The Street Date Debate

[Greedo The Green Menace]

Did anyone else see the story over at Yakface about Hasbro reps planning on fining stores for putting stuff out early and trying to make them take it down with a week left before it can even be put out? This is just getting sad if true.

[Jesse James]

No, but given Hasbro set a street date I'm not surprised and if that's in some contract between the retailer and the manufacturer, I'm sure it's quite enforceable.

[Greedo The Green Menace]

I just don't see much point in enforcing it now, with like a week left till August. Just seems like a waste of resources to send reps around to see if people broke street date and bother pulling stuff now.

[Jesse James]

Hard to say if they haven't been cracking down since the initial leaks though...  *shrugs*

I just don't understand what the street date's point is...  There's no movie or anything. 

[Pete_Fett]

Never gonna happen.

They can't fine the online retailers. Fining an online retailer would put them out of business.

They aren't going to fine the online dedicated toy store in the country (Toys R Us).

And they certainly aren't going to fine WalMart because they're selling stuff early on their website.

If anything they are merely talking smack about fines to appease Target who (so far) has been the only retailer that I'm aware of that hasn't violated the street date in some form or fashion.

[Dressel Rebel]

With the economy being what it is, Hasbro should be happy we're buying their **** at all, and shut up.

Especially after their distribution garbage for the last year.

[Rob]

Anyone in such a ridiculous hurry to get action figures from the toy store that they'll get into arguments with store employees should have their head examined.

[speedermike]

Never gonna happen.

They can't fine the online retailers. Fining an online retailer would put them out of business.

Not that this matters, but so what if Hasbro put them out of business?  If the online retailer broke a (suposed) contract, they should pay the price like any other retailer.  I'm so sick of people acting like internet companies are above the law because they don't make a lot of money.  It's like when peopel were defending that comapny in the UK that was making Stormtrooper armor, and Lucasfilm shut them down.  People were moaning and saying "Lucas has enough money..."

This really gets my goat because I make my living off copyrighted material.  Rant over.

[Jabba the Slug]

Did anyone else see the story over at Yakface about Hasbro reps planning on fining stores for putting stuff out early and trying to make them take it down with a week left before it can even be put out? This is just getting sad if true.

The story, ala Yakface:

i decide to to Target at lunch and I found the entire wave of new Star Wars including vehicles and Clone Wars, and I noticed a lady that had a Hasbro name tag looking and scanning the figures. So I kinda hung around deciding if I need a couple of doubles like the AT-AT commander and cloud car pilot. I overhear her on her phone calling someone and then she gives the zip code of the store and store number and starts talking about a fine of $200 saying this stuff should not be out tell August 3rd. She then says that the manager is not there but she has already informed the supervisor and they are aware.

She also said that the new Transformers were out so they could be dinged on that as well. So I quickly grabed the figures I wanted and head to the front because I could hear talking about having someone from electronic come over and pull these off the shelf.

Target's putting stuff out.

Hasbro's getting pissed.

Learn you lesson, Hasbro, dammit!

[Greedo The Green Menace]

See, for me it's not about wanting to get stuff early. I had no problem waiting, I'm just looking at this from the stores perspective and how ridiculous it seems to have to follow this senseless street date at all. These stores have paid for these products, why shouldn't they be able to sell them? Are they really expected to keep all that shelf space open for something they aren't even allowed to put out? My local Wal Mart had empty pegs for a good 2 months at least I'd say. If I was a store owner and I got some ridiculous fines from Hasbro for selling product that I paid for in full I'd be pretty pissed. I'd probably say screw it and just stop carrying their product altogether just based on the principle alone. The whole thing just seems like a slippery slope that's only going to anger the people who actually sell the products. I don't really see the comparison with the stormtrooper armor guys. They were making money off of someone elses design that they didn't pay for. The stores putting product out doesn't hurt anyone as Hasbro already has their cash.

