What's Going On With Marvel Legends At Target?!?

[JayC]

If you have walked down the boys action figure aisle at your local Target store recently, you may have noticed something missing which is Hasbro's 6" Marvel Legends figures. If you look on the discount shelf you might still find some Eternals figures, but otherwise it is seemingly the same story across the country. New Marvel Legends figures are no where to be seen.

To make things even more interesting, some have noticed the latest Target shelf Plan-O-Grams (POGs) have no spaces allocated for Marvel Legends. If you aren't familiar with what a POG is, its a print-out used by store employees to map out where all the various products will be placed on the shelves when new stock comes in. Often when a store is resetting their shelves to bring out new products you will see these POGs taped somewhere on the shelf. See an image of a recent one for a store in New Jersey mapping out the area where Marvel Legends are normally located. You will notice Marvel Legends are no where to be seen.

So what does this mean? Is Target dropping Marvel Legends or will no longer sell them in physical stores? That is certainly a conclusion some people on the Internet have seemingly jumped to. However before you panic to much, I did some checking with a few folks I know who work at Target to see if they could shed any light on the matter.

The first thing to know about these POGs when it comes to the toy sections, they usually get updated every 4 weeks. So the one you see above should take us through most of June. They can differ from store to store, but from what I can tell Marvel Legends are missing on these POGs for most stores right now.

Second Target in general is clearly continuing to carry Marvel Legends. All the recent waves are available for pre-order on the Target website and Target continues to get new Marvel Legends exclusives such as the recent Spider-Man Black Noir figure.

Also when you check the store inventory system they continue to say sold online and sold in store. See the listings below for the upcoming Marvel Legends Quake and Target exclusive Thor figures.
 

However what is missing is any indication one when any of these will actually start arriving at physical stores. The only new Marvel Legends figure that seems to have a physical store arrival date is the Spider-Man Black Noir figure which says 7/20. That date however can vary from store-to-store and can also change.

Now the folks at Target I checked with about all this did admit to me that not seeing any Marvel Legends on the store POGs was unusual, however these are unusual times we are living in where we have seen Hasbro list many of these newly revealed figures with release dates going as far into the future as a year from now.

I don't think Target is dropping Marvel Legends, however it may be some time before we see any new Marvel Legends on shelves at physical Target stores. Right now it looks like mid-summer could be the earliest we see them return, and that's seemingly best case scenario.

[Atlantis]

Thanks Jay. Well informed and constructive piece. 

[Lord_Scareglow]

I;m sure Target isn't done selling legends, but with the supply chain issues likely they don't see new product being available to them in the nearest future and removed the alotted peg spaces, and are just going to wait till the next re-configure to put out the legends, with so many delays and unknown variables on when these figures will be shipped from the vendors I could bet they just don't want to put up empty pegs.

but my fav take away, which is off topic a bit is, I love that Spider-Man Noir is a "2pack" with Spider-Ham, that's a slick trick, when only a year ago we got Spider-Gwen who came with Spider-Ham and a BAF piece for a lower price.

 

[monron999]

On 5/25/2022 at 3:37 PM, Lord_Scareglow said:

but my fav take away, which is off topic a bit is, I love that Spider-Man Noir is a "2pack" with Spider-Ham, that's a slick trick, when only a year ago we got Spider-Gwen who came with Spider-Ham and a BAF piece for a lower price.

Hell, I'm still pissed that we had to pay full price for the first Spider-Ham back in the Monster Venom wave.

[Dodge76]

On 5/25/2022 at 4:41 PM, monron999 said:

Hell, I'm still pissed that we had to pay full price for the first Spider-Ham back in the Monster Venom wave.

OUCH!!!!!! I don't blame you for being pissed!

[bashpics99]

i will be pretty shocked if Target doesn't have some sort of endcap or other display with the Thor L & T wave.  However i will not be surprised if that doesn't happen til much closer to the movie release date, perhaps mid june.  If target doesn't stock L & T at all then i will start to believe that maybe they've given up on the line - seems hard to believe they would do so while continuing to stock the Black Series and Fortnite lines on pegs.

tbf i have only seen portions of cases for L & T at two Walmarts now, so they aren't heavily stocking the wave at this point either - feels like its mostly MoM remnants on Walmart pegs now (plus eternals, of course).

I'm a bit unclear as to whether Bonebreaker wave is out already or if that comes after L & T.   

And if you think getting exclusives means a chain will definitely carry the line in their stores, i have one word: Walgreens.

[Emnems80]

I wonder if Target will only carry their exclusives in their stores to drive foot traffic. I've noticed all the recent general release preorders on Target have a little "when purchased online" note next to the price, and the prices have been a little cheaper than other sites.

[McHogan]

In a perfect  world, this would be Target protesting Hasbro’s dumb decision to go plastic free and jack the prices. I know, I know, Target is The Emperor to Hasbro’s Darth Vader so none of Hasbro’s decisions matter as long as they get theirs. 

That plan-o-gram really highlights how much terrible product Hasbro puts out as well. I get they need to diversify but this garbage just clogs shelves in every store. Are the Titan series and Bendy things getting price increases as well? .... cause from what I can tell, they can’t give that stuff away at any price.

Well, plastic free had me leaning towards online purchases ( especially after seeing the Thor L& T wave that some loser had stolen BAF pieces and another with missing paint apps) so if Target is dropping Legends this just makes my decision easier

 

 

[tarot]

On 5/26/2022 at 11:12 PM, McHogan said:

In a perfect  world, this would be Target protesting Hasbro’s dumb decision to go plastic free and jack the prices. I know, I know, Target is The Emperor to Hasbro’s Darth Vader so none of Hasbro’s decisions matter as long as they get theirs. 

That plan-o-gram really highlights how much terrible product Hasbro puts out as well. I get they need to diversify but this garbage just clogs shelves in every store. Are the Titan series and Bendy things getting price increases as well? .... cause from what I can tell, they can’t give that stuff away at any price.

Well, plastic free had me leaning towards online purchases ( especially after seeing the Thor L& T wave that some loser had stolen BAF pieces and another with missing paint apps) so if Target is dropping Legends this just makes my decision easier

 

 

Okay I can understand the protesting the price rise but plastic free packaging? Every company, not just toy companies, are moving away from plastic packaging. Target wouldn't protest that.

[McHogan]

On 5/26/2022 at 6:17 PM, tarot said:

Okay I can understand the protesting the price rise but plastic free packaging? Every company, not just toy companies, are moving away from plastic packaging. Target wouldn't protest that.

Oh I know they wouldn’t. That was hyperbole. The whole first paragraph was sarcasm.