ATTENTION HASBRO:  Brick And Mortar Needs Your URGENT Intervention

And then there were two...

There are only two national brick and mortar retailers who sell a meaningful volume of toys. Those stores are Target and Walmart, and you might get the impression that they don't give a lick about the Vintage Collection. You probably think that because you're right. The contribution that the Vintage Collection makes to their respective bottom lines is probably the statistical equivalent of zero. Any effort they make toward managing its retail success is literally wasted money. Don't give me the "but the Vintage Collection is what gets me into their stores" justification. Target and Walmart are also the only national retailers of everything else. Most people can't not go into their stores. The only big player who has any vested interest in the Vintage Collection's success is Hasbro, and it's going to take them to help right these ships.

Let's start with Walmart where things are the most dire. To date, there hasn't been a single report of a Walmart store giving true allocation to the Vintage Collection on the pegs. A few stores have stocked the Vintage Collection, but it has basically been an accident. The Vintage Collection has appeared in the clearance section or, in rare instances, in the Star Wars section, but on some random pegs. No Walmart store of which we are aware of has even a single peg dedicated to the Vintage Collection. Not one! Perhaps this is why Steve Evans erroneously indicated that the Walmart Exclusive Island Journey Rey hit shelves weeks ago. The planogram for Walmart's fall reset may reveal a HUGE indication as to why the situation is so dire. It appears they are continuing to use the defunct Black Series 3.75" UPC. See the following planogram:



Do you see those three pegs circled in red? That UPC is for the 2015 wave 1 Black Series 3.75" Darth Vader figures as verified by UPC Index. We can presume these pegs are intended for the Vintage Collection, but with that old defunct Black Series UPC on the peg tag, stock personnel are as likely to stock Silly Putty in that location as the Vintage Collection. Finding Vintage Collection product at Walmart will continue to be an accident until this is resolved.

The situation at Target isn't as serious. Target has a well organized Star Wars section with clearly allocated pegs for the Vintage Collection, but there are two problems. First, those pegs are completely occupied by the very poor selection of launch wave repack figures, and if these stores actually do get wave 2, they're going to accumulate more toxic assets. What makes matters worse, is that the Vintage Collection still isn't scanning at Target. So the already glacial sales pace of the terrible wave 1 is going to be ground to a complete halt since Target's customers can't even purchase the figures. I know we've shown a similar image here recently, but I assure you this was taken today:



None of this impacts me personally. Just as was the case in 2012, I'm going to order my Vintage Collection figures from e-tail. But what the wildly successful Sail Barge campaign shows is that there is a huge number of lapsed collectors who are itching to get back in the game. The only way they will is if brick and mortar starts getting heavy inventory churn with a lot of fresh figures appearing. Hasbro: Your retail partners don't care.

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