Oh! That one. Isn't there another Soundwave out now that's orange and actually plays music? I guess that's the one I meant. Too many names to keep track of for every toy lines now. I did see that MP Soundwave once and that was it.
Never heard of it, but it's not their Soundwave exclusive. Regardless, there are clearly examples of exclusives that are tough to find at retail, even at TRU.
As Jeff posted above, they did put the preorder up when they said, so you can't be mad at TRU that you assumed by meant on on. You do know what assume means, right? Relax, Justin, you'll find them in stores in a month (hopefully. Hard to have hope with the lack of product since the 4th). But in the end, it's only a toy to be bitter about this.
Actually, I can be mad whoever I want because America is still a free country.
Not really that upset about it, but I do think it was handled really poorly on several fronts.
I guess my thinking is not everyone would be able to get a pre-order or don't buy online because they don't want to pay shipping, want MOC, want to see the paint apps first before getting one, etc, that they are waiting for the to see it in person at the store. So if TRU has only 20 cases available and pre-sell 10 cases, have 15 stores and give remaining 10 cases to random 10 stores (maybe 8 if an extra case went to each of the two big market stores), means there isn't enough for every store or the market in general... meaning someone would miss out due to shortage and distribution.
If TRU is planning to only have a case per store, then I don't think that qualifies as "making a lot of them." As a business model, I would much rather get payment in advance with guaranteed purchases via preorder than ship cases out to stores hoping to sell through them. Per your example, if they randomly ship out to a group of stores and the product doesn't sell then it's taking up valuable shelf space while a customer elsewhere isn't able to make a purchase. Just not seeing the logic there. Hopefully they will be available eveturally to everyone that wants one.
This isn't rocket science, so it is frustrating to see retailers get this so wrong. The majority of stories I heard from Force Friday were that people even as close as 5th or 6th in line didn't get
anything despite waiting for hours in line. There were numerous questions about an exclusive when I was there, so why not have pre-orders set to go for those visiting the store? "Well, I didn't get any figures to take home, but at least I got the excluisve TRU figure on preorder" sounds a lot better than "Everything was sold out and I went home with nothing." Isn't the point of an exclusive to drive people to the retailer in the hopes that they will buy more stuff? They drove people to the store, then gave them nothing at all to buy until a later date. Huge missed opportunity there.