Our first and also last stop of the past day, 24 hour time lapse.
It’s May 16. I think Graham and I just spent the last 24 hours looking for Transformers: Dark of the Moon stuff. Sure, there was a sleep break. And we probably ate at some point. And we took a few moments here and there to open some toys. But that was a midnight-to-midnight deal we just wrapped up.
I gotta tell ya, this sure wasn’t 2007. In 2007, we woke up, went to a Toys “R” Us, a Target, and a Walmart, hoping to pick up each of their native exclusives as well as the general releases, and that was just a three-store run. We were done by lunch.
Not so with Movie 3, nosirree. It wasn’t totally surprising that Walmart wasn’t putting up Transformers 3 toys at the crack of midnight. They’re not Ethan. And so in the wee hours of the night, Meijer was the only real game in town. But was surprising was that, nearly 24 hours later, most of those same Walmarts still had nothing! Several didn’t even have their old product cleared away to make room! And forget Targets. Even though they definitely have the toys out back (I should know!), searching them was a waste of time. Only Toys”R”Us, the old standby, was consistently good to us. Not that, like, they had anything Transformers on the feature wall. No, that’s still dedicated to Pokemon Black and White.
Most of my haul, plus some of Graham's.
Is this the general malaise that sets in on the third movie of a franchise? And, yeah, Revenge of the Fallen was not a beloved movie, but its many faults didn’t hurt sales at all, that’s for sure. The last two Transformers movies have been like Christmas in July for retailers.
At any rate, after much searching, some of it redundant once we started backtracking to Walmarts previously hit under premature circumstances, I did manage to find everything that I was out looking for. Plus a few impulse buys. I’ve had a pretty good haul. It’s no ’07 haul, but it’s a good haul. And if it were the ’07 haul, it woulda taken about 20 hours fewer.
Seriously, screw a Target.
(If you want to see a list of everywhere I hit in the past 24 hours, check out my Foursquare history. It paints a picture of… something. And it may not be flattering.)
Your Wal-Mart too?
I went there for 7AM and no DOTM toys out.
Then went to TRU at lunch and witnessed a massive palette.
Also, you may find this amusing, but Jin Saotome tweeted that at least in his area, the Targets aren’t putting out Transformers because they don’t want them to eat into sales of…..wait for it…. CARS 2 MERCHANDISE.
funny enough when my dad heard the word “CARS2″ he left to the store, with me in tow . I humored him, because, this has been the ONLY THING that has made him act like his old self since his paralysis, also a good father son bonding – he helped me find transformers , marvel, whatever my next obsecion is, its only fair I help his.
This year though there are a metric ton of toyetic movie properties this summer. Thor is still ongoing, X-men:First Class and Green Lantern are soon to be released and then Captain America the boys toys aisles shall be drowning in a flood of movie toys. (I didn’t include TFs but well, retailers only have so much space. and a ton of mine still have lots of Iron Man stuff to.)
In this new world order Hasbro decides what is good and what is evil. (and also Mattel, just a little bit.)
Just like with RotF, I’m going to try VERY hard to stick to new characters only, with a possible exception for radically improved molds (like how RotF Prime was light years better than 07 Prime).
That said, your haul in general, and that Shockwave in particular, has my mouther watering with jealousy. He looks so much more purple than what we’ve seen of him in the trailer, and that makes me happy for some reason.
Shockwave is amazingly pretty.
I had horrible luck everywhere but KMart, of all places. Got all the Wave 1 stuff I wanted at least. TRU, like yours, had nothing out, and when I asked I got a nasty reply back about how they will do it for Tuesday. Target was picked clean by the time I got there too.
I see Wreck-Gar. That’s on my hunt list
Target is complete bullshit now for me. I don’t collect Transformers, but I haven’t seen any new DCUC for something like a year, year and a half.
I went to a Target store today and they didn’t have any DOTM toys. Walmart had a conservative selection, while the one at TRU was apparently decent, it’s just that many of the toys were already bought.
Maybe ROTF toys sold well, but stores still had them long after the movie ended. I can understand if they feel a little burned by Hasbro, thus the not so enthusiastic release of DOTM toys. The first two Transformers movies had large display areas in toy stores. DOTM, not so much.
I think it’s understandable for a store to not completely sell out over the duration of a movie.
They didn’t sell out because they bought too much.
Think yourselves lucky you dont live in the UK coz god only knows how little of the movie stuff we’ll end up with the way hasbro seems to hate us these days(though its there own fault for overcharging on what they do release) bet we dont even get shockwave for months if at all and other than the new megatron thats pretty much the only figure im after from the movie line(saving the rest of my cash for causality 03-05).
If I was still working at my Target, you would totally have had the toys out. But no, they couldn’t decide whether Planogram should be dayside or not. Ugh.
*irritated that I might have to go back but I hope not*
the freddies by me has had a rack of empty pegs pricetagged for “tf movie 3″ merch for two weeks now. went by at 730 tonight, still empty. they put out the gl figures last week but no thor stuff yet.
Well, at least I know it just wasn’t the WM I work at that dropped the ball on DotM toys.
We have THREE PALLETS in the back shrink wrapped of GL, DotM and Cars 2 stuff with huge notes ‘hold for Sunday night reset’ and guess what…no one came in and did the reset on third shift! And the sheets have been hanging up for over a week.