On another note, is there an actual contract I wonder or is everyone just getting boxes from Hasbro with "do not put out" labels on them?

[Jesse James]

The only thing is, Retail and Manufacturer routinely refer to themselves as "partners" rather than customer/supplier...  There are contracts and things worked out between companies.  I don't know what the deal is with this street date of course, it makes no sense to me either for the reasons I mentioned, BUT if there's agreed upon terms between Hasbro and their retail buyers, then one breaking the dates is pretty negative to whatever they had agreed upon with (assuming here) all parties involved.

None of it makes any real sense...  It's like sales figures and stuff...  You never see the details, so you never know the whole story. 

It's so unimportant to me I guess I just don't care.  I've been happy to wait I guess.  I made 2 trips to TRU's only because I was in the area anyway, but otherwise I've largely just waited for stuff to hit everywhere when it's more convenient for me...  I have done some financial catching up lately, some planning for the future.  Honestly I don't mind the 3-month-breaks...  Some are complaining, some are I guess saying this is enough for them to totally lose interest in the hobby.  Maybe my attention span isn't that easily killed by a lull?  I don't know.  This just has been a financial downtime for me where I put money into other things like home improvements here and at my gf's, car stuff...  Even student loans are ahead of the game a little more right now.  Good times.

Hasbro can do what they want, and retail can do what they want, and if there's consequences for what they did then that's their deal. 

I did like picking up Jodo Kast and the deluxe Cad Bane though.  Nice figs.  Saw the AT-AT today too at K-Mart, and it's really nice as well, and normal price ($99.99). 

[Greedo The Green Menace]

It's all very complicated, especially with these big box retailers, since all the deals would be done with the big gods of the chains, which is what makes it even more confusing as most of these stores that broke the street date might not have known the full extent of severity of the agreement or realized it was even that big of a deal. I mean they could just be stocking one night, notice some empty pegs, and the manager says, "oh, those are empty, there's a box in the back somewhere, put those out." without so much as a thought. Hope no one gets fired for it, cuz if there's money loss involved someone is bound to pay for it. That would suck, getting canned because you stocked the shelves. Ouch.

[501ST]

Instead of TL;DR I did read all of this thread before posting and can say firstly Australia has not had this issue with street dates on TVC.

Here's a docket for the first TVC figures I purchased from a local K-Mart (price match there from a variety store,normal price is $15.75 AUD).



Said figures:



TRU in Australia now does have TVC figures for sale and at a 'sale price' of $9.98 AUD for the moment so it's totally odd and perhaps a lot of power-tripping freaks in their little pond they call Hasbro or TRU talking smack cause if Hasbro AU can get it sorted then how Hasbro USA cannot is whacked to say the least.

[CHEWIE]

If anything they are merely talking smack about fines to appease Target who (so far) has been the only retailer that I'm aware of that hasn't violated the street date in some form or fashion.

A couple Targets in STL reportedly put vintage figures out over a week ago (and they rang up fine at the registers). 

[Jeff]

I just don't understand what the street date's point is...  There's no movie or anything.  

Australia has not had this issue with street dates on TVC.

Hasbro confirmed in the Q&A that there is/was no street date outside the USA.  The same answer also covered why it is there for the USA.  Here's the response, taken from Q&A @ JN.UK:

"There was no shelf date at all for retailers outside of North America; this was changed earlier this year and all marking were taken off of our master cartons.  The reason for this is that there was no entertainment event that set up the new line launch in other countries; in the U.S. and Canada it is part of the lead-up to the launch of Clone Wars Season 3 and all licensees were held to the August date to create an event-feel to the launch."

So, Hasbro is officially passing the buck on the 8/6 street date and effectively saying, "blame LFL not us".  

Of course, that doesn't explain why they let TRU sell stuff early... but that probably has something to do with TRU taking Legacy Waves 13 (EU) and 14 (TFU) after Target and Walmart said "no thanks" to more movie product last Fall.