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Mass Effect Minimates


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Me and 2 coworkers cleaned out 4 gamestops. My boss got a full set and me and my other coworker got everything except Wrex and Illusive man. Everything else around me is sold out apparently, so I'm bummed. I don't want to pay 20 bucks for those 2. confused.gif

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I cleaned out the Gamestop across the street from work. Out of ten figures I got five different characters. A couple will make decent army builders for my future Guradians of the Galaxy display. Another might end up as a Marvel custom.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I bought 6 and cleared out the Boonton NJ store. Very helpful staff, nice change from what I expected at a Gamestop.

I bought another 6 at the North Brunswick, NJ store, there were about 15 still left in the bin. Also a very nice store, helpful staff.

Have all of them except Illusive Man. Nice figures, some interesting designs for the aliens. GL or Nova Corps customs?

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Looks like these are now marked down to 97 cents each! Cleaned out 3 stores tonight. Price drop is reflected on GameStop's website but now shows as out of stock.

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I'm pretty sure I bought almost the entire case from the shop across the street from my work. I snatched one of each (except for the elusive Illusive Man) when they first came out and the rest just sat there. I probably could have saved myself $10 if I'd waited a week but whatever. I'm content with what I got.

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Thanks for the heads up on the $0.97 price reduction. I went back to the North Brunswick store and bought the 13 they had left.

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As much as I love 97 cent clearance as much as the next, isn't the reality of this that blind bag minimates were not a success at Gamestop? Which in turn means they won't be willing to support any more minimate product? How does this look to other retailers? At the two Gamestops I visited, they didn't even know what minimates were, and the cases sat untouched for months until the first clearance, with the exception of the one figure I bought.

TMNT blind bags at K-mart were no more than an eyeblink. Comic shops seem unwilling to take much of a plunge locally, at least past ordering one lone case. Gamestops took a hit with them. Blind bags online seem kinda pointless.

So I have to ask - are blind bag minimates - helping or hurting the brand in the long term? And is it the concept of the blind bag, the assortment, the price, or a combination of all those that contribute to their demise at places like Gamestop?

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Blind-bagged Minimates are not saving Kmart. It's certainly not the license's fault because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is at its peak in the 21st century with a high-rated cartoon, a new movie franchise, and a top-selling toy line from Playmates.

Likewise, Mass Effect is a pretty popular game (on its third installment?) but to block figure virgins, they're unlikely to take the chance of getting not only a character they don't want but a product with which they're unfamiliar.

And as I've pointed out, my LCS isn't a huge fan of blind packaging at all and based on other comments I've read here, they're not alone.

Simply put, blind bagging is not the best way to pop someone's Minimates cherry.

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These initially sold out on the Gamestop website. I know my local stores seemed to sell through the initial cases fairly well before Christmas so they must have been restocked at least 2-3 times. Successful though? Hard to say. I get the impression most toy and collectible sales are really uneven between Gamestop stores so seeing some end up on clearance isn't surprising; I suppose it depends just how much of their total stock they ended up selling off at clearance prices.

I was able to deal with the blind bag format, but only because this is one of my favorite properties and I knew I wanted some extras and could get rid of others pretty easily. I'd hate to see the fate of Mass Effect decided by blind bag sales. Still, if you look at what else Gamestop is selling I'm not sure you can definitively say something like an exclusive boxset would have been more successful. I am afraid though that these have moved into "never say never" territory and we aren't going to see any more.

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These things cleared out fast around me. Once the .97 cent thing hit, I didn't think I'd find many, if any. One Gamestop that is the furthest away from me had some according to the website, but they disappeared hours before I got there.

The TMNT bags at Kmart stores around me do not stay in stock. I have two Kmart locations within 10 miles of my home.

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Most of the Gamestops around me had a lot of these. When the clearance price was $2, two stores closest to me had 30 each figures. Back in January or February, I bought a few and the clerk told me I was the first person they'd seen buying any, so there's a good month and a half of product possibly not being bought. by the time the clearance price hit 97 cents, many stores around me still had 10 or so figures at each store. So I'd say, in my area at least, these were not good sellers, but I doubt it was the blind bag issue alone that made them not sell, I noticed that there were very few (if any) of the blind boxed Transformers vinyl figures left (which were still priced at or above $3 each)

It's not just blind bags some stores shy away from either. I know a couple of my LCS typically don't even buy cases of Minimate two packs just because they know they'll be stuck with product. They usually only buy the 4 packs because they can buy one or two and not a full case.

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What was the price point on these guys? $4.99? $5.99? That's a lot to pay without knowing what you're going to get, especially if you're not a collector of the toy line. But I doubt Gamestop would have been interested in these if they weren't blind bagged. They were clearly looking at them as an impulse purchase, not a collectible. And if that's what it takes to get more Minimates on the market and in more places, so be it.

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