Right?! You'd think the manufacturer would have enough on hand at least.
You have to remember that Hasbro has to walk a very fine line here. They are trying to sell enough copies of a figure to be relevant and make it look like they are helping the collectors get stuff, but not selling enough stuff direct-to-consumer that you hurt their wholesale businesses with BBTS, Dorkside, EE or even big shops like Walmart and Target.
THIS!
I was at a Target store this morning and ran into the Hasbro Rep. It's the same guy who has been working in our area for years. I asked him about the general inventory situation, and he agrees that it's ridiculous that there's barely any product on the pegs. He had a theory about it - that whoever at Hasbro leads the sales team for the Target account hit their sales number, and they may not be aggressively pursuing additional sales. I think part of that could be an unfortunate side effect of the Target Clearance Vulture phenomenon - collectors waiting for Target to put items on clearance and THEN they buy them at the lower prices. But he also had a very significant point to share. Right next to the 4 feet of Star Wars shelfspace was some MOTU stock. And you know what? There was product on those pegs. He said that when you're in the aisles having product that you can look at is effectively brand advertising. Sure the Star Wars section has that Mandalorian banner with Din Djarin and Grogu on it. But what good does it do if there's little or no product to buy? He was proposing that core characters like Mando and the Child should almost be pegwarmers to keep the brand present in people's minds.
He and I also talked about Hasbro Pulse. Notably because he had set a reminder on his phone to buy Wrecker on Hasbro Pulse at 1 pm. And he said exactly what Jeff said - Hasbro Pulse has to walk a fine line, because otherwise they might be hurting their big dollar accounts like Target and Walmart. Target has around 1900 stores in the US, and Walmart has around 4800 stores in the US. So suppose they get 4 cases of each wave of TVC figures per year per store. And let's figure 6 waves. That could mean over 40,000 cases of figures go to Target, and over 100,000 cases go to Walmart each year. These are just ballpark numbers, and conservative ones at that - just in the US. I didn't even figure in Best Buy or Meijers, which are respectably sized chains. Hasbro HAS to serve those accounts before EE, BBTS, Dorkside and Hasbro Pulse. So Pulse will get smaller allocations. They're just playing the game according to the numbers.
