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I did a lot of hunting over the past 2 months and revisited a few key stores including TRU at several key points over the holiday season. I was worried about how many OOTS figures were out there...and how few new figures. TRU in particular had jam packed an entire aisle full of TMNT merch right around the end of November including like 5 or more columns of loaded pegs for basics (plus an endcap for basics) plus tons of the retros that hadn't been moving at all all year at that location. What I observed over time is consisten with a sudden burst of sales for Christmas. Store after store shocked me over the week after Christmas as to how much was gone immediately after shopping season concluded. At that same TRU only a single figure was left hanging on less than half the pegs and there was only one of each retro left out. At the Walmart I frequent most it was the same story...stuff that hadn't moved in months suddenly gone...empty pegs hanging there. I never saw any signs that they had been removed in any way other than sales. That Walmart did eventually convert more than half its empty basics space into POP! Storage and condense the leftovers to a single still-bare column but it took a good week or more for them to do it. I saw this general pattern everywhere I went and I went a LOT of places multiple times (kept hoping to find good clearance or leaking 2017 merch!)... I concluded that TMNT figure sales must have been epic this holiday season. I can't say the same for any other section of the toy aisles I frequent except LEGO which also saw much holiday devastation. I'm no longer much worried about turtle sales in 2016...
Now...what I didn't see moving very well was Mega Bloks...which would be unfortunate and really a tragedy. Too bad LEGO has apparently negotiated to keep the clones out of its aisles most everywhere I go. Mega has really finally hit the point where I doubt most laymen could tell a difference now and they are so much cheaper too...you'da thunk they could have been a huge holiday hit too.
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