• I'm two hours from the nearest TRU. I can't bring myself to believe i'll get Arcee off the shelf, ever. :[

• At least Wal-Mart is fucking everywhere. The nearest TRU is about an hour away and I want a goddamned Arcee...

• Those are the GI Joe-sized 3.75" figures. The 6 inchers aren't out yet...

• She was... different.

• Bah to your facts and reasoning. Mattel sucks at everything else, why not this?

• I've seen this toys on the shelf for almost a month at both walmart and target. With the line being closer to twelve figures(not counting vehicles and specials).

• Hasbro briefly had 6" TM & CD on display at SDCC last year before removing them. In a Q&A they said they'd try to release them this year. With Iron Man 2, it'd be great timing. There's also been a few test shots showing up on ebay, suggesting that full production moulds have been made. There was also a 4th 6" Iron Man shown at Toy Fair - Robert Downey Jr was pictured holding it. It had an unmasked head wearing sunglasses, for some reason.

• I guess it's my turn to be "that guy." So be it. :-) That ain't no suitcase, it's a briefcase. Briefcase armor.

• Guys. Seriously. DCUC's distribution is NOT Mattel's fault. It's Wal-Mart's. The way shipping works, either Mattel ships them from China to a warehouse in California where they are then picked up by Wal-Mart to be fanned out into their own distribution centers, OR Wal-Mart picks them up in China and sends them to their own distribution centers from there. As far as I'm aware, when given option 2, Wal-Mart virtually always goes for it because it saves them shipping and warehousing fees. So the dirty little secret that the Mattel reps are too nice to beat into people's heads is that really and truly, once they have a signed PO, that's pretty close to the end of their involvement in the wave. The flip side of this is that you should very much be concerned about whether or not you're going to see these at retail if you've had problems with stuff like DCUC. However, seeing as this is a high-profile movie line, I would bet it goes to all the stores, and not just the ones in the higher sales brackets...which should alleviate some of the issues. The point is, even though it's easier, we shouldn't be holding the toy company responsible if the store can't get their shit together. That's like calling the manufacturer because you can't get your computer to turn on while your power is out. (Which, sadly, is a call I got once. No, I'm not kidding.)

• Exclusives suck. Especially when they're only at Target or K-mart or some other chain that's only in the States (as I'm Canadian). I've missed out on a fair share of cool figures that way over the years..

• If I ever see a Walmart exclusive set at an actual Walmart in my area I WILL SHIT MY PANTS! I just want to go into the stock room and tear the hell out of the place yelling, "I know my toys are in here bitches! Where are they!" Seriously I can find any set BUT a WM exclusive.

• You may be speaking from your own experience, but Mattel did NOT fix distribution after Wave 5. I have 3 Wal-Mart stores within 15 minutes of me (2 of them supercenters), and not a single figure from Wave 10 ever surfaced. During the time they were showing up in a few locations across the country, I checked all Wal-Marts in 3 other areas in 2 other states, both east coast and west, and found not a single figure. And I'm not the only one. Wave 10 was/is notorious among collectors for either clogging the shelves full of Power Girl or never arriving at all. Granted, Mattel is worse than Hasbro in every way possible, but exclusive waves like these have been experiencing problems with uneven distribution across the board. While I've had no problem finding WM ML exclusive waves, I know others who couldn't find a Nemesis-series Punisher to save their life. Again, Hasbro has the tendency to be better than Mattel, but the Arcee problem shows they have their own issues. I managed to grab the last Arcee at my local TRU when she first came out. Now we're, what, 6 weeks later or so? A second case of Arcee/Cybertron Ratchets has yet to reach the shelves here. Some stores around the country are finally starting to see additional cases, so I'm confident she'll return. But for an exclusive figure in such high demand, two months without product on shelves is unacceptable.

• Those are MU-scale figures. These are ML-scale. Completely separate lines.

• Wal-Mart is spotty with its distribution of toy exclusives, some stores will get gobs and it'll gather dust till clearance. Others will get one case and no more. And some never seem to get anything. 3 stores near me never got the Star Wars AT-ST from last year or some other exclusive items, and two of those stores were Super Centers. In fact, the craphole smaller store gets exclusives more than the super Wal-Marts, that or the employees/scalpers are buying entire cases and no one is even putting shelf tags up for the items.

• I never EVER want to smell a FFF.

• First off, these had BETTER not be Legends scale but rather the slightly smaller movie scale. And damn it, Walmart? I've heard nothing but horror stories about their various exclusive waves. I've been able to avoid it so far, but I'm an avid movie superhero toy collector so I'm going to be stuck on these. Dang it.

• this

• These 3 figures are just series 1 - there's at least one more figure (MkIV with RDJ head), plus the unreleased Titanium Man & Crimson Dynamo need to be released somehow...

