Vintage Collection Loses Another Peg In Walmart Reset

I need to preface that this may mean absolutely nothing. My Walmart is currently conducting a physical inventory. It's entirely possible that after the inventory, the toy section will reset again and the Vintage Collection footprint will return to its previous size. It's happened before. So this may be, and likely is, much ado about nothing, but daily content isn't easy. I gotta talk about somethin'.

This store has had four Vintage Collection pegs for over a year now. Last night, I walked to the toy section to see it reduced to three. Regardless of whether or not this is a temporary blip, the TVC footprint has been going down. It used to be at six pegs. As I've written several times, this location stocked nine cases of the Lando wave, and even managed to sell all the Landos after a couple of years. It's a high volume store. They sold through 23 of the 24 pieces from the Dark Side shipper, and most of them were gone in a matter of days. The only figure left is a lone Klatooinian Raider (yes, all six Dark Troopers sold).

This location has no problem selling Vintage Collection. It has a problem ordering Vintage Collection. This store doesn't order TVC because the inventory no longer gets low enough to trigger replenishment. The inventory doesn't get low enough because, like mercury in a fish, this store has accumulated a toxic level of non-sellable figures. They get ingested, but never excreted. In this case it's a Vel Sartha (approaching a year and a half in store), a Fennec Shand from the unfortunate reemergence of that case assortment right after Christmas, and an Ahsoka from around November of last year. Aside from that Dark Side shipper, which was compulsory, this Walmart has not stocked a single case of TVC in 2024. The same store that is capable of selling 27 Lando figures, went over six months without stocking a single figure.

Is it any wonder why the TVC footprint might be shrinking? The inventory system doesn't know that the store is stuck with three unsellable figures. All it knows is that it has TVC in stock, and from January through June, they didn't sell a single figure. Unlike the specialized Fan Channel, the brick and mortar behemoths don't have the capacity or need to analyze figures on an individual basis (in most cases). They either clearance the entire SKU or not at all, and if they clearance an active SKU, it typically means they are going to stop carrying that product. Note: sometimes Hasbro will re-SKU the line to facilitate this, but not as frequently as when the line look would change every year.

Of course a shrinking footprint is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. The reorder threshold gets even lower, and the sales volume slows further. Then two pegs. The one. Then 2015. I've watched this movie before. The TPM figures in 2012 are blamed for the demise of TVC 1.0, but that was merely the final nail in the coffin. The problems cropped up almost immediately.

Through the first three waves, stores were accumulating peg warmers at an alarming rate. Dengar, 4-LOM, the Cloud Car Pilot, Echo Base Han, the clean Sandtrooper, the all white (but pre-yellowed) Phase II Clone Trooper, and yes, Wooof all proved to be unsellable at the levels TVC was stocked at the time (which was a lot). Post holidays in early 2011, stores did their natural reduction of action figure aisle. This caused the reduced TVC pegs to overflow with those peg warmers. No new product came in. Sales volume dropped, and the perpetually tightening vice of reducing footprints continued until the line blinked out of existence.

This is why we must all be vigilant to call out potential peg warmers when we hear them come up in the community. You will never hear me advocate for Frog Lady (sorry if you and 20 people you talk to online really want that figure) or Yerka Mig (a figure I really want). They're both high potential to become toxic stock. The only things for which I'm comfortable advocating in the barren retail landscape now are mains, and figures with constant, and voluminous fan requests, such as Pong Krell.

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