I never really understood why Target dropped the Bravo vehicles. After RoC, my store had Alphas and the Mechs, but never carried Bravo. I know some Walmart stores carried Bravo, mine did for maybe the first wave, but then dropped all Joe vehicles. I've recently seen some Bravo vehicles at Walmart again, but I don't think they carried the Sky Striker but Target did.
I'm wishing now I'd gone ahead and bought one of the early brown HISS Tanks but I was holding out for black and I only ever saw that once and didn't buy (kicking myself). I'm happy to have the Crimson version, though, because it looks like they're cutting back on the new movie HISS Tank, dropping the rubber treads and going back to wheels.
One thing that baffles me is that after RoC, stores really dumped GI Joe from their shelves and it's been harder than hell to find stuff or the last 2 years but they don't seem to have the same problems with other lines that don't sell. Even with the huge amount of unsold product, how long did Target dedicate decent shelf space to Iron Man 2? How about Walmart, which, while carrying that, completely removed Joe from a lot of its stores? At least Joe was moving forward with new product, the IM stuff was stagnant for all of 2011 and really never got beyond the first 2, maybe 3 waves back in 2010 before it gridlocked.
It feels like Hasbro gave up on Joe for the last 2 years. Even though the figures, for the most part, were decent and I'm sure they sold some stock, it's like Hasbro was deflated that RoC wasn't a huge hit and an instant sellout of all toys and they just gave up. Even though the PoC line has some of the best GI Joe action figures ever, it's like they, as a company, couldn't be bothered to try and sell it to retail. You could see that the Joe team still had love for the line, but somewhere up the chain of command they just abandoned all hope.
The crappy part is that with the market today, if you look at the Retaliation line, it really is a lesser line than RoC/Poc/30th/Renegades. Articulation is missing, sculpted in accessories for the Battle Kata figures, most of the vehicles are repaints... And now, I just got home from Target where they bumped the price of Joe figures to $10.99.
They just pulled the Vintage Collection figures back a $1 to $8.99 and then raised Joe $2? They're out of their damned mind. If this is a primer for the Retaliation figures, they can count me out. There's not enough I like in that new line to get me to pay that kind of money.
E...