I saw this coming from a mile away. First, you have the even in 1997 it was bad move of placing one new figure in an assortment. You have the compressed release schedule. You have the fact that despite making $$$ at the box office, these toys aren't moving like they used to, or even like LEGOs. Kids go for LEGO and role play. Adults for BS and more expensive options. Hasbro seems stuck in the middle, dying from a thousand cuts of slicensing, the shrinking of brick and motar and a clinging to outdated release patterns.
If it's going to be a movie a year from here on out, Hasbro needs to jettison assortments. It needs to be here's the fall/winter release for the movie, here's the spring for the DVD and that's it. No waves 2 and 3, no bottlenecking, no spacing **** out. Here it is. Nice big supply, sells out, it's gone. Moving on. It's that or oblivion. I don't know why some people think Vintage is going to solve any of this. It would be nice, but TVC went away last time in part because of what's happening right now. The last wave was cast off to Amazon/EE/etc. and no matter how cool the cards are, the line will fail if they can't sort out distribution. Distribution has really been the issue for Hasbro across its ranges and brands going back to at least 2008, 2009; it was a regular topic of concern in the old Q&As and I remember talking to DePriest about it at NYCC 2011. We've got it figured out, he said.
5 POA is not the issue; 6 inch is not the issue. The line would be dead if either failed. The issue is Hasbro doesn't know its market, because either market is changing too fast for it to accommodate, or they haven't learned to change with it.
My two cents.