Skylanders in stock at MSRP including Cynder!!!

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They have Whirlwind, who I have been looking for, but I can't bring myself to pay nearly $15 after shipping and tax for one figure. Oh well.
 
I would, but I just went nuts at a Toys R Us and a Target today that had stuff in stock. Got the Toys R Us exclusive Legendary pack, plus 5 other single character packs, then picked up 3 multi character packs at Target (Only one double character, so I'm not hoarding!)
 
I still don't get why people go so nuts collecting these things. Seems like you could just get all the elements and be done with it.
 
[quote name='Gosha']I still don't get why people go so nuts collecting these things. Seems like you could just get all the elements and be done with it.[/QUOTE]

Pokemon my friend, I still remember the craze!!!
 
[quote name='etcrane']Can anyone weigh in on whether they prefer the 3DS version vs console versions of the game?[/QUOTE]

Depends on what you prefer. 3DS version is more of a straight platformer, while the console versions are much deeper and have a bit more RPG elements fused within. I had a lot of fun with the 3DS version, but the full-fledged console versions are decidedly better.
 
[quote name='Mixer236']Depends on what you prefer. 3DS version is more of a straight platformer, while the console versions are much deeper and have a bit more RPG elements fused within. I had a lot of fun with the 3DS version, but the full-fledged console versions are decidedly better.[/QUOTE]

Cool, thanks ... I picked up the 3DS version at TRU this week on sale because I like the characters it comes with better but I'm debating getting the PS3 version again (had it last year and sold it before opening it). Dunno ... I'm way too old for this stuff anyway but it kind of takes me back to my childhood.
 
MSRP should be $4.99. I fully expect the Skylanders bubble to burst by the end of February.
 
[quote name='Kerig']MSRP should be $4.99. I fully expect the Skylanders bubble to burst by the end of February.[/QUOTE]

yes, because when they sell like hotcakes, it's always smart to lower the MSRP. :applause:
 
[quote name='Gosha']I still don't get why people go so nuts collecting these things. Seems like you could just get all the elements and be done with it.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but even finding one of each element is tricky. I'm having a hell of a time finding Air types.

[quote name='Jose87']Why is Cynder so rare, exactly?[/QUOTE]

My guess is that it's two-fold: 1) she's a dragon, and the dragons are popular and 2) she's an Undead character, and one of only two on the market that aren't part of a $20-$25 level pack.
 
Yeah, I really only cared about getting one of each element, which I have now. I'll probably hold off on completing the set until they are more plentiful and the sales start kicking in.
 
[quote name='Kerig']MSRP should be $4.99. I fully expect the Skylanders bubble to burst by the end of February.[/QUOTE]

That seems logical. After all, they've only been hard as hell to find for 3 months, it stands to reason in the next 2 weeks people will suddenly not want them anymore.

I honestly don't get it...I mean, when you finish the game, what do you do with them? I have my little collection of 11 on standing on a shelf between sessions, but they will probably go to my friend's kids when I S-rank the game.
 
[quote name='radioactivez0r']
I honestly don't get it...I mean, when you finish the game, what do you do with them?[/QUOTE]

Skylanders Giants, of course.
 
[quote name='radioactivez0r']I mean, when you finish the game, what do you do with them?[/QUOTE]

That can be said with almost anything. Games, books, movies, etc etc. When you are done with the (insert item here), what do you do with it?

You sell it, keep it, give it away, use it some more.
 
[quote name='radioactivez0r']That seems logical. After all, they've only been hard as hell to find for 3 months, it stands to reason in the next 2 weeks people will suddenly not want them anymore.[/QUOTE]

I bought all of mine for $5 each from TRU and Amazon the week of Thanksgiving. It had been released for over a month already and there was no real issues with finding them online or in stores except for a few of the rarer ones (I've never seen a Whirlwind or Stealth Elf in-store).

Christmastime comes around, and they're still fairly easy to find. Then, after the new year stock start mysteriously drying up everywhere and the prices go crazy on eBay. Store shelves have been barren ever since then. Now we're starting to see a thread here and there talking of a long overdue restock.

