The Wal Mart in Fair Lakes, Virginia used to be a Mecca for action figures. Fully stocked pegs, most of the current figures and lines. Now it has been reduced to half an aisle, raely has any figures of interest, and usually looks like a bombed out street with peg warmers peering off the pegs. Not even worth any special toy runs to the store. Been this way for a few years now even after conversion to a Super Walmart. Anybody else seeing the same?
The 2 closet Wal-Marts to where I live have become an easy pass for me on toy runs over the pass year due to store style and mis-management of inventory and employees. There is one Wal-mart within 5 miles from my house. It is a proto-type store meaning, the Toy Dept is 4 short aisles, one of them being loaded with Kid Connection type garbage that no one buys. This store also has no deli or bakery, making it a waste of time for grocery shopping. The 2nd closet Wal-mart is loaded with bloated, lazy redneck employees that do anything but go on smoke breaks. From groceries to toys, shelves are always a mess and left more than half empty. Back in the Prequel Star Wars days, this is where I would go for the midnight release of Star Wars Toys, but since Hasbro has pulled back on shipping what people want and started pushing lines like Angry Birds, this store has become a complete joke for the past 5 years. Also, Store Management at this location obviously could care less about being customer ready looking at the sheer length of time where nothing in cleaned up or stocked in any department. The only positive about a store being poorly manamged is that when the resets finally get pushed, case after case of brand new stuff finally surfaces but usually at 30% off or more. Other than that, drive right past.
TRU carries Minimates and that's where I go, for better or for worse. Targets are getting worse every year, carrying less stock on shelves and hiring more stockroom rats than ever.
My closest Wal Mart had diddely on the action figure aisles for Christmas. The one time you would think it would be stocked. I want to stop wasting my time looking, but with my luck, good stuff will show up once I stop. No Star Wars since last February, no Marvel Legends since wave 2. Just pathetic.
Wal-Mart has next to nothing nowadays. I read once how they were aggressively trying to squash TRU, and that was around the time when they had the most selection, first, out of the mass toy sellers. TRU prevailed, and WM shifted their focus to groceries.
But I rarely see anything new anywhere lately. I haven't bought a new figure from WM, TRU or Target in ages.
Same thing happened here. My closest Walmart imploded its action figure aisle a while back, but both of the others in my area just matched it for carrying nothing. One was actually worth going to, carrying things like Ben 10, Marvel Universe and Legends, and other things neither of the other two did. Now it's gutted.
Nothing like driving other toy stores and manufacturers out of business so you can turn around and carry nothing. Good thing Amazon handed Walmart their corporate keister when Wally tried to do the same to the book industry...
