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TRU Wave 7 Announced!


pawcanada

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I was running errands near my TRU, so had an excuse to stop by! And I found one Hulkbuster pack, but both Betsy/Lockjaw packs were gone. Surprising to me, given that folks seem to think Hulkbuster will be really popular.

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Just checked at my TRU in Kalamazoo, MI and it appears they haven't gotten them in yet. But on the plus side I was able to pick up Wave 36 sans the variant when I was picking up my comics.

I really hope these show up online soon, the hunt for these exclusive waves really burn me out.

Me too. I've been going to TRU everyday since i found this wave is out. Its only 5 minutes from where I live and employees are oblivious to what I'm looking for. Betsy is Mine!!!

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Hulkbuster/Hulk: 99788 72782

Betsy/Lockjaw: 99788 72783

Thanks Turtle, but apparently you need the entire upc number including the 2 numbers outside the barcode.

I asked one of the guys at the TRU I was near today if he could look up those numbers and he didn't see anything because the number wasn't long enough.

Ok, so I just called my local TRU.... and after talking with 2 people, the guy I ended with asked me 3 times what it was called I was looking for, are they single packs or multipacks, what are the characters.... he proceeds to tell me that he has in stock and I quote, "All I could see were 2 packs of Secret Wars and a package of 8 or so little heroes together (Handful of Heroes)."

....Sigh....

Edited by jcastick
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nothing at Willow Grove, pa. if i dont find these by SDCC I will trade someone 1 sdcc only exclusive of their choice (within price comparison reason) for the two.

Edited by mrjasontodd
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About a year after I left, the head guy in charge of that section got fired. Management found out he was pulling the variants/exclusives from the cases as he unpacked them (after truck, but before putting them out on the floor). As employees, we could "hold" stuff for ourselves for a few days (we each had a space in back) that we wanted to buy. He was pulling all the good stuff (believe you me he was up on everything in his section), buying it with his emp discount & scalping it on eBay. When he was fired (& mgmt was pissed at him when they found out), he said he didn't care because he had so much stuff that he wouldn't need to work for quite some time.

So yeah.... certain employees would know. I'd go back & be there right as they opened on Monday. I'd bet that this happens everywhere. (BTW, this is how he was discovered. Not the "minimate embargo," but that stuff had just come in on the truck & first customer in was a collector that cried foul when the more exclusive of the items were already gone.)

I worked at KB toys for about 2 years, back when they still existed, and while this was always kindof a tender issue, it sounds like your store cracked the whip about it way more than mine did. (Though, granted, two different stores.)

Though there really wasn't any way for the managers to police this, we were told we weren't allowed to sell any items we bought on the secondary market, and I can proudly say without guilt that I never did throughout my entire period of employment.

That said however... 90% of the time, they didn't stop any employees (Specific to my story: Me and my buddy who are toy collectin' types) from raiding the cases as soon as they came in the back door, which was oftentimes, early morning, before the store had even opened. We got new waves of stuff the minute they came in. The store got its money. No one really complained. It was more or less viewed a perk of the job.

I bought dozens upon dozens of toys, many rarities and 1 per casers, but they were ALWAYS for my own personal collection. Not one thing I ever bought went to ebay.

Now, note that I did say 90% of the time. To elaborate further on the other 10: There was a brief period... around the time Marvel Legends did their first build a figure, Galactus, in which even the normal figures were highly sought after for their parts... when a couple complaints began rolling in. These complaints were known to have come from a certain couple of regular customers we had, who made their living buying rarities and scalping them. I remember one's nickname was Johnny O... the other was an old fella with a mustache... there may have been a couple more, but those two really stuck out. They were basically there most new truck days, first thing in the morning, to pick the variants clean, and nothing more. It was well known that they were what might be known as professional scalpers, lol.

Their complaints were that they were there at the crack of dawn, sometimes taking time off work (as if this was somehow our fault as employees, for making them blow off responsibilities for some quick cash) only to find nothing of value and wasting their time.

And after these complaints were made, the managers begrudgingly told us we couldn't open the cases and pull items for ourselves fresh off the truck anymore. They were to remain sealed until the store had opened, and these particular customers (should they be there upon opening) had a chance to see us open the cases and look them over themselves. If they weren't there to see them opened first thing, they became fair game again, a 1/2 hour after the store had opened. This lasted for a case or two, and soon enough things were back to the norm.

But see, the key element in my tale is... the tables were somewhat turned here. I, as a collector, and not a scalper, enjoyed the perk of being able to easily procure my new waves, shortpacks included, with no hunting whatsoever. It was somewhat heavenly, in that regard. Meanwhile, the scalpers, who were regular customers, were getting the short end of the case, and it made them all red in the face and bothered. (And yes, I freely admit years later, that we did enjoy the hell out of pissing them off.)

