1. Hi Adam, with stores like Target no longer selling sports or Pokemon cards because of people literally fighting over them, do you see any chance retailers drop figures and other collectibles altogether? There's probably a good sized overlap of those who collect cards and toys, and as you've mentioned, toy sales make up such a small portion of their sales, could they see it as not worth the trouble anymore?

I remember in the 90s stores would have signs up saying "No, we can't look in the back for you," and some stores have brought those signs back.
--Jesse

I doubt it.

The "we won't check the back" signs come and go, and that's unfortunately life. I don't think most big box stores handle collectible items well, mostly because there's no good system for anything. They even say things like "limit 2 hand sanitizers per guest" but with cash and the self check-out, that can be circumvented. If Target wants to stop selling cards - and given the limited, presumably low-margin nature of these easily shoplifted products - I can't say I entirely blame them.

We've seen Target take interesting steps to prevent theft, fighting, and other issues - sometimes Tide is locked up, or Baby Formula has limits, and you get carded for Sudafed. When it comes to toys, this isn't unprecedented - Target did stop carrying Simpsons in the 00s briefly during Playmates' run and the lack of available supply was blamed. (I want to say it was around wave 4 or 5?) Cards - indeed, anything collectible - have been having a huge upswing in popularity lately. NES games, action figures, Magic cards, you name it - bored people are buying them and paying more. They're not dating, they're not going on trips or seeing movies, and they've got money and time to kill. I assume the trading card issue at Target is as much about supply as it is about conflict - they could just as easily move their inventory online, or restock shelves at random times mid-day (as we had seen with a lot of toys), or find other ways to change up how these items are sold.

When it comes to adults behaving a certain way for collectibles versus kids stuff, I have my doubts we'll ever see all toys everywhere discontinued. I do think it would behoove everybody to make their exclusives available online with a pre-order window (and possible limits) just to discourage scalping and to make the most out of your products.

What we're seeing is most likely a temporary disruption that will be figured out - card companies don't want to overproduce their product so it crashes and stops selling. Stores don't want fights, or stale product. It all ties in with the classic "why is distribution so bad?" question - it's impossible to get it right. Maybe you can get close but there hasn't been a time in the last 20ish years where I think you can reasonably expect to go to a store and find a recent figure on shelves. That's one reason why pegwarmers were kind of good - you'd see something on shelf (thank you for your service, Greef Karga.)

Frankly I still hold out hope that "collectible" figures stop completely and we just see the product changed to a one-size-fits-all approach, like Power of the Force in the 1990s. We've seen "kid figures" from Spin Master and Mattel get significantly better than 5POA and cost less - and Hasbro's own "kid" 6-inch figures (the $10 Gamerverse figures and their ilk, not the $5-$6 checklane figures) for Marvel for $10 have nearly the same articulation as a Marvel Legends figure. I don't doubt they could come up with a way to make a good product for everybody that would ultimately sell more and make more money. I mean, it's working for LEGO.

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2. Disney has partnered with Target on its Galaxy Edge items (many of them). Do you see any chance of on-line shops getting more access to those items?
--David

Target has a lot of items, but many of them aren't real Galaxy's Edge items - they're branded as such but were not sold in that configuration in the theme parks, a few of which were never (as far as I know) sold at the parks. I think it was more of an exclusive program to raise awareness of the theme park as a destination (corporate synergy) using Target's Disney Store within a Store much like ABC used to use its TGIF sitcoms as advertainment to convince kids to ask mom and dad to go to a specific vacation destination. There's a lot of stuff that was rumored that I don't believe showed up, so there could be more - but they could also be holding it back until it's responsible to hold a national retail-based marketing initiative for theme parks.

If fans want specific products I hope they ask - most of the good Hasbro stuff did indeed get into Targets (outside the boxed sets, no less) and the online Disney Shop carried some, too. The non-Hasbro items - like the Rise of the Resistance First Order Short-Range Evacuation Vehicle (with four damn variant droids and I don't even have one yet) - I doubt will ever make it outside the Disney ecosystem. I assume the Hasbro license (or Disney agreement) is to not compete with Hasbro outside Disney's own lands, but I could be mistaken. Heck, I still need to get me a R2-RNBW somewhere.

