Is the Cat & Mouse chase getting harder for you in stores?

[Tigermegatron]

Is the Cat & Mouse chase of finding NEWER Transformers toys in stores getting harder for you?

I'm wondering what the reason or reasons are for such low volume stocked newer TF toys in the USA major chain stores for the past 2+years. Is the reason the bad economy? is the reason previous TF toy lines were major shelf/peg warmers? did stores order more TF product when the cartoon was on a better network like Cartoon network or Fox kids or when it was in syndication? are the NEWER TF toys more inferior,thus stores order less of it?

I've had to resort to shopping on-line for about 85% of the NEWER TF toys i'm interested in buying. I find sites like HTS & recently target offer decent prices & free shipping.

At my local major chain USA stores,Target,Walmart & Kmart barely have a couple of Transformers toys on the shelves/pegs. The shelves have barely up to Three boxes,While the pegs seem to be over-dominated by bot shots & legends. Their are barely up to 8 deluxes on the pegs.

These days,It seems like my not-so local (60 miles away TRU store round trip) TRU stores have the biggest selections of Transformers on the Shelves & pegs. Sadly most TRU stores are known for having previous TF toy lines in over abundance still on the store shelves/pegs. Still TRU stores seem to stock newer TF items in bigger volume units compared to Walmart & Kmart these days.

Finding & buying those TRU TF Store exclusives requires more effort,more home work,more research,more phone calls,more stalking the TRU.com site. These days in order to get a newer TRU MP TF toy,I've had to call the various stores in my area the minute they open,Ask if they have the toy,then if yes,ask them to put it in customer service until i get there & buy it.

Kohls use to stock newer TF deluxes but in my local area Kohls stores,their have been no newer TF deluxes stocked on the pegs for almost Three+ years. It seems like my kohls local stores like to stock tons of the smaller TF toys like bot shots,legends,Cyber-verse commanders & those super tiny basic sized Kreo build it sets.

I often like Kmart because hardly any scalpers visit the store because it's so off the radar. Often times when a newer TF is hard to find at walmart or target,I have a high success rate of finding it at Kmart. Examples: ROTF Leader sized Jetfire,2007 Leader sized Desert camo Brawl. ROTF Leader sized black recolor for megatron,TFP Rid Deluxe Vehicon,BH Voyager Shockwave when he first came out & was hard to find & the list goes on.

[JediTricks]

For me, it's not been too bad thanks to Target. Every new TF in the last few months that wasn't MP Soundwave was from Target. That said, I haven't seen the TFG Legends ever, but I'm not too worried about it, I'm pretty zen on that matter because they simply aren't that important to me.

[Tigermegatron]

That said, I haven't seen the TFG Legends ever

I saw the entie wave at Target Two days ago,I bought Starscream & megatron JUST FOR the Targetmasters styled Waspinator & Chop shop. I saw the optimus & bumblebee but didn't buy them.

I'm probably also going to buy the Generations legends Sharp shot because it looks like decent G-1 homage toy. That target master styled Reflector looks decent.

It's odd Hasbro didn't want to sell those Takara TFP styled targetmasters but yet they have no problem selling these newer Generations targetmasters toys.

[Sparky Prime]

Is the Cat & Mouse chase of finding NEWER Transformers toys in stores getting harder for you?

Can't say that it has. I was surprised how quickly I found MP Soundwave actually. And the TRU's I visited while looking for it were fairly well stocked with some newer figures.

[Onslaught Six]

I've been unemployed since last year (job market's shit and I live in the middle of nowhere), and had car problems for the better part of the year that made it pretty well inadvisable to drive more than 20 minutes at a time. If I've bought anything, it's been online, and it's been few and far between. I'm so far behind, it's insane. I still need guys like Blaster and Grimlock, let alone Springer or Blitzwing, and I don't even want to talk about GI Joe.

[Shockwave]

No worse than usual, which is ridiculous here anyway. It took 3 1/2 months AFTER everyone else had BH Shockwave for him to show up on toy aisles here and even then, I've only seen two of them. And I just yesterday found Springer. That figures been out for how long now? Yeah, I live in a toy no man's land.