Has “Toxic Stock” Returned To The Vintage Collection?

I've often said that slow selling figures are not a problem for the health of the line. Slow sellers are absolutely fine, and in some respects good because at least there is some product on the pegs. VC158 - Luke Skywalker (X-Wing Pilot) was a slow seller because it was technically a repack, and it was also the only figure that was 2 per case in its assortment. But that stock eventually sold through, and now that figure commands a decent premium on the secondary market. As Mr. Nomadscout points out, the community is entirely too quick to label something a "peg warmer". It seems that nowadays, if something doesn't sell from brick and mortar within 48 hours, the community cries "peg warmer".

No sir, a peg warmer is inventory that will never sell at MSRP. The Vintage Collection has had it's fair share of such items. We all remember the glut of Episode I product from 2012, some of which would occupy store pegs for a full year before being blown out on clearance, and even then it didn't move quickly. That launch wave played a big hand in TVC 1.0's eventual cancelation. Then there's the infamous TVC 2.0 launch wave, which was loaded with multiple figures that had no chance of selling through at MSRP (and they didn't). That wave almost crashed TVC 2.0's launch like a Soviet test rocket. It's for this reason that unsellable product should, and often does put the fear of God into longterm TVC fans. It appears we may be on the precipice of another unsellable item.

The image above was taken on April 4th. As of the date of this writing (5/1), all five VC262 - Vel Sartha figures are still at that store. I know that the VC205 - Land Calrissian figure is the current poster child for "peg warmer", but that is where some context is needed. Obviously the biggest factor is that Lando was infamously packed 3 per case, which is almost unheard of, but when comparing apples to apples at this particular stores, a telling story is told. This store got nine (yes nine) case of the Lando wave. They have two left. That means they sold twenty five Lando's. That's actually an impressive number in the current brick and mortar landscape. By contrast, this store got four cases off the Vel Sartha wave. They've sold three.

Using one store as an example is hardly representative. Fortunately, one of the worlds biggest stores provided some amazing transparency recently. Amazon started showing how much of a particular item has sold recently. The below graphic was compiled on April 1st. Vel is the poorest selling figure from its case. Despite being 100% newly tooled and from new media, it was being outsold nearly six to one by a Luke Skywalker figure which reused some tooling from a decade ago:


I don't want to keep beating up on this figure, but I'm just trying to give as much empirical data points as possible. This Vel is too new to already be on significant sale on collectible sites:


Now, despite the tone earlier, this Vel release probably won't sink brick and mortar. They simply don't deal in enough volume for a single figure to grind things to a halt, but I have to imagine there's some angst amongst the Fan Channel retailers, and that's not good. This is just another example of urging responsibility when we push for our figure wants. If what we campaign for is ultimately bad business for retailers, it's bad business for all of us. With that in mind, I'm personally going star exercising restraint when it comes to backgrounders. The Jabba's Court Denizen's pack hasn't sold out on Pulse. This can't be good. I have to imagine the production run of this set is somewhat similar to the first run of the Amazon Bad Batch 4-pack which sold out in ten minutes. I feel like there is a lot of noise in the community for the exact type of figures in the Denizen 4-pack, but once again, the market at large says something different.

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