• One of the more maddening things that Hasbro does is that they will put a much desired figure or vehicle into a wave that consists of otherwise uninspired repaints, designs that should have stayed on the bench or frankenbuilds. That means, taking GI JOE as an example, if they were to find the mold for the original Devilfish http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/86/devilfish/ and put it out with reasonable colors and accessories consistent with the original toy, it would be part of a wave of vehicles made of of repainted sculpts that originally bombed during the Valor Vs Venom line and ended up on clearance at Big Lots, as well is the thirteenth re-release of the AWE Striker, this time painted bright blue with neon orange tiger stripes and an over-sized missile launcher. Long after the two Devilfish that were in that shipment have found their way to someone's online store at $30 (before shipping) apiece, the Cobra Tapeworm and GI Joe Pothole Plugger as well as the hastily repainted AWE striker will sit on the shelves until the next season, at which point the Devilfish will entirely disappear. If ever re-released, the Devilfish will be well nigh unrecognizable, as it will have been repainted by what looks like the result of a three year old with a spraycan, and retooled with a giant claw and wrecking ball in place of the original accessories.

• FUUUUUUUCK! Never saw the Giant Man wave at Wal Mart. Only saw one set of the Ares Wave, but I only could afford one fig that day (Spider-Ben BTW) Seems that I'll be missing these just like I missed on Mossman because I sneezed.

• What the fuck is with these store exclusive action figures? If a toy company expects me to go out of my way to find a specific figure and/or toyline, they are sorely mistaken! That's why I stopped collecting pretty much everything now. Bah!

• Well, the mass appeal is correct, and I think that's the logic of Hasbro or Mattel when they do this. However, two problems arise: 1. Shipping and volume. They get either a smattering weekly or too few to meet the actual demand. Sometimes they get too much of one, less popular figure, and none of the more popular. 2. Scalpers. Every nerd douche without a job, and even non nerds with job have Ebay businesses and that makes people whores. The people who really want just one end up paying ten cents on the dollar or much more to people that got in there at 6AM and bought 50.

• I really don't see the problem here. Like others have said, exclusives to stores that AREN'T everywhere (like Toys R Us and Target) are what drive collectors mad. Every Walmart I've gone to has had their exclusive items. Maybe I'm just lucky, but everyone made a big fuss about how hard DC Wave 10 was going to be to find, but my roommate and I found them rather easily in complete sets across three stores across a 50 mile area. Mattel and Walmart said they were going to fix distribution problems after the Wave 5 mess, and for the most part they did. But yeah, Mattel and their Masters of the Universe line is the epitome of exclusive figures gone wrong. I don't collect those figures personally, but those who do have my sympathy. Overall, Walmart exclusive = not too bad. It could be worse.

• @Greymattersplat Exactly.

• Well, there was that purple boat chick in the Cybertron (I think) toyline.

• Yeah, Moss Man was a debacle. Matty keeps getting worse and worse.

• Well given the amount of Wal Marts in the US and the fact that Hasbro is king when it comes to shipping/distribution, I'm pretty confident saying that there shouldn't be any problems finding all 3 of these. See, this is why I like Hasbro: you have a good chance at finding these things actually IN the stores. That being said, FUCK YOU, MATTEL!

• I swear to God if I could ever find Arcee I'd make it into a full stop-motion video, complete with every other Transformer I have watching them.

• I smell a FFF in the making.

• Any fan of Mattel's DC Universe Classics line can tell you what a hassle it is to have figures be exclusive to Wal-Mart. The main bulk of the problem is that Wal-Mart seems to have some internal guideline that determines which stores those exclusives will go to, and that guideline looks to be based on sales volume. So, in order to make sure the figures sell through, they only send them to their higher-volume stores, which just happen to also be the ones that the scalpers hit first. The resulting bottleneck of product ensures that a large chunk of the available stock only ever finds its way into the hands of scalpers, or in some cases never even makes it out on the floor because even though they're a high volume store, they've got the same pegwarmer figures on the shelves that everyone else does, and can't move stuff out from the back until they're gone. It's not Hasbro's fault for making them exclusive to Wal-Mart, however. Wal-Mart gets exclusives because Wal-Mart <i>requests</i> exclusives...and you don't tell them "no" if you want to stay in business. Ask Josh Blaylock (from Devil's Due comics) sometime about Wal-Mart and GI Joe sometime and see what happens.

• I have no problem with Walmart exclusives since like Eponymous said, Walmart is everywhere. It's the other shit, like the TRU exclusive Arcee, that really pisses me off. I just want ONE other god damned female robot to lez it up with Blackarachnia. Is that really too much to ask for?

• Darn typos- Last line should read "shelf of the item in question..."

• Store exclusive suck--but online boondoggles like the one Matty Collector has going are much, much worse. Moss Man sells out in under 60 seconds? WTF!

• &#64;Heimdall The biggest problem that is that not all stores get decent distribution of exclusive product, exclusives often are released in a more limited run than the rest of a wave, and the few that do get cleaned out by scalpers who will empty a peg or shelf or the item in question and throw it up on Ebay later that day at four or five times the MSRP.

• I'm not sure I understand the reaction here. Walmart is EVERYWHERE, which means more chance to get the toy. Not to mention, this will likely mean a lower price point, which I can't imagine is a bad thing. Or is this more a commentary on the fact that it's at Walmart and not some other store?

• Frankly, I just think it's shameful that this figure comes with the severed hands of robot slave laborers that Tony took as punishiment for failing to meet their lithium quotas as "accessories."

• I'm with you on hating store exclusive toylines. Try finding Transformers Animated Arcee at TRU. The scalpers have been having a field day with it.

• I apologize for my ignorance - I'm not a toy nerd - but why is it that store exclusive toys are so difficult to acquire? Is it because they sell out more rapidly than less readily-available toys?

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