Ok - well - here's an update regarding my local WalMart.
This morning on my way to work, I stopped at two other WalMarts and bumped into the Hasbro Rep for my area. I have had conversations with her before, and I've always been polite so she recognized me and said hello.
I asked her if her region covered my local store as well and she said yes, so I asked her about my store having 6 Vintage figures and 5 Movie Heroes figures on the pegs for over a month and she told me the problem at my store is that the store manager "feels he has too many toys left over from the holiday shopping season" and is rejecting ALL ORDERS for new stuff.
Meanwhile, Star Wars isn't the only line that's nothing but empty pegs - GI Joe has like three figures, there are barely any transformers and his Avengers section is loaded with Thor and Captain America figures from last summer's movies. The entire action figure aisle is bare - except for the end with the crappy Bandai junk.
So, I don't have much hope in things changing, but I am going to go there tonight and ask if he's around, ask him to take a walk with me to that aisle and explain to me why he isn't stocking his store.
At this point, something really needs to give, and the logical thing is for Hasbro to start offering to outlets like EE case assortments where you have a Wave of 5 figures and each figure is in the case twice and then you take two other figures which should be popular and put it in there 3 times. Charge a little more per case, since they are 100% new. The Wave 4 and Wave 3 cases at EE are now temporarily out of stock - but they were "in stock" and available for order most of the weekend. That would NOT have been the case if Wave 3 was 3x Malgus, 3x Imperial Navy Officer, 2x Hoth Luke, 2x Clone Wars Anakin, 2x Darth Vader. If EE had a case like that and charged $150, I'd have bought it in a heartbeat. Heck I would have bought two, just to be done with the wave, and I know many others would have as well. You would think it would be a win-win for everyone involved, Hasbro, EE and collectors alike.
So if WalMart managers are going to essentially ****-block the lines from making it to their shelves, then they really need to stop making case assortments that cater to the brick-and-mortar stores. Pure and simple.