[78Coolbreeze]

I used to be a huge fan of GI Joe as a kid and had nearly everything they had for the first several years including the USS Flag. I remember walking into stores, and not just toy stores like Toys R Us, but places like K-Mart or Hills and they would have GI Joe toys full on the shelves. There were pegs and pegs of figures. You could find any figure you wanted as even the most sought after like Snake Eyes were still there. And there were lot's of vehicles and accessories. Now, Walmart and Target are pretty much the only place to find toys anymore and Walmart's shelves are nearly empty.

As an adult who sold off his entire collection as a child to buy new toys (TMNT), I've been looking forward to getting back into collecting them. I was against paying jacked up eBay prices so I decided to wait and look into these new lines they are releasing.

It started with the 4" line where they sold out right away and I couldn't get a chance to buy one, because I'm an adult and have to work for a living and was in a meeting at the time. I guess Hasbro thinks children are still buying these toys or something and decided to release them in the middle of the work day. So I lost my chance to order them. Not only that, I found out these are not even really new, they are just re-releases of the same figures from a previous Target exclusive.

I then see the new Target 6" announced and decide well maybe I'll give these a try since they are at least new. Again I'm screwed over as I'm sitting at work hitting refresh over and over and they go from coming soon to sold out. I saw 3 of the first waves at my local Walmart a week ago. I went to 3 stores this morning and there is no sign what so ever that there was ever a GI Joe release at all now. No empty displays or anything.

I'm starting to wonder if Hasbro even cares at all about the people they claim to be making these for because even a fool could handle releasing these much better. All they are doing is teasing us with figures we can't purchase. There is literally no point to even announcing anymore that there will be a pre-order because 99% of us will not be able to place the order.

So after all that I'm sure there are hundreds of you like me that are pissed off that they would tease us with new releases and then make them so exclusive that you'd never get one except from scalpers.

I know there are ways of doing petitions against companies but I haven't dug into it to much yet. Would this be a thing that people would be interested in starting/signing against Hasbro? And do you think they'd even care if they received it?

My thoughts would be to petition them to start a Kickstarter or some similar set up where everyone interested would have a month to back the campaign, order and pay for as many as they wanted of each figure/vehicle/etc. This would actually be a real pre-order where you place the order before they go to production so they know exactly how many to create and you've already paid so they have the means to produce them. This would nearly eliminate scalpers as they would just have huge non-refundable inventories with the only people to sell to are the ones that didn't sign up within that month. It would also get rid of this exclusivity crap with sites like Walmart and Target that do not limit purchases and allow bots to buy out all of the stock.

I'm pretty sure big corporations like this are not likely to use Kickstarter but they could easily do something similar if they really cared at all about their customers. I can't image they are making huge profits off of a Target exclusive that nearly no one on here gets the chance to purchase. Hasbro Pulse's sites motto is Where Fans Come First. I'm not sure about the rest of you but it feels more like Where Scaplers Come First.

[Xerofall]

Petitions don't work.

[78Coolbreeze]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerofall

Petitions don't work.

You might have a point there. And with all the hate I've seen against them in their Facebook posts, I'm not sure they would even care as they haven't addressed any of the flak.

[DetectiveFork]

If anything worked, it would probably be constant comments about this problem on their social media.

[Itchweed]

Noble idea. But Xero is right, petitions don't work, getting their attention in other ways works sometimes if we can get them involved on a forum or the Instabook or Facegram.

Hasbro cares about customers, not necessarily us collectors. That's why they put the snoozers out in the first wave because they know most collectors will buy the snoozers for the second or third time to clear the shelves for newer product. Well Xero and I....we aren't falling for their shenanigans this time. Right Xero?

[Yeet]

The easiest solution is just make everything also available on Pulse and make second presses if they sell out right away like Pulse does with their exclusives.

[78Coolbreeze]

Actually I just got an email from Hasbro Pulse about that Marvel Sentinel. They already have a Kickstarter type setup in Haslab that they are using for this toy. If that's already set up it makes no sense why they don't just do all the GI Joe releases like that.

[SmokeBellew]

Well, you make good points. Problem is Hasbro has been stuck with too much stock of stuff people said they wanted in the past and had to clearance it. I think they don't know what to make of adult collectors. We've taught them the best way to sell through is to limit production runs.

[KiloinNorCal]

Just make them made to order. Exclusives are a scalper botters dream.

[Dusty Ayers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yeet

The easiest solution is just make everything also available on Pulse and make second presses if they sell out right away like Pulse does with their exclusives.

Nailed it. What is the point of Pulse if they give retailers exclusives? Pulse Premium is $50 a year but what for?