Stopped by my local Target Monday (which has historically been run over by scalpers, or just never gets new product until months late, since it opened in the late 90's) for some other stuff and and noticed a toy isle reset going on, with a GIANT pallet full of Hasbro boxes.
Didn't pick up anything but I did chat it up with the two twenty-somethings stocking the toy isles and learned a great deal.
First, I learned that both of them collect as well.
One collects DCUC and the other JLU.
So that explains why those two lines never ever show up on the pegs at this store.
Neither one of them even realized their store was being picked over by scalpers.
They thought that the SW stuff was just not popular.
I put in a quick area search in eBay on my phone to show them how many vintage collection auctions were going on in a 10 mile radius and a WOW face shot over them.
I gave them a quick physical description of the two problem guys and they were shocked that they were resellers.
"Both those guys are here every Monday morning, and they race each other to the toy and electronics section.
And they return tons of toys every week... Carts full of em... Now I know why sales are so low."
These guys weren't mean or putting me on, they were just clueless.
Two customers have been sabotaging this store's sales for YEARS and the two kids in charge had no idea/couldn't be bothered to say something about 30+ of the same figure being returned with "$19.99" white price stickers affixed.
They were up on the switch-in-box problems but only the last few weeks as per an internal memo to the store. But they couldn't figure out why figures had these white price stickers on them.
On a more positive note, the shelves were stocked with a bunch of Attack Shuttles, all the new deluxe sets, and the new Blu-Ray box sets. Actually WAY too many of the blu ray sets. These are nice starter sets but at $24.99 for 4 figures the savy new collector will find them cheaper somewhere else.
Zero new vintage, zero new TCW, and one new case of legends. It looks like TRU and Kmart are the places to go for new TVC, as they charge too much per figure for resellers to make any profit.
Most of the new stuff was for Captain America, which blew these employees minds. The Cap stuff they said "looks so bad" and they can barely keep in stock. To me it looks great and is the same as the MU stuff.
The only stuff the guys said that isn't moving is the 4 pegs full of Dengars, cloud car pilots and green clones (which have all been there at least since Christmas!!) and the Transformers movie stuff. They said there's an entire unopened pallet in the back of Transformers stuff and "it's just going to go over to TJ Maxx down the road like the last movie."
Not everyone's Target is awesome. Mine it seems is picked over by both the employees AND scalpers.
