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Will Availability Of The Force Awakens Toy Line Meet Holiday Expectations?

Posted by Paul | November 13, 2015 at 10:48 AM ET

Would Hasbro have been better off offering a modern Early Bird Figures “empty box” for the holidays this year? Some of our closest sources are suggesting this wouldn’t have been a bad idea. No matter if you’re finding Star Wars action figures in stores or not, one thing is for sure: they’re extremely difficult to find. (more....)

Some have attributed this to toys flying off the shelves. Well, not so much. That seems to be the case because there are so few products out there. JTA has discovered from our sources that Hasbro greatly under-"forecasted" The Force Awakens toy launch. In most instances bad distribution is really on the retailers shoulders for not ordering enough product, but that didn't happen here. Retailers ordered plenty and Hasbro greatly underestimated their forecasting numbers and didn't produce enough. And while we’re cautiously optimistic, we’re not expecting things to get much better anytime soon. Despite little blips of new sporadic products and exclusives arriving, it seems that most everything else hasn't been able to meet the current demand at retail. Also, many online retailers have received next to nothing. It also has us wondering if something similar afflicted the Rebels line too. But that’s a different story. We digress.

The reason that there is little TFA product on most store shelves is very simple. Hasbro did not produce enough product and they are parceling out what small amount they have to any outlet that requests it first. Stores all over the USA are bare and we’ve been advised that it’s likely many of these locations will remain that way until after Christmas. We’ve also been advised that there is NOT going to be flood of product coming in closer to Christmas. More likely than anything, what you are seeing now is how it's most likely going to remain until early next year. We have found no proof otherwise to contradicts this. Again, we’ve been told that when Hasbro "forecasted" out what the demand was going to be for The Force Awakens they greatly underestimated this demand and the situation we have now is why stores are nearly empty. There will be exceptions to this as we have spoken to readers who have seen frequent arrivals of products. But it’s unlikely if new items will make it out in time either. (The latter is just a guess at this point.) But unless Hasbro can “alter time, speed up the harvest or teleport Star Wars toys off the assembly line to store shelves” it may be a very light Christmas for young Star Wars: The Force Awakens fans.

Let’s hope that Hasbro is able to improve things on a dime and get out the products it needs to meet demands, because right now things are looking rather bleak. There should be no doubt that they're working hard to meet the unexpected demand, but whether it is possible or not to do this is a totally different thing. Production lines can only move so quickly. We'd encourage you to maybe not second guess a purchase just in case they're unable to get things into stores on time. We believe that they can, it just has to happen now for us to rest easy about it. With only five weeks out from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hitting theaters, and (gasp!) six weeks out from Christmas, stores (right now) are in no position to handle the holiday traffic.... as far as Star Wars toys are concerned.

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