In the next few weeks Activision should finally start replenishing stores with inventory and they'll start going on sale again like we saw around Black Friday ($5).

I'd personally like to know what really happened with all of this. Most hot toys go in and immediately back out of stock repeatedly week after week. From what I've seen, Skylanders figures vanished completely with no restocks. There's definitely an interesting story buried in there somewhere.

TL;DR: Please don't buy single Skylanders for $15, you're getting ripped off.
 
I just recently decided to get into Skylanders. I drove about 40 minutes out of my way today to a Toys R Us that had the Legendary 3 Pack.

After picking that up, I went to the video game section to buy a 3DS starter pack when I noticed that some of the 3DS starter packs that were out had different figures included.

I saw two boxes with different figures and they initially didn't look tampered with. One was missing all three of the figures it was supposed to come with and the other was missing the two except Stealth Elf. The sticker seal on the top wasn't cut, so I examined the bottom and sure enough, it looked like someone had pulled open the bottom, replaced the contents and re-glued the packaging.

I brought them up to the cashier and explained what I had discovered. I though it'd suck if a parent accidentally bought one of those for a kid since they wouldn't get the figures they're supposed to. Told him about my findings and told him to pass it on to their LP department...if they have one.

Then, before leaving, I bought a seemingly clean 3DS starter pack... ...and now, I regret buying it. I'm not sure whether I should open it because there's no telling if another TRU would even believe I wasn't the one that tampered with it in the event something is wrong or missing.

The boxes looked normal at first glance. Also, since the figures that were missing were exclusive...I reckon it was someone putting them up on eBay. Freaking scammers ruined my day...

Oh yea, just in case, it was at a Toys R Us in San Jose, CA, but it could've happened anywhere. Buyers beware!
 
[quote name='Kerig']I bought all of mine for $5 each from TRU and Amazon the week of Thanksgiving. It had been released for over a month already and there was no real issues with finding them online or in stores except for a few of the rarer ones (I've never seen a Whirlwind or Stealth Elf in-store).

Christmastime comes around, and they're still fairly easy to find. Then, after the new year stock start mysteriously drying up everywhere and the prices go crazy on eBay. Store shelves have been barren ever since then. Now we're starting to see a thread here and there talking of a long overdue restock.

In the next few weeks Activision should finally start replenishing stores with inventory and they'll start going on sale again like we saw around Black Friday ($5).

I'd personally like to know what really happened with all of this. Most hot toys go in and immediately back out of stock repeatedly week after week. From what I've seen, Skylanders figures vanished completely with no restocks. There's definitely an interesting story buried in there somewhere.

TL;DR: Please don't buy single Skylanders for $15, you're getting ripped off.[/QUOTE]

I'm surprised at this statement. It is very simple. Tons of kids got them for Christmas, then wanted more figures afterwards. All the stock that was sitting around got bought up within a few days after Christmas and every restock since then sells out within minutes days (if not hours) - even the "commons" like Boomer and Drobot. At this point it is partly resellers of course fueling the quick sellouts but the whole thing is still driven by the demand from kids/parents.

This even happened within my own family and I was being all CAG-y before Christmas buying them for $4 or $5 each. I made sure to get one of each element and even passed on the Legendary pack (the one and only time I saw it in November) because I didn't want to pay full MSRP (which at the time was $19.99). But then when my 9 and 4 year-olds started playing it they wanted more figs. My 9 year-old wanted to spend his Christmas money on the Stump Smash/Flameslinger/Drobot 3-pack and since I had seen that everywhere the week before Christmas I thought it would be no problem. Luckily I called a GS store and had them hold their last one because all of a sudden all those packs were sold out. It has been like that ever since. At this point, perhaps, it mught creep into your mind that they are keeping the supply artificially low to create more demand (getting people to buy ones they might not otherwise for fear of not finding them again). But I'm positive that not even Activision anticipated the post-Christmas demand. There was a lot of money to be made then that they missed out on due to lack of supply.

