I know my regular venue has about 14-15 extra cases right now. This is crazy as it is fairly well known that for the first month or so he only charges $150 for a case and product flies off the shelf. He is a fairly new shop owner so he's concerned and so am I about these kinds of practices and what it does to his shop. That's nearly $1,300 worth of his money collecting dust. He's a great shop owner and he puts his own neck out on the line regularly for his customers.

Price depends on how good of product you want to use (*in the voice of Hank Hill* see that? I said "product"). Time investment could be weekly or bi weekly depending on the color. You don't want your roots showing. And it depends on what you want your hair to do.

Nope, sorry. I regularly shave my head

We knew this was inevitable, and Wizkids did, too, but there's not much they could do about it.

They had the sell-outs on earlier sets and so began increasing production, set to set, trying to find the optimum fit for the market.

Unfortunately, the reasonable alternatives to the above would be a combination of going back to more limited production runs and increasing the rarity of the rarest items -- things many of us complained about before. (I know I did about the latter -- I really dislike especially the older levels of rarity for chases, and only feel as calm about the current ones as I do because they're generally not must-haves for me, the way they've been choosing them)

Early in the year when they announced that 2012 would see smaller, more frequent steps, an aspect of that hinted (at least to me) that they were accepting that finding a "perfect" supply flow to the market wasn't going to be possible, so they were setting themselves up to expect sell-out after sell-out, looking toward smaller sets to make it easier for more people to get a good taste of each set, and the increased frequency to better get people's minds over what they may have just missed out on as they focused on what was soon to come.

To be honest, it seems NECA/Wizkids is almost trying too many things at once. Too much product, too fast, and trying too many different "ideas" for sets. I'm not sure I like what they are doing next year for sets. I'm a Marvel guy and I admit that DC is getting the shaft. Again, might be DC's fault, but going back to the Super Boosters could be very risky. I may not even buy a single brick. I might just buy individual boosters and I know I'm not the only person thinking this and I'm the guy that would buy a couple cases in the past.

Another thing my shop owner said is that he thinks that NECA is just starting to get the "greed" factor growing. This is influencing some of these more questionable decisions. Again, that's just one shop owners opinion, but I can't help but think there are many others out there that may be thinking the same thing. This could come back to haunt NECA.

My venue has the same thing. Got ~20 cases of 75th and GSX and upped it to 30 for CA and 35 for SM. CA sold out quickly, but he was still sitting on 14 cases of SM as of last Friday. When I asked him about it he wasn't worried. He wanted the extra as he feels that he will be able to sell the SM stuff over time to "DC-withdrawl" people as the next DC set will not be out until June.

No direct experience, but I've known a few who started to gray early and went this way.

If it's a good product (something that effectively dyes the hair, and won't gradually wash out) the need to touch it up will be a matter of how quickly your hair grows and how dark the dyed color is, as gray bases of each strand of hair will obviously start to stand out more sharply through a dark head of hair than, say, someone who has hair that's light brown or some degree of dirty blond. So, the darker the color you're looking to be and the faster your hair grows, the more frequently you'll need to do it.

Any guesses on todays preview?

That's a good point about Superman and DC withdrawal, but it won't do anything for all the Cap cases lying around. :/

My only experience was when my hair turned green during a summer when I spent almost every day at our town's pool.

My wife dyes her hair herself. She just buys the color at the drug store and follows the instructions. No maintenance needed unless you get one of the "extended life" products that come with a special shampoo that you need to use once a week to juice up the color between dye jobs.

And, you know, it's not a flatly bad idea. Much will depend upon whether new players are still coming in strongly. Still, yeah, it's likely to be a bit of a load on him, especially as it's likely many of the wholesalers are in a similar position and will be likely looking to dump some of that inventory within the next couple months -- which they can do at lower costs while still making a little profit.

Remember when there was Crimson Skies, Mage Knight, Heroclix Shadowlands & Creepy Freaks. How did that work out from them?

Nothing like competing with yourself.

Luckily our guy has none of the Cap stuff lying round.

So it's not a unique situation at my venue of stores having to sit on product right now. So will the reverse be true for Hulk because stores will be a little shy about ordering more product? Will there be any kind of backlash on NECA?

That's what I was expecting, too, which was why I was surprised to hear what seems like many reports of the Cap inventory at retail level having been mostly sold through. I haven't been in any shops in a while, so I didn't know whether the average shop (whatever that means) has much of it collecting dust.

Superman was being hyped as sell-out product even during the release week, but I'm taking it that it's too easily come by now.