Another KB Exclusive Chewie

[JediTricks]

Last I heard, KB was actually pulling themselves out of the disaster they had gotten themselves into. Malls all across the country realized once KB had shut down stores there that there was a very significant gap in their market reach and have started offering KB better rates to come back.

As for why Hasbro gave KB these 2 Chewie exclusives, I bet they're the only chain to say yes to it, I bet Hasbro ran it past the bigger chains first and they all passed.

[tagmac]

Last I heard, KB was actually pulling themselves out of the disaster they had gotten themselves into. Malls all across the country realized once KB had shut down stores there that there was a very significant gap in their market reach and have started offering KB better rates to come back.

Considering the big chain stores like Macy's and JC Penney's dumped their toy departments (with their lousy, overpriced selections) years ago, the malls have no toy stores left without KB, aside from the occasional "scalper" stand, and the novelty shops that sell mostly stuffed animals and baby toys. If KB's reopen in the malls, hopefully this time they won't be so much of a "clearance" store and will actually have better, more recent selections of toys that get re-stocked a little more often.

[JediTricks]

KB has long been a strong focus on the "clearance" concept in no small part because of how outrageous mall rent is. Malls charge huge amounts of money AND they skim around 10% off the top of your receipts, so for a mall store like KB, selling a new Star Wars figure means that you have to give a portion of your profits away, so even if you are paying the exact same per-unit cost as Target or Wal Mart for Star Wars figures you have to charge more than those non-mall chains just to break even. When KB was buying items that were clearanced from wholesalers, they could afford to go with big discounts, but when they buy straight from the manufacturer at full price and then the items don't sell, they have to clearance those items and take a loss just to get rid of old merchandise so it won't clog up stores - it's a downward spiral that I suspect led to their troubles in the first place.

Bottom line, if we want toy stores in the malls, we have to accept that they WILL charge more than non-mall stores in order to stay in business. It's not an equal system unfortunately.

[Mace Windex]

Look at the new 12 inch figure pics at hasbro.com. They have both boxed and unboxed pics. The unboxed pics are obvioulsly some one off customs because they look NOTHING like the boxed figures. I saw the unboxed pics first and said WOW! Then I realized that this was just another trick.
Sigh...

[JediTricks]

That's how I felt about them. I think the unboxed shots are those photoshop retouch jobs like what they showed for the VOTC 12"ers though.