I admit, though, that I really thought it would die down by now. If you had asked me in early January I would have said it would die down by end of Feb when for sure they would have flooded the market. But for some reason, it is still going nearly as strong as those days right after Christmas. At this point you can't reasonably say that it will happen by end of Feb. I just got back from Target, TRU, and Best Buy and none of them had a single Skylanders item that wasn't a starter pack. That is just stunning. The TRU I was at said they might have more tomorrow including Legendary Packs but I simply can't get to a store 30 miles away by 9:30 AM on the off chance they might have them. So at this point I probably won't be able to get that pack (as I definitely won't pay eBay/Amazon prices for it - $24.99 is painful enough).

Now, at some point I imagine the "commons" will be readily available. But when that happens is still up in the air. Late March? June? I dunno... Then it will all start back up again when the Giant Skylanders are released. Except this time it will be different: they will be hard to get from the very start. You can count on that.
 
[quote name='Kerig']From what I've seen, Skylanders figures vanished completely with no restocks.[/QUOTE]

Working retail, I can say, we've gotten Skylanders shipments pretty much every other week (if not weekly) since the game came out.

The shelves are empty because people have been buying them. Tuesday, we got in two six-packs... put them out in the afternoon. They were gone by noon on Wednesday. And we're a tiny town. This has pretty much been the same story since around Thanksgiving.

There's no big conspiracy here - Activision is simply shipping and selling.
 
Resellers are really driving the sell outs at the moment. Every store employee I have asked about them tells me about people buying about people buying every single one off the shelves as soon as they come in. I missed a Legendary shipment by minutes when a woman bought all 6+ packs at once as soon as the store opened. Right now there are over 350 Legendary auctions on Ebay, and thankfully the vast majority have zero bids, and as far as I could tell the only ones with bids were in the 25-35$ range, tops with very few exceptions. Gougers are going to eat themselves, and as they slowly figure out that they aren't going to turn a ton of profit they will be returning them to the store and stop hoarding.

Activision isn't the type of company to not ship product to try and keep it rare. Their business model is to exploit the hell out of it. The rush on them caught them off guard, prior to Christmas it was easy to find pretty much everywhere, so they weren't ready for the massive rush. They are obviously ramping up production, and their reprint of Legendarys makes it obvious that they have no intention of not keeping them coming. The gold and silver ones are their nod to collectors, and honestly my son would rather have the normal ones than those (and he would want to take it out of the box too).
 
Walmart is stocking them weekly here. They do just sell out that fast. And they have at least 3 boxes full of them on stock nights. Its sad that resellers are buying them up this fast, but that's the way it goes I suppose. I luckily have found all release ones now except the legendary pack for my wife.
 
I can't wait for the next Street Fighter game to come out Skylanders style. You get the Ken and Ryu figures with the game, but have to buy every other figure if you want to play with any of the other characters.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']I can't wait for the next Street Fighter game to come out Skylanders style. You get the Ken and Ryu figures with the game, but have to buy every other figure if you want to play with any of the other characters.[/QUOTE]

this is definitely gonna happen with another franchise within the year. pokemon people are kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']I can't wait for the next Street Fighter game to come out Skylanders style. You get the Ken and Ryu figures with the game, but have to buy every other figure if you want to play with any of the other characters.[/QUOTE]

That does sound just like something Capcom would do :)

However, I do bristle a little at the repeated suggestion that this is nothing but DLC. The figures are nice and at least on par quality and price wise with almost all other action figures. By itself that isn't out of line.

But...

On top of that you get cross platform storage (great when the neighborhood kids have different systems). The idea that it is "pulling" the character into the game is awesome for a kid. It also is essentially DLC, because it gives you more content in not one but TWO games, the main game and the web game (it's like Farmville for kids, not a lot to it but entertaing). If you also have the 3DS version make that THREE games, this version is completely different and quite a bit of on the go fun. And with Skylanders Giants this fall being backwards compatible, make that FOUR games. You also get a trading card and stickers, which are always a hit with the kids.

