Man, I agree with these sentiments and observations of late.
Old stock and reissued stock is clogging up pegs.
I desperately want more Gungans to army build, let alone not finding the whole ANH wave. I want the NEW stuff (and with their wave specific BaD part, not the reissued part from a different wave).
I really think Hasbro is screwing the pooch so to speak with all of this. My personal opinion is that new figures should SOLELY come in new cases for awhile BEFORE refresh cases come out. I actually found an Ewok set but it had the freakin' Terminator droid part in it, instead of the blue droid part. I bought it knowing I wanted a second set, but it still irked the crap out of me that this is a NEW wave and yet I only found the REFRESH figure.
And please don't get me started on the Imperial Scanning trooper (and for that matter Ugnaught 2). Can't even find these guys in ANY wave, new or refresh.
Yes, Hasbro we all get it, you want the most out of your molds for figures.
However....refreshing them into cases that should be reserved for newer figures is not the way to go. How about doing some ACTUAL market research. Find out which figures sell well and people are asking for more of. Then guess what....yep, you already have an answer for that, it's called the LEGENDS line. NOT Legacy. Spaces resevred for Legacy should be new figures only. I get the repacks. You don't want to "force" people to buy a whole wave of figures when some are obscure, so you think by offering us popular characters with the same droid parts you're doing us a favor. Maybe...but I'd say more often than not, this is NOT the case. If you seriously want me to pay more upwards or more than $8 per figure, then yo've got to make available NEW figures, not repacks. And not even refreshed ones from previous waves.
It's obvious you're not doing this market research. How do we know? Simple, just look in this thread for example for all of those folks complaining about still seeing 2008 figures on store shelves. Or what of those figures from early 2009. It's verging on December now. We shouldn't be seeing figures older than 6 months on the pegs. Like that or not, it's REALITY.
If a figure is deemed a stinker, oh well. Sometimes you've got to take a hit on those. Maybe some additional research up front about what figures we want would help. You've done some of that, but you definitely can do more.
For example, Yarna. I personally think she's a great figure for what she is, but she'd have best been served as an exclusive, either on card or in a battle pack. More examples are aplenty.Were I not at work at the moment, I'd expound upon this some more. But I think I've stated enough for the moment.