[Peteparker]

So I'm having trouble understanding 'running change'.

From what I know, 'Running change' is when the company makes a change to the way the figure is produced, never to go back to the 'old way' once the 'new way' is established.

If that's the definition, than all of the variants are running changes as well. Hasbro has always started with the under-produced version, only produced it for a short while, and then changed over to the one that is in always in rev cases later.

Even when those versions get rev'd, as in the cases of the new card art on the first wave of series 3, it's STILL a running change. They'll never go back once they've moved forward.

The only reason you'd see an older version put on shelves after a new rev is because of distribution. Places like Walmart and Target order in bulk and fill up the warehouses. Because they order at different times, they end up with different variations of the same cases. Then the timing as to when those cases hit actual shelves is completely dependent on each individual's store's replenishment need.

Even packaging and figure production errors are corrected (and sometimes corrected again) during the entire production run. These aren't variants, they're running changes too.

So basically, there's no such thing as 'variants' really. Only running changes to production over a long period of time.