It’s sad the entire dept has always been oblivious to anything new or hot or exciting ( it took 3 months after the RotF Skywarp and Ramjet exclusives came in to actually be put ON THE SHELVES for sale).
My local Target was the same way-I was there at 10:30 and they had just started on the aisle resetting everything. Of course the Cars 2 end feature was all pretty and set up! Bad enough C2 is getting a sequel and not The Incredibles, but when their toys are given priority over TF’s that’s just sad.
I hit TRU as well and got the only Powerglide I saw (GREAT FIGURE…GET HIM!) and was going to get Leader Sentinel there to get the free Preview Prime, but they were 5.00 more than Kmart and the same price as Target so not really a deal for a ‘free’ 8.00 figure.
Glad you got Shockwave Walky! After him and SkyHammer, I’m mostly done with DotM myself.
Hunting was pretty lackluster here too, Toysrus was good to me by having everything I was looking for (minus Topspin) but it still bugged me how Pokemon retained the featured section.
Quite frankly it’s like the 50 year old CEO of a major company losing his front row parking spot to a girlscout, it just shouldn’t happen.
I work retail at a K-mart, and when I got to work I pretty much begged the managers to let me put the new transformers out. They said no, so I secretly was taking them out of the back to give friends and random shoppers so they could buy them at last. >:)
preaching to the choir, the dozens of times I’ve gone to Walmart looking for something at 5 in the morning right after work and they never have it up on a Tuesday. I might buy some of the toys for the nephews and niece though
The really important thing here is the Pepsi Throwback.
Any Target who didn’t have their Boys Action aisles set and filled by yesterday night are just lazy and not doing their job right. I would know. And anyone saying they won’t set it because it would “cut into Cars 2 sales” has no idea what they’re talking about, or goes to the most moronic Target on the planet.
I actually ran into the new stuff on accident, and at Target! Of course, it was a little trickle. The dude came out and started stocking stuff when my wife and I were walkin’ around, so we went and looked at other things until I figured he was done. There were some cyberverse and some of the ones like bumblebee and roadbuster (also a sentinel prime) but no Shockwave or…well I’m only interested in Shockwave right now. Everything else was still empty space. Only thing I ended up with was a cyberverse Megatron, and he’s actually a lot cooler than I thought he would be!
I hit a couple of Wallys and targets and a TRU for completely different reasons – naturally I had to check and found nearly the opposite experience. My closest Walmart – generally crap, had pegs abursting and clearly had swift business. The second one had some random things out and was clearly behind on the reset. The Target had much there and gone but the two bucks a pop diff on figs let me decide to go back to Wally. TRU was a sad, sad dissapointment.
Was looking for the toys and found nothing of DOTM up untill now, worse yet, they don’t even have it ordered in all shops for miles!
But today i found an odd suprise; Reviel the shield toys. The only got it today, so i wonder what the hell is wrong with distribution in my area.
(still overpriced though, 20 Euros for a deluxe)
Between gas prices and stores not putting out stock, doesn’t it make more sense just to preorder what you want on-line?
Not when it comes to Transformers movie toys. No matter what things look like now, the movie does come out in July, all retail stores will have DOTM toys in stock for some time.
Shockwave’s so pretty!
I stopped at a Target Monday night as I needed groceries and many other things. They had a fair little set up and I nabbed me a Voyager Megatron and nothing else.
Its cool as hell with the ragged cloak making him all Kenshiro and such, but I haven’t had a movie Megs yet (unless a Legends counts) and he can go up against original Voyager Prime.
Seriously underwhelmed by these toys. Of course I was seriously underwhelmed by the previous movie sooo…
Now all I want is Shockwave and Hasbro has all they are getting out of me since G1 Legends class, Thundercracker, Wheeljack, and red tank guy whose name I keep forgetting probably aren’t ever seeing most US shelves…
I went to a Toys R Us on Sunday looking for the Generation and Reveal the Shield figures that I wanted and they had the Human Alliance figures out.
I agree with the others: Shockwave looks goooooo-oooood! *drool*
My Sprawl-mart had a small section (about 3 feet of space length-wise, four pegs down apiece and the shelves under them) that were mainly Cyberverse, a couple mechtech deluxes, the leftover Preview Primes and Human Alliances. Shelves were the Leaders of Prime, Megs and Ironhide, the mini battle playsets and the huge ass Bumblebee.
All I grabbed was HA Backfire & Treadshot. Spike was defective, though: had two left arms. Willis (or Grant… or anybody reading, really) do you keep the human figures? I’d like to either find somebody who might have the opposite problem and we could trade parts or I could just flat out buy or trade for a good figure? Somebody? Anybody? Please?
In Las Vegas all I found was remnants of Generations items and two RTS Perceptors: nabbed one for $7. And, what’s with all the Thunderwing’s clogging the pegs? Thought he was a figure EVERYBODY wanted?
- a_o_t_8.
Meant to say “Graham” not “Grant.” Sorry, was watching old episode of MythBusters at the time of writing that. <_<'
So in 24 hours the Knex box moved 18 inches to the right.
I miss the days of the store-to-store runs around where I live. Hoping 2012 has much more to bring from TFs in the form of Generations figures-rebranded-as-Dark-of-The-Moon and Transformers:Prime figures.