Holiday Edition - Nowhere, Southern California

[stillakid]

Just got off the phone with all the Walmarts within spitting distance of me (Panorama City, Porter Ranch, Valencia, Simi, and Monrovia). All say that they had them but no more. All except Simi said to keep checking back. The lady at Simi was very sure of herself when she said that they were all gone a month and a half ago and they would not be getting any more in.

What's this bs about? Now I'm forced to pay the ludicrous prices of planetaction figure or other scalper "sponsors" of this site. This is utter crap. Exclusives SUCK! Merry F'in Christmas Hasbro and Walmart.

[JediTricks]

Wal*mart in the Los Angeles area totally sucks at exclusives. First off, there are no Wal*marts at all in LA city itself (at least, not in the basin) and a HUUUUUUGE amount of Star Wars collectors in this area. Then, the ones that are within 40 miles of the center of Los Angeles only get a handful of exclusives that have to satiate the collecting appetites of thousands of LA-area collectors: clearly, the math there cannot add up, and since LA-area collectors aren't very close to Wal*marts, it requires a ludicrous amount of drive time just to fail in finding anything. And Wal*mart almost never is able to offer SW exclusives on their website.

Los Angeles has one of the highest Star Wars collecting populations in the world, yet when it comes to Wal*mart exclusives these collectors get shafted almost as bad as some overseas collectors. This simply does not make sense and NEEDS to be rectified, even if it means forcing Wal*mart to ear-mark more exclusives for LA stores and enforcing strict working non-scalping policies.

[stillakid]

Originally posted by JediTricks
This simply does not make sense and NEEDS to be rectified, even if it means forcing Wal*mart to ear-mark more exclusives for LA stores and enforcing strict working non-scalping policies.

I'm glad you mentioned that. I hit virtually every Walmart that I could drive to in less than an hour in the past couple weeks and only one had any pegs or tags that might have accomodated the exclusive. Though I have no proof whatsoever, beyond not seeing the exclusive itself nor the peg tags, I strongly suspect most of these never found their way to the floor.

The way I see it, one of three things is going on:

1) store employees steal these from the back immediately,

2) these Walmarts just flat out didn't order any or didn't order nearly enough to satisfy the market...which brings us to...

3) because of the OT nature of the item, and it's universal relevance to the holiday, Hasbro and Walmart grossly underestimated the market and didn't consider that non-collectors would scoop these up in greater numbers.

Or a combination of all. Regardless, PlanetAction Figure.com somehow has a stash of these Walmart Exclusives and is charging $30 bucks a pop plus shipping.

[sith_killer_99]

Ouch, sorry to hear about the bad luck. Exclusives are always a pain, it was REALLY bad for me back in Hawaii (stuck on an Island with no Target), I still don't have that stupid Skiff.

Did you all have this hard of a time finding the Cantina sets?

Anywho, I just checked selazebay and found 16 listed, none of the sellers were fron LA area, probably just a bigger demand by non-SW collectors causing the problem.

I hope you guys find this set. I will keep my eyes peeled for any sets still up for grabs.

[stillakid]

Originally posted by sith_killer_99

Did you all have this hard of a time finding the Cantina sets?

Yes.

Originally posted by sith_killer_99

Anywho, I just checked selazebay and found 16 listed, none of the sellers were fron LA area, probably just a bigger demand by non-SW collectors causing the problem.

I hope you guys find this set. I will keep my eyes peeled for any sets still up for grabs.

Thanks! I've still got a sliver of hope that a vat of these are still cooling off and will be dumped into some clearance bins in January. But I'm not holding my breath.

[clonehead]

you all should be happy that you even have a wal mart near you, i live in irvine and there is absolutly no wal*marts anywhere, the closest are near costa mesa and aliso veijo, like a 45 min radius, nothing close like KB or TRU or even a target

you should be happy that you even have a Wal*mart near you

[Vortex]

Don't feel bad, I think its an all over the states thing.

In Minnesota, out of the 5 Wal-Marts I frequent, only 1 had the holiday figures. They had 6 out and I bought 2, one to open one to keep. Went back the next day, gone. The space was used for harry pothead legos. Haven't seen any more since and this was the 2nd weekend in Dec.

The cantina sets, again only found them at 1 wal-mart when they hit, and now at christmas 3 of the 5 have tons of them on the pegs.

I've asked about the Trash sets, given them the SKU # and not 1 store has them in currently or knowledge if they'll get them. Odds are I was dealing with holiday employees, but the distribution or HQ ordering process has/is terrible with Wal-Mart.

If I run across more, I'll keep you posted. I have no trouble sending stuff out to those in need...

[clonehead]

if i see one i'll let ya'll know too

[Jedi Master Silas]

Maybe its a regional thing because we have had alot of the holiday packs here in WV. We tend to have WM exclusives warming the shelves for months.

[stillakid]

Originally posted by Jedi Master Silas
Maybe its a regional thing because we have had alot of the holiday packs here in WV. We tend to have WM exclusives warming the shelves for months.

Could I convince you to pick up a couple for us wayward souls?