So We Had Another Preorder Experience Yesterday

So Walmart had a Vintage Collection preorder yesterday:



How did it go? This:


Quick side note: If you play the video and watch the gif at the same time, there's a chance it will sync up comedically.

I began my morning routine as normal yesterday. I played Wordle, and was heading to Twitter to post my score when I saw this Tweet from long time friend of the site, DarthChuckMc:


I got Wordle in two, by the way. Thanks for asking. Anyway, what "went live" were the Walmart preorders; the preorders that were supposed to launch at 1PM. Four of the the five were live at 7AM, but here's where it gets fun. They were only live in the Walmart app. The links weren't available via browser (which meant you couldn't access them from desktop). Even better, the figures couldn't be searched in the app. You had to click on the link on your phone and hope you had the right combination of operating system and settings so that it would open in the Walmart app. If you were not fortunate enough to have this magic constellation of conditions on your mobile device, you were rightly worried that figures would sell out before they were supposed to go live.

Eventually all of the links were live across all platforms well before the advertised 1PM launch time, but apparently this feat overwhelmed the Walmart servers because clicking the preorder button most often resulted in this message:


The only solution was this:


You had to keep pressing the preorder button repeatedly until it would eventually add to your cart. Then you would have to repeat the same process if you wanted to increase the number of units. Despite this presumably unintentional slowdown tactic, the Stormtrooper was already sold out by 1PM. I feel terrible for any collector who wasn't able to stay glued to the internet all day, and showed up at the announced time only to find out that one of the most anticipated figures in years was already sold out.

Even if you were able to secure all your orders, it wasn't a fun experience. In fact, I wasn't looking forward to the process yesterday at all. When a hobby becomes more stressful than fun, people start dropping off. The problem is that nothing is likely going to change. Walmart exclusives aren't going away (nor should they). Walmart probably isn't going to be motivated to improve this process unless they suddenly take pride in the niche adult collectible preorder process, but what would be their motivation to do this? The figures sold out. That's all they care about, but again, Walmart's carelessness with these collector events is going to cost Hasbro customers.

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