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Is Hasbro's New G.I. Joe Retro Line A Nightmare For MOC Collectors?


JayC

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If you are lucky enough to find Hasbro's new 3 3/4" G.I. Joe Retro figures which are Walmart exclusives at your local store, there is apparently a decent good chance you won't find the cardbacks for them in very good shape.

Now I can't personally speak to this because I have yet to actually find any of the figures at my local store, but I am told the material Hasbro is using for the packaging on this line isn't the most durable. On top of that the first wave of figures apparently shipped on the pegs of this special in-store display as seen here.
 
GIJoe-Retro-01__scaled_600.jpg
 


While the display piece is kinda cool and I've seen many collectors taking them home to use for their own display purposes, the cheap material used on the packaging combined with them shipping to stores on these metal pegs has caused this to happen to many of the figures.
 
GIJoe-Retro-02__scaled_600.jpg


You can see in the second image which comes via Duke, all the cards have been torn where they were hanging on the pegs.

I've heard this happening at quit a few stores. So just know this isn't due to someone intentionally ripping the cards, but because of bad planning and cheap materials. It's a shame since for many who are collecting this line, they are doing it more for the nostalgia packaging and less for the figures themselves.
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1 hour ago, Satam said:

That's too bad, but Walmart treating toy packaging like garbage is nothing new, unfortunately.

This actually reminds me of waaay back in the days when Joe switched over to Sgt. Savage and the Screaming Eagles. Around that time, Target was taking some kind of weird stance against the collector community of the day, and they actually considered adopting a policy of DELIBERATELY damaging action figure packaging to ruin their aftermarket value. Obviously it didn't go very far.

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This is nothing new.  Wal-Mart treats their toys horribly.  i once watched as a store employees opened toys from factory boxes.  She threw them on the floor, then picked them up and shoved them on to pegs as if she hated them or they had done something bad to her.

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1 hour ago, jsmooth said:

This is nothing new.  Wal-Mart treats their toys horribly.  i once watched as a store employees opened toys from factory boxes.  She threw them on the floor, then picked them up and shoved them on to pegs as if she hated them or they had done something bad to her.

She must have picked up an extra shift and didn't realize it was stock day...

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3 hours ago, Satam said:

That's too bad, but Walmart treating toy packaging like garbage is nothing new, unfortunately.

Well this one really isnt on walmart. This is how they are arriving at stores from what I am told.

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Walmart is terrible for exclusives and toys in general. I found 4 MOTU Origins Battle Cats and they all had blade cuts on the sides. They obviously don't care about cutting open the mailer boxes, so they cut off the sides of the package. Many stores have a special cutter that doesn't damage the items with a sharp blade.

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1 hour ago, JayC said:

Well this one really isnt on walmart. This is how they are arriving at stores from what I am told.

They're arriving at stores from Walmart warehouses, aren't they?  I didn't think Hasbro ships directly to their stores.  They don't do that with Target from what've seen/been told.

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seems like pretty standard big box retailer activity here, they don't care one lick about a collector, I have seen hideous things done to figures boxes at the hands of Walmart etc employees they hate their jobs, and they hate you coming in to the store blabbing like a big nerd about where the newest stock of whatever and whatnot is, they probably have a handful of employees who giggle in the lunch room about how johnny 40 year old figure buyer scoffed and charlie browned out of a store because all of the figures packages looked like sasquatch handled them, they also high fived each other at the end of the conversation and said "next time we will make those packages look even worse"

 

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10 hours ago, sonic360 said:

Walmart is terrible for exclusives and toys in general. I found 4 MOTU Origins Battle Cats and they all had blade cuts on the sides. They obviously don't care about cutting open the mailer boxes, so they cut off the sides of the package. Many stores have a special cutter that doesn't damage the items with a sharp blade.

It all depends on who is doing the cutting.  Some workers don't care/think about this.  they just want to open the boxes and get the job done as quickly as possible.

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13 hours ago, jsmooth said:

This is nothing new.  Wal-Mart treats their toys horribly.  i once watched as a store employees opened toys from factory boxes.  She threw them on the floor, then picked them up and shoved them on to pegs as if she hated them or they had done something bad to her.

If she’s working the toy section, maybe it’s because she has to deal with crazy collectors trying to find them.

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I hope this doesn’t prove to be a nightmare.  I’m mostly a loose collector (I open about 90% of my stuff) but given that I do love the card art and this line doesn’t really offer much new outside of the total packaging presentation this is a definite MOC line for me.  

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3 hours ago, jsmooth said:

Woah...that is not all that you found!!!!

Weeks ago I made a friend in the toy department and he texted me when they got the figures with details on every figure they received and today when I showed up to make a return from an online order I went to the toy section and he was there and I told him what I ordered online and that I came to get a He-man figure with the card in better shape and. He told me since last time I text you they restock more figures and he bringing down a box sealed and he told me a I save the figures you were looking and I said oh wow thank you very much for that man... Ge knows I been hunting MOTU and GI Joe since we met in my visit when I got Joe figures more than a month ago... After leaving I saw the Jada Marvel figures and I told him... Hey you know that Jada the company that make the mini Marvel figures is also doing GI Joes and they are already showing at some Walmarts and he said come with me to see if you are talking about this... We went back to the area of the MOTU figures and at the very top shelf he pulled out a little box and he told me this one and I said oh yeah that one... Thanks man. He said the got them but still don't have a place in the shelves to put them... That my toy hunting story of the day!  😃✌️

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7 hours ago, Roadpigmaster said:

Weeks ago I made a friend in the toy department and he texted me when they got the figures with details on every figure they received and today when I showed up to make a return from an online order I went to the toy section and he was there and I told him what I ordered online and that I came to get a He-man figure with the card in better shape and. He told me since last time I text you they restock more figures and he bringing down a box sealed and he told me a I save the figures you were looking and I said oh wow thank you very much for that man... Ge knows I been hunting MOTU and GI Joe since we met in my visit when I got Joe figures more than a month ago... After leaving I saw the Jada Marvel figures and I told him... Hey you know that Jada the company that make the mini Marvel figures is also doing GI Joes and they are already showing at some Walmarts and he said come with me to see if you are talking about this... We went back to the area of the MOTU figures and at the very top shelf he pulled out a little box and he told me this one and I said oh yeah that one... Thanks man. He said the got them but still don't have a place in the shelves to put them... That my toy hunting story of the day!  😃✌️

If only there were guys like that in Jersey.

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48 minutes ago, jsmooth said:

If only there were guys like that in Jersey.

Hey you don't loose anything by establishing a conversation with one the guys in that department... And from there you ask if there is any possibility to le you know when figures are coming to the store... 

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32 minutes ago, Roadpigmaster said:

Hey you don't loose anything by establishing a conversation with one the guys in that department... And from there you ask if there is any possibility to le you know when figures are coming to the store... 

Trust me I have tried but it seems like the answer that i always get is "There are none in the warehouse at this time and we don't know when they are coming."

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To the average employee these are all toys , they figure kids are gonna buy them and rip the package open anyway. You might get one or two that cares about MOC collecting and try to preserve the package as much as possible but most of them are just trying to finish their task as fast as possible so they can move to the next one. Also, there's a good chance that by the time you or a polite good natured collector get there they already had to deal with a bunch of rude customers who tell them how to do their jobs and let's not get into people who swap figures, who hide the figures and people open the packages to take something. It's not ideal behavior for them but I can't really blame the employees for getting fed up and not caring about a toy. 

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