Starting to believe the classic retailer excuse "manufacturer's issue"....
Hasbro hasn't provided any restock on alot action figure lines in atleast a month.
GI Joe - haven't seen a restock in atleast 4 weeks, never saw W3.
Marvel Legends - haven't been restocked at local Targets in 5 to 6 weeks.
Star Wars Vintage - never saw the Deleted Scences Wave, went ahead and pre-ordered the next wave from BBTS when I saw the 1 per case packout.
Marvel Universe - Tons of figures on the pegs..from January. Never saw the Thanos or Gambit 2 packs either.
Avengers - yep, no retsock on these either for alomst a month. TRU pegs are empty and Target pegs are full of Wave 1.
My local Wal-borg only received the Thanos/Warlock and Gambit/Sinister MU comic packs for the first time this past weekend so hold out hope!
Some other guy saw me in there comparing the paint jobs and loudly exclaimed to his "buddy": "He's taking them all!!!" I never saw another consumer look so worried before. (I only took one of each, leaving 1 pair behind for him.)
As a retailer I can confirm that many manufacturers have had delays recently. This is due to two major issues. China has been improving the working conditions of the factories, and Chinese New Years in January extended throughout the whole month, as people are starting to be allowed to take vacations. This delayed manufacturing and shipping, and many companies are just now starting to receive their inventories. The second major issue is the down economy has made many manufacturers produce less. They simply aren't cranking out the same numbers that they did 5 or 10 years ago. This is because of smaller orders from Waly Mart, Target and Toys R Us. If you notice none of the major retailers are getting many of anything. That leaves most of the orders picked up by smaller retailers who simply cannot make huge orders like the big box stores, so production gets delayed untill enough orders come in.
- Matt