Walmart and Target Stock Dates?

Targets and WalMarts are doing dept resets now so unless you ask them they won’t be put out until the resets are done.

Works for me. The only time it hasn’t work is the the new McFarlane Super Powers figures. Because they don’t have a location in the back yet so when the employee checked the back room and couldn’t find them she said she thinks they are in one of the trailers which I wouldn’t expect them to dig through.

I have been tracking Ultimate 13 at my closest Targets for a few days. All the stores either have 4 or 8 of each figure. Now some of them say 3 and 7. I am guessing someone requested one from the back.

I ended up ordering from the Target site. I do not want to ask employees to check the back.

Yeah when the minimum wage worker puts it on the shelf

Here's how it works....

Most Walmarts look like this - most of the time:



About once a month, they get in some new stock. Usually 1 case of 1 product (Basics, Elites, Battle Packs, or Championship Belts) - but never more than one type. It may or may not make it out to the shelves within 3 weeks.

So, at best - they stock about 10-12 times per year.

If you don't happen to be standing there at the very minute that an employee is putting the case out, you probably won't get the figure you are looking for.... but don't fret, you'll find it for double/triple the price on most of the "marketplace" type websites....

My brother does some sort of truck/deliveries to Walmart (I don't know exactly what he does, but it has nothing to do with toys) - he said THIS was posted on the loading dock at one of the Walmarts he deals with.....



Over at Target, I was poking around last week, hoping for that "7/21 Street Date" Ultimate Macho Man..... noticed several pallets stacked high with boxes all over the toy department....



I was a little nosy & peeked around for those "Mattel" boxes, didn't see any.... also didn't see any employees doing anything with all these boxes. Rather than deal with this nonsense, I just decided to come back 24 hours later & see if they had put anything new out.....

24 hours later, the exact same boxes were all still sitting in the exact same spots.... no one had touched them.

My friend, retail shopping for figures is a mess. I've gone back to our friends at Ringside Collectibles, because Walmart & Target are making my head explode. I can no longer ever expect to just walk into a store, see a selection of figures on the shelf, and pick one out that I'd like to have..... I've adopted the attitude of "screw the exclusives, if I find 'em, great - if I don't, I'm not getting it." Because I refuse to pay double/triple/more for these "store exclusives" that the stores never seem to have.

It's become an endless search, bothering store employees, trying to place "pre-orders" with way too many problems, waiting in digital "queue lines", trying to schedule my lunch break around whenever the next "presale" is that'll probably sell out in 2-4 minutes....

But I'm being a little harsh on Target, they haven't been too bad lately.... I've managed to get most of the Legends Series with at retail with a bit of detective work...but forget the chases, I've never found any of them on shelves. My motto in 2022 is "Every figure is a chase".... I've completely given up on Walmart, their shelves are bare 85% of the year. I honestly don't know how Walmart or Mattel can claim that a certain line or figure "isn't selling" when the shelves are always empty.

God, I miss Toys R Us and Kay Bee.

I did this two weeks ago looking for the Legends 15 Kane, but coming back in 48 hours did the trick, haha. The one thing they actually seem to stock here is the Legends sets, so I can't complain about it too much. The items having separate codes in the system makes it least somewhat easier for employees to find them in the back (which I hate doing, but the four pegs they set for these never actually have the figures on them).

Northeast Walmarts are a complete waste of space. I'm amazed I've been able to find the exclusives this year since maybe two or three of them routinely try and make an effort to put out product. I have no idea how people ever find basics or battle packs at them (and I have no idea where the ones they ship to these stores end up, either). Maybe last Christmas I think, I kept running into the same Mattel reps who were stocking shelves at the big box stores, which was maybe the last time I saw them fully stocked.

I'm wondering what the store resets will actually look like. Half the Walmarts I go to still have remnants of basic 119-123 on the shelves and the Hardy/Goldberg top picks set. At least Target has Legends stocked and maybe some Elite 92 to go with the slightly more recent Top Picks sets, but it feels like it's not even close how far ahead Ringside is on sets compared to retail right now.

I unload trucks for Wal Mart. When it comes to product that is not street dated, it should immediately be placed on the shelf. The only reasons that it wouldnt be are if the overnight stocking team is short staffed and they couldnt get around to it (the 'consumables' get priority over 'hardlines' since they have expiration dates) or if it is determined that the product is overstock (meaning that unless the full case can fit on the shelf, they wont bother opening it) and it goes into one of the locked trailers outside of the store itself. Partial cases are never put back in trailers. Employees can not get into the trailers on a whim, though there is a system in place for picking the items when there is shelf space. Even then though, the 'picks' are worked by the often short handed overnight staff. This results in pallets wrapped in plastic wrap sitting in an often unreachable place, waiting on anyone to stock them or place them in the proper trailers/bins as overstock. With the blame mostly on the overnight stocking team (who work in the store with no customers around and still cant get it done most of the time) I will say that whatever employee you are speaking with is probably just as frustrated about not being able to help you as you are.

The best thing you can do to get new product on the shelf is to buy what is on the shelf and trigger the POS replenishment. My store gets a steady shipment of Elite figures because they sell all the way through.

I’ve given up any hope for most of my local Walmarts but the Targets in my area are stocking daily. When Popfinder shows stock, I’ll usually see goods on the floor within a day or two

I worked in the stockroom at Target so I was the guy that pushed stuff put from the back so the shelf jockeys could put it on the sales floor. We pushed stuff out when our inventory guns told us. It seemed like a complete crapshoot. One time we had a fresh box of WWE Elites in the back. We had a nearly bare shelf out front. I wanted to see how long before the inventory gun told us to push out the new figures. I gave up after a month and pushed them out myself. I saw the same thing with the old Hall of Fame series. I saw the same with the first Marvel Legends X-Men series.

There’s really no rhyme or reason except for seasonal resets. I personally think resets are dumb when you’ve got empty shelves for a long stretch. But I digress. Target’s inventory system is kind of a mess. It’s an old, outdated, custom program that was cobbled together in the 90s.

If you’re very nice and not being annoying, you could ask someone to grab you something from the back if the store’s internal inventory system says it’s in the back. Brickseek is not accurate. Don’t be surprised if they say there’s nothing in the back. They’re overworked, so don’t be a jerk. There also may be a store policy to not pull things from the back because collectors are psychotic (see: Pokemon card parking lot fights). And worse yet, there may be a street date stamped on the box.

Oh, and they are severely understaffed in most stores. The $15/hour didn’t help much because it’s such a crap job working with the public now. People are extra cruel these past 2 years. The Target near me is desperate for new hires.