It was posted over at the RTM Board from a poster from San Diego that when he tried to get a Invisible Woman figure from the stock room of 3 different Targets he was told they have a new policy that will not allow employees to go look for figures unless they are restocking the pegs.

This was supposedly in response to the Star Wars figure craze.

The link below is to the post.

http://www.toymania.com/toybuzz/messages/73108.shtml

Its a shame if this is going to happen because in my Target the pegs are usually filled with stuff nobody wants.

That's been a policy at Target that goes in and out of style for the last 5 or 6 years, at least. I noticed the old "this is a collectible item so don't even think about buying it" signs back up at a couple of the local Targets again when the Star Wars stuff hit.

If it weren't for this lapse of intelligence on Target's part, they'd be my favorite store. Unfortunately, once again retailers have no real clue how to deal with the collector market, and continue to assume by ignoring it or treating it like lepers, they have it 'under control'.

Michael
MWC

Yeah, if I remember correctly, this first started when McFarlane toys hit in force around 1996, along with the modern Star Wars line.

It's been sporadically enforced since then. Look for it to go away when the hype from the exclusives dies down.

J.

I used to work at Target and that's always been the policy. I didn't always agree with it, but it was set up for inventory and shrinkage issues. They don't want everyone accessing the backroom. Have the sales floor doesn't know how the inventory works and if something is taken out and the system isn't told, the whole reordering and count is thrown off.

I, for the most part am trying to avoid all figures at the big stores and am trying to support my local comic shops and online shops. I'd rather support the little guy that cares.

I agree. However, comic shops tend to drive up the price of figures. $15 for JLU figures when they're $8 or $10 dollars down the street? Ouch!

I'm not sure what the SRP for JLU figures are. I know they aren't what Target and Wally World charge. If I were to take a guess, it'd be $8.99 or $9.99.

Gas and time are also a big factor for me these days as well. I just paid $2.35 a gallon the other day and that's going to be used for work. And with my job, I can sometimes put in 13 hours a day. So when I get home, I'm done for the day.

How would they go about to enforce the policy though?

How does Target enforce their policy? They remind the sales floor at huddles that unless they are backroom certified they are not allowed in the backroom. And usually the Team Leads in and around toys are aware of the policy of not going in the back for specfic action figures. And that's something that new hires are taught. At least this was the case at the store I worked at.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I worked at the big red T, the threat of termination was used to enforce the policy... Who wants to get fired for a Hot Wheel or Star Wars figure? At the time they were trying to stop the people that were getting paid by scalpers to ferret out the short ships...