You're right. It's not as though there's a contractual obligation to wait for the street date or anything with the distributor...

This doesn't make sense for two reasons.
First, if you blame the distribution then you're arguing that Hastings is fine, which is the same as arguing that there shouldn't be street dates.

Second, Hastings had these for sale before all the Alliance warehouses even had their cases. You're blaming Diamond/Alliance, but it doesn't appear to be a D/A problem. My guess is that D/A has the exclusive contract for hobby market distribution, and Hastings is a big enough chain to be considered Mass Market, so it's similar to selling GL packs in Target, which do NOT go through D/A.

This is ENTIRELY on Hastings. That should be the context of this conversation. They bought a product that had a street date, and broke that contract. If you really don't believe in street dates, that's fine. Argue that. Don't blame the shipping companies, the distributors, or the stock clerks. The company is responsible regardless of any of these other issues.

Comical, any insight into why stores need to have stock two weeks out?

A few people have mentioned it. Hastings is probably their own distributor, like most large chains, getting the product directly from Wizkids/NECA. If not then yeah, blame Diamond/Alliance (or more likely, the sales rep working for them), since they're the ones shipping it out so far ahead of time.

[Observation]

Step 1: Complain when the street date gets pushed back.

Step 2: Complain when the product gets released early.

[/Observation]

I love the internet, where nobody's happy 100% of the time.

Note that's not directed at anyone in particular.

It's no excuse, but from my vantage point I think WizKids lost some control of release dates when they gave up the Cincinnati warehouse. My impression of the new WizKids is that they are a much smaller entity that is using NECA's pre-existing supply chain to deliver product. Without that one central shipping location in Ohio it's nigh impossible to keep the door closed and prevent product from arriving too early everywhere. It's not a perfect system, and it never will be. Shipping and logistics is a tricky business, and some places only have so much warehouse space.

Regardless, it's the store's fault for putting product on shelves. How WizKids deals with this is another issue. We can't really affect these decisions, and to be honest it falls into the "none of our business" category.

I realize there was a contractual agreement, but this is focusing on the wrong part. If we focus on the stores breaking the date, then we are focusing on the symptom and not the disease. That's what I was trying to say.

Again, focusing on the store is focusing on the wrong problem. Yes, it's a problem that a store lacks judgement and breaks the agreement. No debating that. But the store breaking the street date isn't the root cause of the problem here.

And that will be the interesting thing to watch and see what happens. In way, it was some of our business when Wizkids (Ziran) asked us to report on stores that are breaking street date. When asking customers to report venues, they did (in a manner of speaking) make it our business too.

Not really. What would be interesting to see is Bat-Man's dial and what the 4th chase is.

When was the third one revealed?

Three of the four chases are revealed to be Kal (medieval knight), Son of Darkseid Superman and Earth One Superman (from the JMS graphic novel)

I went to my Hastings this morning, and while they did not have Superman packs they did have Watchmen fast forces. I asked the guy stocking comics if he knew the release date on the Superman set and he said they just stock them when they get them.

How much does Hastings pay their employees? How demanding is management? Just wondering as to why the employees ignored the release date. All stores get product that have release date. Most of them with proper management can follow that. If every big store got their product the day before, there is no guarantee it would be out with the exception of movies and games which are usually done by a outside vendor in stores such as Walmart.

Plus with a "Do not sell until XXXX date" should the company have to worry about the product being put out early?


On a lighter note maybe we should all plan vacations around a hastings location a week before the Hulk set releases.

Where's son of Darkseid? No pic no dial obviously not confirmed....

Obviously you haven't read other threads, or looked on units.

Agreed. WK can't be blamed for stores that decide to violate the street date. It isn't their fault, and I think there's a tendency to jump on them when things happen that is not their fault.

I'm all for holding WK responsible for things that they do wrong... but this wasn't one of them.

ummm.....this looks confirmed to me.

EDIT: Also see next post.