I think it has more to do with regional fulfillment of online orders than when your order was placed. It's a big cost saving measure that both Target and Walmart have been undertaking - fulfill online orders from store inventory rather than have these huge fulfillment centers. Best Buy was doing this, too.
If you use inventory trackers like Brickseek or Popfindr you might find when a store gets a particular item in stock. But when you go there you can't find it, and it's very likely because that item never made it to the floor - it got pulled for online order fulfillment. Cutting the overhead of those distribution centers, along with shipping something 50 miles instead of 500 probably cut a lot of costs for Target.
The most likely situation is that stores in my region just don't have this yet.