Yoda Lives
Sep 21st, 1999, 12:11:59 PM
I listen to and read tons of complaints about "pegwarmers," especially ones in the Episode 1 line, i.e. Ric Olie, Palpatine, Valorum, Padme. I know that tons of product was sold in May, and I heard many stories that TPM toys are (were) one of the hottest-selling items this summer. So why the &^%$ is there SO MUCH TPM stuff still on the shelf!? I think I know a reason. Hasbro probably thought it would be O.K. to overload the product so that "everybody" could find what they needed. Pshaw, yeah right. Who here has found a Darth Maul yet, or better yet, a Destroyer Droid? How about Mace Windu, Yoda, R2-D2, Queen Amidala (Coruscant), the Naboo Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, the accessory packs, the new Jabba... the list goes on and on. I'm sure many of you have found some of these things, but how hard was it? How long did it take for you to find one of these? Obviously, Hasbro's strategy failed. By "overstocking," it dissuaded stores from ordering MORE stock, because they couldn't sell off the VAST SURPLUS of toys people either already had, or didn't want. In some cases, REALLY didn't want, like Valorum - I see as many of that figure as I do Ric Olie - and Valorum was packed in cases the same as the others, PLUS it was a shorter run! Another idea I had was that Hasbro might have assumed that they could have sold 5 years worth of toys this summer... that's what it looks like to me, in a way. They figured SW is so popular, kids and adults alike would hog everything. But I, personally, don't know any young children. No one in my family is between ages 6-13. I've seen children dancing up and down the SW aisles, literally, but I don't know how popular SW is with children, these days... Hasbro's "basic" plan, at least, backfired - they packed too many of the unpopular characters, and not enough of the popular ones. Sound familiar? But hey, we can't razz them about this - I mean, NO ONE could have guessed how wildly popular Maul would have turned out to be. Common sense could have played larger in this, i.e. more variety in Coll. 2 cases at May 3, thus lowering the number of slow-moving figures in Coll. 2, pack more battle droids, pack more "lightsaber-wielding" characters per case, etc. But, as with any new line, no one can predict the selling points. Bromine brought up a good point. If Hasbro would enable stores to order a case of ONE of each figure, then this pegwarmer problem could be avoided. The cases should be 12-packs (not a problem, the classic line holds this many) and that wouldn't be TOO much overstock (after all, I'm sure at least 12 people in town would want ANY figure, given enough time...). When customers would request certain figures at the customer service desk when they couldn't find the one(s) they wanted, they could order another case (or two) to meet demand (believe me, they CAN do this - I used to work at retail). Hasbro would no longer have to worry about telling stores to ship back the pegwarmers, Hasbro would ALWAYS have a steady stream of product (and would hopefully produce enough of each at the warehouse to prevent shortages), and whatever was "surplus" at the warehouse could be distributed to needy children, on NICE card backs for once, and the continuous rotation of new stock to replace old, discontinued figures would enable all this to happen without mishap (hopefully). The only disadvantage to this concept would be to those who rely on short-packing to drive up the price/value of certain figures. This method would eliminate those one-per- and two-per-case rarities (and thus causing the virtual EXTINCTION of the "scalpers" that run rampant today), but for those who wish to make their collection an "investment" (like me), their profits will depend on the popularity (and unpopularity) of each figure. Well gang, what would your input be on this?