These are the rules of how things work according to Hasbro:
1. Collectors are always wrong and don't understand how a business works
2. Retailers are always wrong. If we ship too much of something due to our ass-backwards case assortments, it is retail's fault for overordering. If we ship too little of something, it is retail's fault for not ordering enough.
3. Nothing is ever Hasbro's fault.
4. Any Clone or Stormtrooper figures should ideally be packed at one per case in the final assortment of a given line so that it will be monumentally difficult to locate one at a decent price*.
5. When all else fails, blame the collectors. Only do this in the wake of a movie year when you will ideally have more income from children and casual buyers. All other years, do your best to placate them by releasing random Cantina alien number 27 amongst outdated resculpts to give the illusion you are listening to them.
6. If this is your first time at fight club, you have to fight.
7. Instead of concentrating on lines that have proven success like the 4" line, be sure to develop endless secondary lines that will clog aisles for the next year taking space away from things that would actually sell well.
8. All initial waves of deluxe figures should include toys that are total crap. Second waves, which will naturally be difficult to find given the glut of the first wave (which remember is always retail's fault for overordering), will have much cooler figures that people actually want, but if we have learned anything over the years from doing this line** it's that as long as we claim to have shipped them in decent numbers, retail can bear the brunt of the blame for not stocking them.
*SEE ALSO: Darktrooper and Spacetrooper (1998 EU), Stormtrooper (CommTech 1999), Clone Trooper (POTJ 2002), Clone Trooper (Clone Wars 2003), Sandtrooper (OTC 2005), Target exclusive Clone Trooper (2005), Stormtrooper (VOTC 2004), Stormtrooper (Unleashed 2005)
**in actuality, they've learned very little. Do a Google groups search for some of their highlights in case packing ratios and look how far they've come in the ten years since POTF2 started.
