Hasbro Working On Individual Figure Ordering System
Friday, June 20th, 2014 4:45AM CDT
Categories: Toy News, Company NewsPosted by: Autobot032 Views: 23,891
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You can read the full article at this link: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/19/ ... re-orders/
We've quoted some of the most relevant snippets below:
This week, Hasbro, for the first time, has decided to make individual figures available to the direct market and Diamond. This is a pretty big deal. For those who do not know, usually figures like these can only be ordered by the case, which Hasbro controls the packouts to. So instead of buying a case and getting only one of the most desired figure, now your local comic shop for example can order as many as they want of the “short packed” character.
To say their (Hasbro) distribution is “spotty” is an understatement. Pegs sit empty for months, stores get 1 or 2 cases and are not restocked for months on end. Filling the lines and cases with unwanted characters or making the case packouts skew towards reissues of the same characters that are still sitting unsold on the pegs.
It should be noted that big box retailers such as Wal*Mart are somewhat to blame for this, rather than just Hasbro alone. By dictating which Transformers toy lines they'll sell at a given time, for example, movie toys over the Animated line, retailers can have too much power some of the time. Cutting Animated out of sales space was one of the factors that helped lead to the cancellation of the final waves.
Some good examples of how assorted cases instead of direct figure ordering can affect the line can be seen below:
Skrapnel and Tailgate
And Cosmos and Swerve, along with the previously overstocked figures that helped delay their release
Hopefully, this new ordering system will help all of us obtain the figures we desire at an easier rate and for less than we'd normally spend in our sometimes fruitless searches.
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Posted by Burn on June 20th, 2014 @ 5:24am CDT
Posted by Cobalt Prime on June 20th, 2014 @ 5:50am CDT
Posted by wolverinetodd on June 20th, 2014 @ 7:19am CDT
BTW, the wave of Deluxe figures containing Waspinator, Dreadwing, Goldfire (Goldbug), and Skids... was that a limited release? I got three of the four from http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com (not surprisingly their IT department forgot to add Skids to the listing at the same time as the other three) a while back and missed out on Skids when he was finally listed. Now none of the four are listed at all. So, limited release?
In the case of that particular wave, since they are working of the Individual Figure Ordering System, they need to fix it where certain waves could be ordered as well. Of course, just ordering an assortment of individual Skids and perhaps a few Waspinators (he'd make a great Deluxe Insecticon Venom repaint) would be great too.
Posted by Megatron Wolf on June 20th, 2014 @ 8:04am CDT
Posted by Optimizzy on June 20th, 2014 @ 8:24am CDT
Seriously, this is only good news. I don't buy Transformers from walmart. I can't because they don't HAVE ANY.
Posted by Optimizzy on June 20th, 2014 @ 8:29am CDT
Megatron Wolf wrote:i dont think this is going to help, most people have to shop mass retail for tansformers and they dont know a damn thing about their individual departments these days. The person in charge of the boys section isnt going to have a clue which figure is more wanted or popular and the store is just going to order a default case like normal or order one or two of each. Only way this will work is if you can go into a store & have them order the figures that you want if they dont have them in stock. Nice to see them addressing the issue but in typical hasbro style they're far from fixing it.
well...I see your point but...an improvement is still an improvement. If Target, ToysRus and kmart can get a better selection that only helps them. Walmart simply does not care.
But that's fine. Kids who want Transformers will get them from stores that carry them. Some people will not know that's true. But most kids do. My boys don't like non-transformable transformers. So I think there is hope. And this helps.
Posted by SW's SilverHammer on June 20th, 2014 @ 8:45am CDT
Posted by Noideaforaname on June 20th, 2014 @ 9:22am CDT
And I'm guessing, since it takes months to manufacture/ship out the actual toys, this might mean pre-ordering.
Still, should be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't at all expect this to be completely revolutionary, wiping out scalpers or all distribution woes or anything, but any little help is a good thing.
And I really doubt regular retail will ever pick this up, otherwise they may just go with BB and Optimus...
Posted by lucentgalaxy on June 20th, 2014 @ 10:21am CDT
It would have been great had Mattel done this back during the 2002 Masters of the Universe run. That line was a nightmare to collect.
Posted by lucentgalaxy on June 20th, 2014 @ 10:25am CDT
Posted by megatronus on June 20th, 2014 @ 10:51am CDT
Noideaforaname wrote:It should be noted this is NOT affecting Transformers or regular retail.
And I'm guessing, since it takes months to manufacture/ship out the actual toys, this might mean pre-ordering.
Still, should be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't at all expect this to be completely revolutionary, wiping out scalpers or all distribution woes or anything, but any little help is a good thing.
And I really doubt regular retail will ever pick this up, otherwise they may just go with BB and Optimus...
Precisely - big box retailers won't see a change. They still need to order case assortments (I doubt they would want to change that actually; the buyers don't have enough specific knowledge to want to parse individual characters).
This is more targeted to Diamond & BBTS to help smooth out volatility in the collector market. It won't completely alleviate the pain, but certainly, if the plan becomes a reality, it will lessen it.
Posted by BERSEKAEL on June 20th, 2014 @ 11:21am CDT
Autobot032 wrote: for example, movie toys over the Animated line...
or Animated line over Movie toys, for example
Posted by GuyIncognito on June 20th, 2014 @ 11:48am CDT
BERSEKAEL wrote:Autobot032 wrote: for example, movie toys over the Animated line...
or Animated line over Movie toys, for example
Huh?
Posted by Wolfman Jake on June 20th, 2014 @ 1:00pm CDT
Posted by Nemesis Maximo on June 20th, 2014 @ 2:44pm CDT
Posted by Ultra Markus on June 20th, 2014 @ 7:54pm CDT