Has anybody noticed that both Target and Wal-Mart have made their action figure sections smaller by almost 50%! Every Target and Wal-Mart I have gone into this week in my local area which is about 5 Targets and 8 Wal-Marts everyone of them are making their action figure sections smaller... what does this mean? I see no pegs for DC All Stars, Marvel Legends, Thundercats have been greatly reduced... even Ben 10 has been reduced in the amount of pegs that product normally has. I just hope this is temporary and not a sign of things to come.



Webslinger

If you mean smaller for everything else and more for Transformers and Star Wars, yeah!
My Wal-Mart has almost 20 feet for Star Wars and the other 20 feet for Transformers. Almost one whole side of an aisle.

I agree. The local Target, for example, used to have an aisle and a half of action figures. Now, they're down to an aisle and even that is starting to be reduced, they're moving in non-action-figures and most lines are being reduced. Half the aisle is Star Wars and Transformers, the other half is getting smaller and smaller.

hmm... Each of my Targets, post remodel, seemed to have added space for toys.

Marvel alone is an aisle facing, with Star Wars and Transformers taking up almost the whole other side of the aisle.

That still puts DC, GIJoe, Wrestling, and all the others on an aisle, an aisle for Bakugan, Pokemon, Thundercats, Ben 10, etc. and another aisle for Imaginext and Hero World and their ilk.

TRU on the other hand seems to be working hard to consolidate some of their action figure aisles into a "kids" aisle and a "collectors" aisle and if it doesn't fit there its hitting clearance.

Walmart is definitely giving more space to Marvel and Star Wars and condensing or eliminating most everything else.

I have to be honest my Walmart hasn't changed since last year....... it still has crap all in.

It seems that most of them in my area are getting smaller, too. Or maybe it's just getting less of what I'm interested in, who knows? Some don't even carry Marvel Universe anymore.

Brando81
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There's also a possibility this shrink in size is due to the summer toys. Usually when we would plan-o-grams and layouts for this time of year, things got shrunk, even Barbie which is a huge seller year round. The action figure sections may increase again around the holidays.

WM has beem making toy sections smaller overall for the past year, been pretty public about it.

I know I have seen a couple of wallys move the bikes into the sporting goods and reduce the overall numbers of lanes in the toy sections.

Target is probably following thier example.

Wall-Marts have bikes in the Toy Department? I never noticed but yeah those racks are there. I'm always use to them being in Sporting Goods in other places.

At the local WMs, the sporting goods department is right next to the toy department so I'm not sure if bikes are in toys or in sporting goods, they seem to straddle the two.

Our Walmarts are arranged differently. It goes Pharmacy/ Health and Beauty Aids... Toys (with bikes)... then home and garden like soil and gardening equipment. Then seasonal.... then hardware... THEN sporting goods which is right next to Electronics..

WM's near me are all over the place, but it's on recently those that don't have the sporting goods bordering the toys have done the switch.

Either way there was a ton of stuff published last summer about WM reducing the size of thier toy sections.

Bikes are considered toys at Walmart (no idea why, but they're assigned to department 7 which is toys). In the current store I'm at they've always been with the toy department. In the previous store they were practically on the other side of the store between pets and furniture (but still classified as toys). Seems like most stores now have the back wall running from electronics into photo into toys then into sporting goods with the bikes between those two.

Yeah, Walmart's plan was to reduce the toy departments company-wide but apparently that's sort of on-hold. My store was supposed to have had a huge remodel last year which would've moved toys half-way across the store and cut the department in half. The saving grace was that most (if not all) remodels were scaled back to bare-minimum affairs (new paint, new signs, new carpet) instead of the full-blown treatment of new everything.

Which is sad because Walmart expanding their toy section is what killed a lot of independent toy stores in the first place.

That's essentially how the two closest WMs to me are set up, although crafts are between electronics and toys.