if they quickly sold a bunch from wave 1, the distribution center probably still has wave 1 it wants to get rid of (they will rotate their inventory, first-in-first-out). That's kinda how the stores that actually have shoppers that want to buy stuff get clogged with the waves they've already purchased.
5) The stores treat it all as one product, not individual waves or case assortments or figures, as was said. So once they're clogged with product that is not moving, it is stuck there until the line is dropped entirely. (I've still got a Walmart that is LOADED with GI Joe: Rise of Cobra movie figures--at full price!)
6) And in the end, they work and work and work to automate it as fully as possible so they can hire someone at the lowest cost possible to "run" things. Stocking a shelf is pretty simple. Scanning a barcode to SEE if something is in stock is pretty simple. Letting that person have RESPONSIBILITY in doing ordering takes some training and some trust. Somewhere along the way that's going to translate to higher pay. That's why Walmart has evolved to the point that they don't have a TOY department manager anymore; that person is over toys AND I think electronics now. Because they don't have ordering responsibilities; they just are to make sure the stuff is on the shelf correctly and neatly; someone at the main office chooses what and how much the store will carry, and the computer maintains it. So if you actually found a stock person who cares about the inventory (which is unusual), they really might not be able to do anything about it. They can't clearance the slow-selling junk until the store manager or someone even higher says so, and the computer system might not let them.

Online toy stores don't seem to have to much of a problem of getting their inventory in, for all the waves. But that's because they care, can clearance individual items when they choose, and don't have as much motive to buy in bulk.

You said very good!Thanks,I will remember!