jason1551

Good luck to everyone. Hopefully Hiya will have shipped the Predator figures by the time this contest ends.

I have terrible news for you: they got full cases, but someone has already grabbed the "good" stuff. have you been wiping out an entire retail chain? I have 2 on my way home from work and both only ever had the Antman/Ares. 1 of which is wiped out already and reset with those playmotion things. I haven't personally wiped out any stores (as PsychoPirate can attest), but stores received full cases. At $5 a pop, I can imagine scalpers/customizers/collectors could tear through a store's inventory awfully quick. For example, I purchased 9 Valkyries, 4 Cyclops, 4 Omega Reds, and 2 Ares, and barely made a dent in the Newnan's store inventory. There were literally full pegs (8-12 figures on a peg) of each character remaining, and I didn't even touch any Deathloks, Antmans, or Beta Ray Bills (which would have been in the dozens).

I have terrible news for you: they got full cases, but someone has already grabbed the "good" stuff.

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but the Valkyrie, Ares, Deathlok, Antman, Astonishing Cyclops wave is hitting 5 Below stores en masse.

I'll take a look tomorrow while I'm out. EDIT: No luck at either Target, TRU, or Walmart.

Any chance they had a Night Viper/Lowlight set?

Saw both yesterday TRU in Columbus, GA.

Picked up AA Thor and Hawkeye at Ross, but will probably bring them back.

Picked up Nick Fury if anyone needs him or has a Falcon for trade.

It's a pretty big head. Would work on a larger buck (Hercules or Hulk), but would be way too big on anything else. Also, the neck peg would need to be filled quite a bit.

Those seem to be the only places he's in stock. I got him off Amaazon for $15 shipped. Dorkside had him for retail, but he was out of stock the last time I checked.

Thanks.........I hit 5 Target this weekend looking for Link and couldn't find any........ I might be able to help you out.

WTF?!

Here's a first: found MU single-packs at Burlington. Picked up Dagger and Abomination for $5 each.

So jelly.

Yeah, but you're in NY, and if I recall correctly, you've got a Mom and Pop store that gets them way earlier than most other places.

Many people have ordered from smalljoes and gotten it within a few days. EE qas tge aame. BBTS seems to havw run out, though.

That is epic.

They are actually. That's the Wave 24 Revision case. TRU seems to have doubled down on it, as I've been to multiple TRU's in the south and midwest that have had multiple cases on the pegs (some even in the front and back of the store).

Yup. Iron Man has plenty of suits that haven't been made. I wouldn't mind Iron Man in every case if it was always a new suit. I know why that can't happen, sure, but it's nice to dream. Wave 1 should never have had the Bleeding Edge suit. It should have been the black and gold Now armor. After getting that exact Cap in most of last year's cases, they really should have done something different with him too, even if it was just an unmasked head. Beta Ray Bill should not be in wave 2. Demand for him has been more or less filled. Commander Rogers has been absent from cases for a while, but he shouldn't be released so soon after the Cap that's been warming shelves for a year. Yellowjacket could have waited until next year. 100% agreed. Hasbro could have done better with the figures they chose to be in that first wave; Commander Rogers slightly retooled to match his movie counterpart and a repackaged IM3 Mark 42 would have been my choices.

