To Pre-Order, Or Not To Pre-Order...That Is The Question Hasbro Seems Confused About

I don't see how Hasbro could stop an etailer from putting up pre-orders. BBTS or whoever orders how many ever boxes they are buying of a particular wave. They can then list those figures for pre-order that they put in a purchase order for on their site, no? If the customer pre-order number goes over their merchant purchase order, they just go back to the manufacture and put in an additional purchase order. Isn't that how it works?

This is a great example of the recent, or not so recent incompetence of Hasbro. The reason these products get made is to have them sell to as many consumers as possible so to make the availability as accessible as possible would make sense. There seems to be a communication problem within Hasbro about this issue and needs some clarification.

Unfortunately this does not surprise me.

Sounds like a poorly veiled plot to kill e-tailer interest in their product or outright kill smaller e-tailers so that folks HAVE to buy from big box or Hasbro Pulse.

This absolutely smells of corporate incompetence. However, another scenario which wouldn't surprise me one bit is that it's a case of Hasbro talking out of both sides of its face.

I could see a world where big box retailers are shrinking / cancelling their orders due to lower foot-traffic sales. E-tailer availability of product and ease of pre-orders becomes an easy scapegoat for cutting into their sales. So Hasbro starts to announce / tell big box purchasers that there aren't going to have as many pre-orders which puts things back in their favor. Big box is happier and maintains order levels. Meanwhile, Hasbro whispers in the ear of E-tailers that it's just a PR snafu and all is well. That way Hasbro doesn't have bad blood which affects the buying trends of the E-tailers either.

Admittedly, it's a bit of a tin-hat theory, but one that would not surprise me given a lot of the stupid decisions Hasbro has been making lately in the name of maximizing profit.

I think preorders are still coming just closer to actual releases dates so we just see the products ffirst.i for one want whole cases shown and go up for preorder so I have the choice but I still plan to wait on most products. The amount of preorders I have compared to past years is way less and that is by design for me. I am playing the long game.

Corporate incompetence on display...and you can bet the people doing this are NOT the ones who are being fired.

I'm glad you're confused still. Makes me feel less dumb about going crosseyed trying to figure this out.