For the gamer that just wants to play, I can see the value being diminshed. But, for the intended audience, the value is very high. I can understand the irritation at unlocking content "on the disk", but it isn't like that content made the disk more expensive or heavier to carry home, and if you had to download data you bought a new character that would turn off alot of kids, particularly ones that don't have their system connected. It's no different than downloading an XBox Live demo and demanding that you be able to play the whole thing without paying to unlock it because you used the bandwidth to get it to your system (the whole game is in your system, why can't you use it?). The game is quite meaty even with just the original 3, and all achievements can be acquired.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']I can't wait for the next Street Fighter game to come out Skylanders style. You get the Ken and Ryu figures with the game, but have to buy every other figure if you want to play with any of the other characters.[/QUOTE]

even better marketing, they give you TWO Ken figures. Everyone hates Ken, so they'll have to run out and buy more ASAP.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']I can't wait for the next Street Fighter game to come out Skylanders style. You get the Ken and Ryu figures with the game, but have to buy every other figure if you want to play with any of the other characters.[/QUOTE]

The DLC plans for Street Fighter x Tekken are already bad enough. Don't give them any more ideas.
 
Uggggh, I think Skylanders mania has finally died down in my house. Was able to get the Empire of Ice pack at GS a couple weeks ago, played it for the 15 mins it lasted, thats been it. Once you beat the game and farm out the individual level achievements, there isn't really anything else to do..Such a shame b/c for the month it took my son and I to beat, we had a blast, possibly the best gaming experience for both of us ever. I was hesitant to buy all the figures before x-mas, but really glad I did, every time we walk in to Target, I see a little bit of hope die in my son when he runs over to the Skylander display its empty, sometimes he doesn't even bother to check anymore.

I think it was really stupid for them for not have enough product to meet the demand. Sure they were testing the waters, but you'd think they would have had it easy to load up stores again by doubling mfg capacities right after seeing BF / x-mas sales numbers..I'm sure if they had plenty of stock, they would have tripled their profits, instead they let stupid ebay flippers/hoarders reap the benefits...
 
Got lucky at best buy this morning. They just so happened to get some figures in this morning. Dude ran to the back and came out with 8 figures. I bought 3 of them. My son is pretty happy to have some more. I almost broke down and bought some off eBay last night, really glad I waited.
 
[quote name='confoosious']this is definitely gonna happen with another franchise within the year. pokemon people are kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.[/QUOTE]

This idea was originally pitched to the Pokemon People but they shot the creator down thinking this wouldn't work.
 
[quote name='Brother Daz']Got lucky at best buy this morning. They just so happened to get some figures in this morning. Dude ran to the back and came out with 8 figures. I bought 3 of them. My son is pretty happy to have some more. I almost broke down and bought some off eBay last night, really glad I waited.[/QUOTE]

My wife took my son to TRU this morning because he was sick and picked up a triple pack but don't know which one they got. She wants to return it but I'm guess it's either the legendary, Wrecking Ball/Stealth Elf/Sonic Boom, or the new one. Have everything else except for the ultra rare.
 
For those in the market for Legendary figures, be sure to not just give up if you missed the first shipment early in the week. My ToysRUs got their second (maybe third) shipment of them today. It looks like the one from Tuesday (and I think they got one on Saturday too) was a smaller Fedex shipment with only about a dozen packs each which the gougers quickly gobbled up. Low and behold, I go by at lunch and they had gotten in at least another TWO dozen packs (on their normal truck). After the one I got I counted another 18 on the racks and it was a good three hours after opening.

It's obvious they have no intention of keeping them rare (which is good, since they count as a unique character in the games). The gold/silver/purple glitter ones are apparently their bow to collectors.
 
Just got back from TRU after I heard they had some in stock, got Hex, and the three pack with Stump Smash, Flameslinger and Drobot. Wouldn't have got the 3 pack but I want one of each element (have 2 magic and 2 tech though) and there were no single packs of air or life.

