The thing with WM for me is that they've been getitng in stuff ALL year, they just sell through really fast and if you're not there semi-routinely, you're probably just missing it.
For instance the store I hit the most, I hit usually two or three times in a weekend... I don't hit it much during the week.
This store is the usual sea of ROTS Clones, ROTS Obi-Wans, a few Sandtroopers, and a few Anakins. Basically every peg is pretty full for Vintage.
So, say I go Friday... there's suddenly a straggler figure from a new case. Indications that something new was put out this week, but I just missed everything. Saturday maybe I have to go back... nothing. Sunday I have to go back because it's close and I have to get some food... Suddenly more stragglers from a case have shown up, maybe some good figures too... Case somehow wound up out there again Sunday.
This store has steadily been this way, all year long, and into last year pretty much.
The same, but more spread out in my trips to them, can be said for almost every other WM I hit... That's 5 or 6 WM's I can think of off the top of my head by the way. I hit all the others much more sporadically, but I'll stop in... Stragglers from a case of Wave 4. A week or two later I stop in, some Wave 5 are around. And so on... Sometimes I walk in a fresh case has been put out too. I walk out with half the case myself even maybe, depending what's there.
These "1 per case" ratios make it really easy to basically miss an entire case of figures getting opened and put out, for sure. WM's actually done really well on distribution it seems, despite the ROTS Clone messing up things.
If you took THAT figure out of the equation, I think things would be flowing like WM just ate Colon Blow for breakfast. It wouldn't be one case here and there, it'd be multiple cases (assuming some other figure didn't just replace the ROTS Clone as the proverbial turd that won't flush). That's not too shabby then, really...
Target, K-Mart, and TRU need to fix themselves. TRU needs to be more competitive, K-Mart just needs to order something (and being more competitive wouldn't kill them either, but they do run sales and have a rewards program that is actually valuable to consumers to some degree), and Target just needs to order stuff at this point. WM's the only store that folks can cite where Hasbro has done something to screw the system, and it's that Clone basically.
Ideally, Hasbro would remove all ROTS Clones... but he's in a case or two yet, so you're still not going to eliminate the figure I'm afraid. Like I said, the perils of making assortments so far out without being able to change things late.