I couldn't believe how easy it was to get the Shadow Biker scout as opposed to the McQuarrie 2pack. I know Hasbrotoyshop had a lot of other items for sale, but they really made it difficult for people to physically get in line to buy the figures.
I'll tell you what
really happened....
At first I thought Hasbro 'blew it' too. Until I asked them and realized it was the SDCC staff's fault. Once I found out it was their fault I went after them and I'll tell you what they said.
First, I asked Hasbro about the stupid 'ticket' situation. I asked them why only a little amount of tickets at a time. Why so few times a day to receive a ticket(at least wed. thru friday tickets only released 2 times day). Keep in mind a ticket was only to get in line at the hasbro booth. So anyway they tell me that the SDCC staff didn't like their overflowing line(preview night) , the middle isles were getting clogged-causing fire hazard, so they forced/enacted a ticket plan on Hasbro to 'slow' things down. All this did was guarantee a 3-4 layer thick wall of humans around the Hasbro booth waiting for a ticket to be released. Humorously, the SDCC 'event staff' tried in vain to tell folks to leave the walkways-that ' they will not get a ticket if they are blocking the isles' and that ' tickets will be handed out in the Con randomly'- yeah right-and of course nobody budged.
Anyways since the SDCC staff's solution was futile I decided to call them out on it. I asked them why they sucked so much, why their idea was causing more of a problem than Hasbro's initial method AND I told them what they could do to improve it. I told them they could/should have set-up a separate booth or meeting room upstairs where there's plenty of room to hand out tickets to purchase items at the Hasbro booth...since the ticket numbers already corresponded to times for folks to use them at the booth that part was already solved. As folks walked up to the booth looking to get in line you could easily refer/detour them to the remote ticket location to pick up a ticket for the line.
The SDCC staff replied with ignorant comment like 'I'll bring it up with my supervisor'. Then, other Staff members were saying for folks to 'spread out and keep moving around the Convention, that tickets would be handed out randomly'. Which I knew was BS and thank goodness I didn't believe it because I would have gone home after 3 days exclusiveless. I told those jokers that as soon as one guy handed out a ticket he would be swarmed by a mob and there would be no 'randomness' to it. As it were, Hasbro employees seemed to be held captive in their booth. They had to pass tickets out to hands in the crowd surrounding the booth since they couldn't get past the wall- even the back door was covered.
I DO BLAME THE SDCC STAFF for not coming up with a better thought out solution.
Is Hasbro totally without blame? No. I think next year they should stategically have less exclusive types or rent out space non-adjacent to their booth somewhere else in the CC for a ticketing distro system. In prior years their booth was more near a wall where folks could line up against the wall instead of take up space unorganized in the main isle walkway. This year only their Hasbro store was this way and they seemed to have succeeded where the other store was in middle and failed.
DS