[Captain Nash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boy Blunder

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.