[Fortune]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peteparker

I fully understand that based on your perspective and morals, this could be considered stealing.

Two counter points I'll bring up are that 1, the returned-to Walmart has not yet sold the remaining 5, and still has the ability to sell them at full price. Secondly, I could not confirm the price of the other 6, as I only bought one. It's possible they're staggered prices based on the age of the figure, especially since the other two clearanced figures I previously found there were $4 a piece.

I personally don't think Walmart as a conglomerate, or even a customer of Hasbro will allow such a minor difference to stop distributing the product altogether. The cut of the product from one store certainly had no effect on the rest of the stores continuing to carry it.

Based on the prices these items are offered at when ordering directly from Hasbro or through Diamond distribution, Walmart is almost certainly completely screwing Hasbro on the price. According to Dateline's Walmart special, this is common practice for the store, to tell the manufacturer that they will not carry the product unless it is offered at their price (lower than anywhere else).

I play this trading card game called yugioh. A few years back the company that ran it here in the US (then upperdeck) had a huge problem with Wal mart. Bassicly Wal mart made up about 53% of yugiohs sales nationwide so they told the company that if they wanted Walmart to continue carrying their product they had to sell it to them for less then 80% of what they sell it to everyone else for. The company said no way and walmart dropped them for a long time until the company played ball. At which point Walmart demanded a further discount.

Long story short ...Wal Mart is evil. Worst part is whenever we try to stick it to the evil empire they punish the little man but taking away jobs or benefits from employess. Although this little trick is no way even close to enough for walmart to even notice in their overall totals.