Around the Toy Aisle: Black Friday Edition

11-30-2009

Last Wednesday we kicked off the holiday weekend with a few store visits followed on Friday with a replay as we checked out the Black Friday deals.

Actually, good things started on Tuesday when we decided to hit up the local Walmart and found the new comic packs. They had a fresh case on the shelves as not only were the new packs there, Krayt/Dare, Luke/Deena, Vong/Katarn and Luke/Lumiya, but also the re-packed figures.

Wednesday we stopped in the local Target, which has been really off this year. While we have found parts of the Return of the Jedi and A New Hope waves in the last couple of weeks (only 1 case at a time), there was nothing new out for the upcoming holiday crush. Plenty of Clone Wars and Saga Legends, but nothing in those two lines has really been hard to find all year. The store does have out their exclusives, including the X-Wing, TIE Fighter and two Clone Wars Battle Packs. The Geonosis sets are also hanging around and the $9.99 sale from early last week didn't deplete their supply.

In the Binghamton area we stopped at three stores, Toys-R-Us, Target and Walmart.

Toys-R-Us was a real disappointment as they only had about 20 single carded figures on the pegs, all Legends and Clone Wars, not a single Legacy Collection figure in sight. They had stock of the exclusive McQuarrie multipacks as well as the Republic Gunship with the rest of the aisle being packed with miscellaneous other Star Wars offerings, none of which have been hard to find and therefore not really worth noting.

On the GI Joe front they had both of the new figure exclusives, Bench Press and Snow Serpent.

Not much to mention in the rest of the store.

Target has actually had the latest Titanium releases in the last week as we've seen store reports. Nothing new was on the pegs Wednesday, however. They had a lone Malakili representing the ROTJ wave but the rest of the figures were CW and SL with possibly one or two blue/white Stormtrooper card TLC figures. They still had some Geonosis packs and exclusive BPs and TIE Fighters. On the comic pack front, they've had the new wave as there were about six Luke/Deena packs left and a couple other red packaged re-packs.

For GI Joe, we found the second wave of the exclusive Deluxe sets, the ones with the figure and a small vehicle. Picked up a Snake armor set and was happy to do so for $10. Nothing else of note in the toy aisle.

Walmart was an interesting stop. They had an end cap full of exclusives including Evolution sets, Octuptarra Droid, AT-ST and our first sighting of the Dewback and Sandtrooper. There was not a single TLC figure in stock, blue/white or red 2009 packaging. All the pegs were full of Clone Wars and Legends, probably a 100 figures in all, but no decent selection. They've had the new Titanium but the newly sculpted vehicles were gone. The only comic pack in stock was the Leia/Xizor pack, they have over a dozen. Battle Packs were on the shelf but nothing new or of note, just older stuff and repacks.

The newest wave of GI Joe figures was out and they still have their exclusive 2-packs, but nothing much else of interest.

The exclusive wave of DC figures was in stock, we saw Batman, Power Girl and Man-Bat along with a couple others. No Joker.

On Black Friday we stopped back through all three of the Binghamton area stores and found nothing new, but Walmart did have an excellent sale.

Target and TRU had nothing new, but had sold off a few things. Target was so packed that we actually only looked closely for Titanium ships but noticed no new TLC figures on the pegs. TRU had fewer Saga Legends figures and the shelves were riffled through, but nothing new had been added.

It can be noted, however, that TRU seemed to have sold through its supply of Bench Press figures but there were some Snow Serpents left.

Walmart had the most interesting items. The Star Wars end cap from Wednesday night was gone, collapsed into the main aisle, but the exclusives were 50% off. Evolution sets for $12, Dewback for $15 and the AT-ST was $22. There were no Commando Evo packs but the other two were in stock.

On Saturday and Sunday we were back in the Ithaca area and stopped at Target, Walmart, K-Mart and Kohl's.

Target stocked their fourth 2008 Wave 4R2 case in two months. Needless to say, this store is sinking. There are new Clone Wars figures on the pegs but nothing on the SL front. No new Titaniums.

Since Tuesday, Walmart has had at least one more case of comic packs as there were two Luke/Deena packs on the pegs today. None of the other new figures but some of the re-packs were there while some had sold.

K-Mart, after their Buy One, Get One Free sale from last week didn't dent their figure supply, still found room to put out more Saga Legends figures. While the store seems to have beaten the other locals to the Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith waves, it doesn't look like they'll be a player again for a while.

Kohl's actually is the only local store to have gotten the Phantom Menace wave as far as we can tell. Unfortunately, they still have them.

While the Walmart sale on Friday was excellent, it's a disappointment to report that Star Wars did not seem to be a heavy seller for stores over the weekend. The lack of Legacy Collection figures is obvious and extremely disappointing. While the sale at K-Mart last week was a nice attempt, it was poorly executed locally as the market is just not there for more Saga Legends.

The extraordinary overload of Saga Legends and Clone Wars figures in most of the stores may be in Hasbro's current game plan, but it's like a running play on 3rd and 10; not conducive to winning.