Seems like we have a bit of a mystery on our hands about the true status of the McFarlane Toys upcoming
DC Multiverse 7" Batman Dark Nights Metal figures, and whether or not they will be released as
Walmart exclusives here in the US.
Walmart seems to want us to think they are in fact exclusive to them, as they have clearly marked them as such on their website.
McFarlane Toys seems to even back that claim up on their own
official website with this recent image they added. Now we should note that the Mcfarlane Toys website only lists Walmart as the place to get these figures, but they never use the actual word exclusive.
On a side note, notice the new image from the McFarlane website shows the
Earth -52, Batman figure, which had previously been missing from any released official images or listings. While the new image gives us our first official look at that figure, it is NOT currently listed for pre-order on Walmart's website, at least not that we could find. Anyway that's a mystery for another day.
So from all appearances as we
reported yesterday, it would seem that Walmart would be the place to go if you want to get these figures in the United States.
NOT SO FAST THOUGH. Since yesterday's story, we have gotten some indications that perhaps these are
NOT Walmart exclusives at all, and that Walmart will only be releasing them first. TNI reader
Greg pointed us to a post made by Toy Instagramer
ToyShiz who suggested other retailers
MIGHT be carrying the figures at a later date.
Now it certainly wouldn't be the first time we've seen a big box retailer get preferential treatment from a toy manufacturer and is allowed to release an item(s) before anyone else. It's not a very fair practice in my opinion, and seems to be one that screws over the little guy, but I guess all is fair in love, war and business. Still when that happens, it's not generally refereed to as an "exclusive". An exclusive means you are the only place that will offer the item, at least that is what exclusive is supposed to mean. Even with other lines like
Mattel's Masters of the Universe Origins line, which we know Walmart gets first dibs on, the word exclusive was never used to describe the product.
Never-the-less we wanted to try and get to the bottom of this, so we've reached out to a few small retailers to find out what they have heard. According to them, they have been told by their distributors that these figures will in fact only be released
first at Walmart and then everywhere else about a month later. So we are talking late September/October for Walmart and then November for anyone else who chooses to carry these figures.
Now we should note that we have not heard anything official directly from McFarlane Toys on this and that sometimes things change and distributors can be going off outdated information. In other words we can't tell you definitively at this point that these ARE or AREN'T Walmart exclusives, but despite what is listed on the Walmart website, there are decent indications that in fact they aren't.