The guy at the desk said they got ONE legendary in and somebody had it as they opened.
 
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As recently as January Activision is on record as saying that they will try to meet the demand for Skylanders. This makes sense because every time a shopper goes to the store and gets greeted with an empty shelf they lose money.

Right now with certain figures you are fighting the resellers (and the fools who were paying over $100 on ebay for legendary packs were only flaming the fire).

I go once a week when my TRU gets their truck in (it is about 20 miles away) and I consider myself lucky to have been able to find everything except for Vodood and Legendary Packs.

Hopefully as the profit goes down on Ebay...they will stay on the shelves long enough for people who have other obligations in their life than showing up as TRU opens its doors can purchase them.
 
[quote name='folkmojo']As recently as January Activision is on record as saying that they will try to meet the demand for Skylanders. This makes sense because every time a shopper goes to the store and gets greeted with an empty shelf they lose money.[/QUOTE]

This is true. It's also why the Starter packs don't seem to be moving and are regularly on sale. The draw of this game is the figures, and being to look through the racks and pick out ones you think are cool, not just scrounge for whatever crumbs the Ebayers left for you. If you see an empty rack with nothing but Starters, chances are you go "forget that" and move on.

[quote name='Chux']Just got back from TRU after I heard they had some in stock, got Hex, and the three pack with Stump Smash, Flameslinger and Drobot. Wouldn't have got the 3 pack but I want one of each element (have 2 magic and 2 tech though) and there were no single packs of air or life.

The guy at the desk said they got ONE legendary in and somebody had it as they opened.[/QUOTE]

That probably wasn't their big shipment then, I swear when I went they had so many that I had a chance to go through them all and pick out the one I felt had the best paint job and assembly.

Don't give up if you want one, I doubt my store was the only one that had gotten 30-40 packs of Legendaries in the past week alone. And when all of those hundreds of Ebay auctions expire with no bids or below the minimum, the gougers will be returning them.
 
I'm glad to hear it's not Activision behind the curtain on this one. I had no idea there were regular shipments coming in all this time. I live in a smaller town now, and the full impact of resale hoarders is very minimal around here.

There's still hope that the fliphoarders will ease off by March after seeing more stock in-store than they can resell. From the retail stories on here, it sounds like at this point the shortage is still being fueled by flipper hoarding more so than just an overwhelming demand by the end consumer.

I'm glad to be part of the CAG community rather than the SlickDeals/Fatwallet one. I'll never share the opinion that we're anywhere close to them in mentality.
 
I'm not saying I would never flip a skylander.

However, if there were 6 legendary/rare single packs I would buy 1 or 2 (if I needed 1 for personal use) and leave the rest. NOT buy all 6 and clear it out.

Flipping is one thing....hoarding is another.
 
[quote name='Marauder7']This idea was originally pitched to the Pokemon People but they shot the creator down thinking this wouldn't work.[/QUOTE]

Man, pokemon could have and might still make a mint off of this. What are there, 100000000 pokemon? Imagine having to collect them all.

I see it working for fighting games as well. That's about it.

Unless the Madden fools get some ideas. Madden 2013 featuring one team with the base game. Then you have to buy each individual player to get to play with other teams...lol..
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']

I see it working for fighting games as well. That's about it.

[/QUOTE]

Given as Activision has the Marvel comics license, and the Ultimate Alliance series seems dead (I hope so anyways, last game was awful) I can see a new Marvel game utilizing this technology. I'd have no choice but to get a second mortgage to pay for that.
In regards to the Pokemon thing, I read somewhere that the Wii U is going to use the same NFC technology that Skylanders uses, so, yeah. Here come the pokeymans.
 
Went back to TRU because I was thinking about swapping out the 3-Pack I got, and they were all sold out, so I kept it.

That being said, I'm not going to use the Drobot I got (sticking to one figure of each element), and it'll be loose, does anybody want it before I go to eBay with it?
 
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