Tell that to retailers who only want characters that the target demographics know. You do that and convince kids/parents to buy characters that they've never heard of instead, and this line could go on forever. Hasbro has gone out of their way with Waves 2 and 3 to bring in characters that only fans would recognize. Hell, Death's Head and Whirlwind might be the most obscure character choices to date, so if putting CA and IM into Wave 1 meant we got those characters then collectors really need to take a look at the big picture of things. We think the big names ruin the line because we see them everywhere, but IM and CA aren't what's going to doom the line; it's characters like Nighthawk, Puck, Absorbing Man, Inhumans, GotG (prior to the movies), etc. that most people don't know or care enough about to buy that will clog pegs and sink sales. Please, if that were the case IM and Cap wouldn't clog the shelves. It's the same accross the board with Hasbro for crying out loud. They blame the retailers but yet they are the only company losing in sales. Hell Lego overtook them last year. The'achors" are clearly a problem and honestly the target demographic quit being kids a long time ago. All the marketing is collector focused and has been for the past decade. Even if you could get kids interested the distribution and horrid case ratios of all the lines from Hasbro would turn them off rather quickly. Only the hardcore collectors are still hanging on and most of them are over 25 The argument in Lego's favor has already been made (multiple franchises, TV shows, and a movie will always help product move). The problem with MU/AI is that it tries too hard to be all things to all consumers: for kids, it's a chance to have figures of characters they've seen on TV and in movies; for adults, it's collecting figures of characters they've seen or read about in comics. Big retailers care more about the kids because collectors are a niche market and won't move sales to such an extreme to warrant a broader cast of characters. When they do, they generally have a hard time moving the product because there isn't enough interest for all parties involved. We, as collectors, want obscure characters that no one else in their right mind would ask for. However, those same figures pegwarm (I'm looking at you Wave 20) because we only want certain characters and only in a certain quantity and can't understand why Hasbro would push more recognizable characters that will eventually sell to kids or parents. We want to have our cake and eat it too; we just can't accept that we aren't the only ones at the table.

Tell that to retailers who only want characters that the target demographics know. You do that and convince kids/parents to buy characters that they've never heard of instead, and this line could go on forever. Hasbro has gone out of their way with Waves 2 and 3 to bring in characters that only fans would recognize. Hell, Death's Head and Whirlwind might be the most obscure character choices to date, so if putting CA and IM into Wave 1 meant we got those characters then collectors really need to take a look at the big picture of things. We think the big names ruin the line because we see them everywhere, but IM and CA aren't what's going to doom the line; it's characters like Nighthawk, Puck, Absorbing Man, Inhumans, GotG (prior to the movies), etc. that most people don't know or care enough about to buy that will clog pegs and sink sales.

I totally agree with Hasbro being abysmal when it comes to figure selections in cases (although that seems to have improved with AI (if you've seen what the revision cases and Wave 3 breakdown looks like)). However, I'd say the Wave 24 revision case was an improvement on what they did with Wave 23 and Wave 24 (essentially combing both waves in one case, similar to what they are doing with later AI revision cases). And I've seen no increase in their prices beyond what I've paid the few previous years ($9.99 a figure), and that has been true everywhere in the south and in the midwest. I can't point to AI Wave 1 as a handicap, though. You either have to be a collector or a serious Marvel fan to know who Hyperion and Grim Reaper are, and Wasp, while an important character, has no obvious media tie-in beyond the relatively long ago AEMH cartoon. Point being, that first wave had to have CA and IM as anchors if retailers were going to have any interest in it because CA and IM are well-known commodities that can tie-in with the recent movies. Future waves feature the same scenario (Thor, Hulk, CA, and IM repacks) but aren't as saturated with them. It's the price we collectors pay so that retailers will tolerate putting out a line that has no marketable features.

Hasbro didn't overship the final repack case. TRU overordered it. There is a very profund difference in that statement. TRU did the same with Retaliation Wave 4, to the point that stores are now drowning in pegs of Alley-Vipers, Fireflys, Battle-Kata Roadblocks, etc.

Hasbro is not a distributor (with the lone exception being what they list on their own website, which does include AI Wave 1). They are a manufacturer and sell their product to stores which in turn distribute said product to their stores. It's not up to Hasbro to order product and stock shelves; that responsibility falls solely to retailers. It is Hasbro's responsibility to supply enough product for those demands. If retailers don't order it, the product will sit in a warehouse until they do or be sold online on Hasbro's website. The simple fact is that most retailers are moving away from toys in general (blame videogames and alternate forms of entertainment), and boys' toys are mainly focused on TV and movie-related lines. Without a movie or TV tie-in, there's not a lot of incentive to carry a product like AI. Because of those reasons, I've chosen to switch from retail sellers to online merchants to get new product: it's easier to find, fairly similar in price, and I don't have to waste time, energy, and gas looking for it. This has been the trend for the past few years and is likely to be the case for the duration of the line. I would guess that waves centered on movies (like the GotG-based Wave) will see larger interest from brick and mortar retailers, but I wouldn't get my hopes up beyond that. Bottom line is that retailers just don't want to order product that appeals to a very limited market, and that is exactly what MU and AI represent.