So... I dunno... I guess my only point is, I think people in the collectable collecting world have a natural tendancy not to see things from any other perspective than the one that benefits THEM (Self included sometimes).

I know the saying goes that the customer is always right... but frankly... as someone who's been on both sides of the coin... it ain't always true... sometimes the customer is just a pushy asshole who thinks you're an idiot because he isn't getting his way.

/sarcasm on

If an employee does you a special favor and sets something you want aside for you, he's a hero.

If an employee does someone else a special favor and sets something you want aside for someone else, he's a bastard.

If an employee tells you there's nothing in the back, he's a filthy liar. Employees hoard all the good toys back there, so they can scalp them later. Demand he go double check to make sure he can't find something for you, because god knows, stores aren't out to make money, so they only put the crap product on the floor.

If an employee pulls something from a case for himself, it's always with malicious intent to scalp it. Never because he genuinely wants it. Never because he's also a collector with the same enthusiasm as you. Employees can't be collectors themselves, and cannot enjoy the perks of having first crack at new product. Because logically, it doesn't follow at all that someone who enjoys toys would apply to work at a toy store.

And finally, if the customers take off time from their real jobs to make sure they're the first at the store to get valuable variants and shortpacks they'd intended to profit from on ebay, the employees must be held accountable for waisting their time if they can't find anything of value. They're busy men. How dare we pull them away from their jobs to shop for toys.

/sarcasm off

...

I'm sure everything I've said in this post won't be met with complete enthusiasm from ya'll... but frankly most of it's true, and needs to be pointed out to toy collectors from time to time.

The toy hunt isn't always fair. This is a fact.

I no longer work for KB Toys (obviously) and I no longer enjoy these perks. Does the hunt disapoint me sometimes? Yes. But it is what it is. That said, I don't begrudge other toystore employees their right to pick through cases before me. It happens. You win some you lose some.

Do I think the Toys R Us employees might have been bending the truth when you talked to them? Possibly. However, all the same, I'm betting when you walk in Monday morning, you'll still find a wealth of Series 7. Maybe not the complete contents of every case, but more than enough of them.

It's not always a conspiracy on behalf of the scalpers to rob you of your toys.

Edited by Gillbob316
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Though there really wasn't any way for the managers to police this, we were told we weren't allowed to sell any items we bought on the secondary market, and I can proudly say without guilt that I never did throughout my entire period of employment.

This is the part that came back to bite him in the ass. When the customer complained, management checked his "hold" shelf space & saw several multiples of the same pack/kind (as he grabbed from several lines of toys/figures/etc). They found it hard to believe that he needed all of it just for him, so they let him buy one of each & he had to put the others back on the floor.

A few days later, they were tipped to his eBay page & saw everything he had for sale. This is when they fired him, as we had the same type of clause in our employment. (Even more so for him since he was head/in charge of that department & held to higher standards than the rest of us.) Besides this, a perk for us was that we could set stuff aside for our own personal purchases at any time -- not just on our breaks. As long as it didn't interfere with us helping guests. Of course, we only could buy our stuff on breaks, or before or after our shifts.

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It's not always a conspiracy on behalf of the scalpers to rob you of your toys.

I think this is the weirdest thing about toy collectors

If we get to a store and we've missed out on the best figures it's always a "scalper", why do we assume whoever beat us bought their figure out of hatred and greed and not love for the figures? Are we so alone in life we can't fathom someone else shares our hobbies and lives within our city limits?

Anytime a new wave hits if someone finds the remains of a case it's never "grrrr! beaten by a fellow collector!" or "gah! an employee must be a fan and took that for their own collection!" no, it's always "DAMN SCALPERS!" or "I think an employee's getting to them first to sell on eBay!!"

I just think it's odd our brains work that way...

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great post Gillbob, i'd go as far as saying it is heartwarming to hear tales of collectors actually leaving scalpers out in the cold.

i've only ever had one problem with the hunt, in particular the TRU exclusives... being in the UK, i never get invited to hunt... for shame!

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Anytime a new wave hits if someone finds the remains of a case it's never "grrrr! beaten by a fellow collector!" or "gah! an employee must be a fan and took that for their own collection!" no, it's always "DAMN SCALPERS!" or "I think an employee's getting to them first to sell on eBay!!"

I think it's probably more of a case of collectors not begrudging other collectors who beat you to the punch . . .

If i think in my mind that someone has bought a toy i wanted for their own collection, i'm disappointed, but not angry.

If i suspected a scalper bought it, i'd be p!ssed because i hate having to buy retail figures for double what DST charges for them.

Having said that - it's really hard to tell if we have scalpers here because almost everything we get down here are the left-overs from overseas. It's pretty rare to get any variants at all, let alone after scalpers and other collectors have been through.

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