It's also worth noting eBay prices on these items go up and down - sometimes quite cheaply - so it might be worth keeping your eyes open for this kind of thing, if there's something you're missing.

3. Store exclusive availability? Over the past 6 months or so, store exclusives from Walmart and Target appeared online for a short period of time and sold out, while stores maybe got 1 or 2 cases before disappearing entirely. Given the trouble collectors went through trying to get the Walmart TVC Mando and Child set, Black Series Mando Supercommando and Loyalist, and Target Mando and Child Black Series set, shouldn't these honestly be called "Limited Edition Exclusives?" Does it make sense for Hasbro to create a new sculpt for a figure, only to have it used in a limited run store exclusive? Will these be released again?
--Chris

Always in motion is the future. I can tell you that there are people in this business monitoring this situation and in some cases, items do get rerun for Target, Walmart, and so on if they want to take them. There are some items coming back later, but whose, and where, I'm not at liberty to say just yet. I would advise against overpaying for anything (more than a few bucks) for the time being because some of these items were possibly (as in, I do not have numbers and cannot confirm) made in lower quantities out of the expectations I've previously outlined in this column. Which is to say, for a brief time it was expected demand would plummet last year when expected disease and unemployment would render collecting a relic of the beforetimes, rather than sending it to the stratosphere.

Hasbro is aware of the demand for these items. If Walmart and Target will make good on the demand remains to be seen. I certainly hope so! But if not, well. There are other outlets for these items sometimes.

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FIN

What a week! New exclusives that didn't pre-sell out in seconds - although one reissue did, strangely - and I remain left with questions. Specifically, "are they going to bury Star Wars Visions?" That's the Japanese-animated anthology show that got announced in a few places but despite a 2021 release date, has no known-to-me release date and no trailer. There's no reason to not expect it, other than a complete lack of trailer, or dates, or voice casting rumors. The bodies of unrealized Star Wars projects are starting to build up, with some quietly swept under the rug and a few just plain unknown.

The only things left to stream this year - that I know of - would be Droids (yes, the 1985 show) with no date and The Book of Boba Fett with a December date.

So in other words, it's been slow, so let's talk video games. There's a guy making a pretty good NES Street Fighter II port via Patreon (I've got one too, feel free to give me a dollar to help pay hosting and domains and such) and the demo is pretty impressive. If you have an emulator - or the appropriate ROM cart or hacked Analogue hardware - I recommend you check it out. It's imperfect, but remarkably good given that it plays with two buttons and rather primitive hardware requirements. The voice samples are amazing.

Being on the other side of stuff for old people, it's kind of neat to see repeating patterns in the "recapture the youth" market. As a kid my dad got the Rhino Records catalog, which was chockablock with Paul Anka collections, Joy Division vinyl reissues, and other stuff for people who were generally much older than I was - it was the nostalgia market. If you're reading this site, you're probably in the nostalgia market for 1980s action figures (or games, or who knows what else.) The whole cycle of recapturing an older generation keeps coming up, the question always seems to be an issue of "when." Hasbro took forever to really capitalize on retro Kenner figures - arguably the most influential thing to all of us here - and now indie developers are putting out new NES games. And for Devo fans, there's a band that sounds like early Devo. Heck, at work it seems that childish things are keeping the world going - old people want to be reminded of safer times, and young people are being bought stuff to try to make the now just a little more pleasant. The recurring concern is always "how long will all of this last?" and it seems that the answer could well be "forever."

Stuff comes and goes - He-Man had the trailer for the Netflix revival this past week, and it's the third attempt at a mass-market revival of the property. Rhino's record catalog was arguably both behind and ahead of its time, now that vinyl continues to be popular among music fans who like collecting and hate paying $10 for MP3s alone. Hasbro's slow-drop of retro action figures, though, remains baffling - the market is there and is starved, and I never saw the darned things in stores. But, point being, interest still exists.

Droids is one of my holiest of molies, so seeing it come back - hopefully with a merchandising program, and hopefully with an exclusive figure or two for the loyal fans who have been pushing hard for such things - would be marvelous. We live in a world where Playmobil is doing A-Team and James Bond now too, so even if one hobby gets boring, it's not like you don't have a dozen more pretty good options at your fingertips.

--Adam Pawlus

Got questions? Email me with Q&A in the subject line now! I'll answer your questions as soon as time (or facts) permit.

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