Making FTITL legends a store exclusive hurts.

[mrh]

The Retailers WANT these as exclusives because they drive traffic to the store and website (as we all know). It's a business decision; that's why it won't change

[SteveHulk]

Apr 10, 2021 14:10:50 GMT -5 Fighter Hayabusa said:

A lot of these are niche figures that need a small production run to get made. If not for these store exclusives a lot of these characters would never see the light of day. Better to be hard to get than not able to get at all.

Amen. I'd much rather have a figure of someone that's an exclusive or hard to find - than NO figure of them.

[mrhoss]

Not sure how Hasbro offers up their Target and Wal-Mart exclusives to other online retailers after a certain time period. Think about that. Hasbro can resell Marvel, Star Wars,and Transformers exclusives to other retailers, but somehow Target and Wal-Mart won't allow Mattel to do the same with WWE.

[TheChamp420]

I saw Don Muraco Survivor Series set at Walmart, Big Lots & Shoprite (my local grocery store)

[~*Young $ Money*~]

I think the only one of these exclusives I found was superstar billy Graham. My stores hardly get new stuff unless people buy it that quick. I have had to go on eBay for most especially the Walmart ones. In all honesty I’m just getting tired of this. Mattel has their hands tied with legends which I understand but I’m tired of A. Not finding the stuff in store and getting it at reasonable prices and B. The same names over and over and over. Yeah I get it people miss out on stuff the release early in the line or they need big names to be released in sets but I just think this is overkill and can’t rememberer a set really being all new first time in the line.

[stc13]

Apr 11, 2021 6:44:22 GMT -5 mrhoss said:

Not sure how Hasbro offers up their Target and Wal-Mart exclusives to other online retailers after a certain time period. Think about that. Hasbro can resell Marvel, Star Wars,and Transformers exclusives to other retailers, but somehow Target and Wal-Mart won't allow Mattel to do the same with WWE.

Hasbro isn't without their share of faults and impossible to find exclusives (still never found the WM Worthy Cap), but they have a lot more leverage with retailers.  Star Wars and Marvel are iconic properties.  If you think back to when the CE program started, Walmart and Targets were skipping entire waves of product, weren't carrying premium products (still largely the case), and pretty much all of the store exclusives had been dropped.

Not saying that justifies it, because I absolutely hate this approach.  But Mattel isn't playing with a great hand.  The recent RR set and Fan Takeover mysteriously shifting over to Amazon without explanation makes me think even the exclusives haven't won them a lot of brownie points with big box retail.

[LaParka]

Hasbro also makes their exclusives in solid packed cases of 4,6,or 8 figures and not packed in the asst hoping you get 1 or 2 , but a lot of the cases got shuffled for a bit as well there were target and walmart cases without the collectors editions. Look back at some of the other CE figures Rock, Undertaker made readily available. Peyton, Billie Kay, Sonya, Liv, Paige and Zelina have mainline figures basic and elite. It was nice to order the few from Ringside Blassie, Graham, Rocky Johnson, Mae Young, Hayes. The prices online aren't that bad for Davey Boy so hoping the same holds true for Kama, Warlord and Colonel Mustafa.

[PJ]

Mattel doesn’t ship to individual stores of big retail chains. They ship all the products to either one main distribution center or various distribution centers for each retailer. Then those distribution centers ship it to the various regions distribution centers/warehouses. Who then ship it to the stores in that region they service. And they only ship it to stores once that store’s inventory gets to 4 or less.

So when people steal figures either by just taking them or going to self checkout and ringing up something else that isn’t street dated or is cheaper. Or they hide figures in the stores to “come back for later” That all messes up the inventory of that store. Because they have nothing on the pegs but they’ll also say there’s nothing in back which is true because they were stolen by the ways mentioned above so the D/C isn’t sending more because those missing figures are still in the system as being in the store. So unless someone changes the count to zero they’re not getting more at that store until the DC/warehouse starts their stocking of the store for the holiday season.

The same happens with Hasbro product too. The only difference is with Hasbro they hire people to go into the various stores and pull and stock their product from the store’s stock rooms.

[mrh]

Apr 11, 2021 10:09:48 GMT -5 PJ said:

Mattel doesn’t ship to individual stores of big retail chains. They ship all the products to either one main distribution center or various distribution centers for each retailer. Then those distribution centers ship it to the various regions distribution centers/warehouses. Who then ship it to the stores in that region they service. And they only ship it to stores once that store’s inventory gets to 4 or less.

So when people steal figures either by just taking them or going to self checkout and ringing up something else that isn’t street dated or is cheaper. Or they hide figures in the stores to “come back for later” That all messes up the inventory of that store. Because they have nothing on the pegs but they’ll also say there’s nothing in back which is true because they were stolen by the ways mentioned above so the D/C isn’t sending more because those missing figures are still in the system as being in the store. So unless someone changes the count to zero they’re not getting more at that store until the DC/warehouse starts their stocking of the store for the holiday season.

The same happens with Hasbro product too. The only difference is with Hasbro they hire people to go into the various stores and pull and stock their product from the store’s stock rooms.

100% -- people stealing and other BS distorts the demand for figure for Target and Walmart. Remember -- the decision is usually ONLY be a made by a computer looking at stock numbers. Human beings barely have any role to play anymore -- even if the pegs are empty, they can't do much to get product ordered if the computer doesn't do it

[ChuckPOORis55 Cody Gang 4 Lyfe]

Apr 11, 2021 22:17:25 GMT -5 mrh said:

Apr 11, 2021 10:09:48 GMT -5 PJ said:

Mattel doesn’t ship to individual stores of big retail chains. They ship all the products to either one main distribution center or various distribution centers for each retailer. Then those distribution centers ship it to the various regions distribution centers/warehouses. Who then ship it to the stores in that region they service. And they only ship it to stores once that store’s inventory gets to 4 or less.

So when people steal figures either by just taking them or going to self checkout and ringing up something else that isn’t street dated or is cheaper. Or they hide figures in the stores to “come back for later” That all messes up the inventory of that store. Because they have nothing on the pegs but they’ll also say there’s nothing in back which is true because they were stolen by the ways mentioned above so the D/C isn’t sending more because those missing figures are still in the system as being in the store. So unless someone changes the count to zero they’re not getting more at that store until the DC/warehouse starts their stocking of the store for the holiday season.

The same happens with Hasbro product too. The only difference is with Hasbro they hire people to go into the various stores and pull and stock their product from the store’s stock rooms.

100% -- people stealing and other BS distorts the demand for figure for Target and Walmart. Remember -- the decision is usually ONLY be a made by a computer looking at stock numbers. Human beings barely have any role to play anymore -- even if the pegs are empty, they can't do much to get product ordered if the computer doesn't do it

Also not recognized is that big box stores methods for stocking doesn't translate well to toys/collectbales at all. The general ideology is that each peg is supposed to sell 1 item per week. So of they order a case of 20 hammers they expect to sell 1 of those hammers per week and that will last them 20 weeks. But that's not how toys/collectbales work, a collector/scalper walks in and sees they have the newest set and cleans the entire peg in one purchase, well those 6 figures were supposed to last 6 weeks so guess how long it takes for the computer to order new stock.