This article isn't exactly news but rather my personal experience. At this point it is basically just a way for me to keep a record of my reaction to the experience. Looking forward to next year though with Skylanders 4, I will be able to direct new readers/players to this article when you ask questions like:
“Is the midnight release going to be busy?”
“I can't get to the store on Day 1, will there still be figures left on the shelves?”
So with that in mind, let's get started.
October 12 – 11:30 PM
As some of you know, I do not have a Toys R Us nearby, so I didn't have to choose between Toys R Us or Walmart for the midnight release. I did not pre-order from Walmart so I was just there to pick up a few figures I knew I wanted to get my hands on.
Upon my arrival, there was no line, no figures on the shelves (except for the remaining Giants stock) and very little SWAP Force signage. As I browsed through the rest of the Electronics department, I noticed a few other groups hanging around as well. Midnight soon rolled around and my suspicions were correct. They were here for the SWAP Force release just like me.
October 13 – 12:01 AM
At midnight, the Walmart employee promptly rolled out a cart filled with SWAP Force figures. Including myself, there were five groups looking to pick up some Skylanders. So with an entire shipment to ourselves, there were plenty of figures to go around. This shipment included two cases (24 figures) of Enchanted Hoot Loop. This was naturally the main focus for all five of us at the midnight release.
The only disappointment here was that they did not seem to have all the Starter Packs. I talked with the Walmart employee (who I used to work with) about there stock and she told me this was everything. She searched the backroom (which isn't that big) for about twenty minutes while I was there and only found two cases of Wii Starter Packs and one case of Xbox 360 Starter Packs. I'm quite surprised that the other three Starter Packs were not on hand at launch.
October 13 – 9:30 AM
After a good night's sleep I found myself at Target. I did not pre-order from Target either. This trip was all about Nitro Magna Charge.
My Target had already been open for an hour and a half, but the shelves were still fully stocked. All the figures were there and there were at least 10 Nitro Magna Charge Double Packs on the pegs. I was impressed with their stock.
October 13 – 10:00 AM
Next stop on the list is Best Buy to finally pick up the game.
Why Best Buy? (Well, it definitely wasn't for their pre-order bonus.) Because I'm loyal to Best Buy. Perhaps a bit too loyal at times, but I'm a member of their rewards program and, since I purchase almost all my video games from them, I usually have a number of gift cards and coupons to use.
As with previous pre-orders from Best Buy, I headed over to the Customer Service desk to pick it up. Usually on release days there is a stack of games sitting behind the counter waiting to be picked up. As I approached the desk however, I did not see any games on the shelf and I got a little bit worried.
The employee at the desk was quite knowledgeable with the stores procedures and was also surprised that nothing had been set aside yet. So he simply ran out to the store display to grab my Starter Pack. Unfortunately, he came back with JUST the Starter Pack so I had to point out that I was also supposed to receive LightCore Hex with the pre-order. So he ran out to the display again to see what he could find.
Five minutes later he returned with my LightCore Hex and the Wristband Projector (Best Buy's worthless pre-order bonus). He apologized for the wait and explained that he had to run back to the warehouse to find LC Hex. That's fine, I've worked retail, I know how messy these things can be sometimes.
So now we finally have the necessary items and we can begin the checkout. I handed him my $10 off Frito-Lay coupon. He tried to scan the coupon, but it wouldn't go through. He asked where I got the coupon and then proceeded to take the $10 off manually. No problem.
Then he tried to scan the LightCore Hex and we have a problem. The register gave him a Do Not Sell prompt. He called over his supervisor and she immediately called their corporate Help Desk. As soon as she mentioned Skylanders, the Help Desk knew what the issue was. She said it was a known issue and transferred the employee to a different department that could take care of it.
After being put on hold for five minutes and explaining the issue to the next Help Desk rep, he had no idea what she was talking about. The supervisor did her best to explain the issue, but eventually was put on hold again.
After another five minutes on hold, the supervisor didn't want to make me wait any longer. So she bypassed the system and let me walk out the door with LightCore Hex in hand.
So I still don't know what the issue was on Best Buy's end, but I did get my game and pre-order bonus.
Aftermath
Now, four days after the release I decided to stop in and check a few stores again.
At Walmart there were still no Starter Packs to be found on the shelves. They had a few empty pegs, but there was still a pretty good selection of figures to choose from including seven Enchanted Hoot Loops.
At Target, even though I was impressed with their stock on Day 1, I was even more impressed now. Not only was the main Skylanders aisle fully stocked again, but it had expanded to two nearby endcaps. Between all three locations I saw at least a dozen Nitro Magna Charge Double Packs still available.
I think it's safe to say that Activision has provided retailers with a much better supply than the first two games. I will try to keep an eye on the store exclusives in the coming weeks. I'm interested to see if they're being replenished or just how long they will stick around.
Wrap Up
Being the third iteration of the game, I would have expected retailers to have a better handle on some of the issues I had and issues that I heard about from others.
In any case though I'm glad to say that I got what I wanted and can now enjoy the game.
Did you have a good release day experience? Share your story in the comments below…
I had a pretty good experience on launch day. I was at TRU at midnight along with 40 or so other people and we all got what we needed. The only thing I was a little disappointed in was the gill grunt stuff but I will get it hopefully in Jan.! I had a little trouble finding enchanted hoot loop at wal-mart I had to go to four of them to finally find him. Which he is still not out on the shelf yet at my local wal-mart.
Man I would totally complain about not getting two LC Hexes. I complained about not getting a sidekick with their special back in June and ended up getting a $10 store credit.
I thought about it. However, sometimes arguing with the place just doesn’t seem worth it.
Sorry, I meant complain to their corporate customer service, not the store itself. I also dropped the matter at the store with the TRU problems I mentioned in my story, but I’m pursuing it online. And I sent an e-mail to Gamestop saying I didn’t get the sidekick, and after I sent them my purchase info, they gave me $10 credit at their online store.
I sent an email to gamestop. Not holding my breath on hearing anything though. lol
I preordered from TRU and Gamestop… Didn’t receive either my starter pack or dark edition. After a full day of being on hold with customer service with both TRU and GS, was told I didn’t preorder from either even though I had email confirmations from both. I got lucky and my wife went to Gamestop and they honored my preorder but TRU wouldn’t. We got out early on the 13th and found out only 2 other people showed up at Target and TRU… Made it pretty easy to pick up every figure that was released..
Yeah, that is why I got to Game Stop early just to make sure they didn’t screw me out of stuff.
I went to Walmart at midnight, and they had nothing, knew nothing. One other person was there trying to get information from an employee. I wandered the store for about 15mins to pick up a few other things I needed, and when I came back, both the person and the employee were gone, with no boxes or anything out.
Release morning I went to Target first. There was no one waiting to get in, and I was the first and only customer in the store the whole time I was there. They had three of each NMC double pack and a decent supply of the other figures. I got the one with Rattle Shake, but sold that half to a friend, leaving me with only NMC. I’m holding out for only variants if possible.
Last stop was TRU, where I made the bulk of my purchases. I got there about half an hour after they opened, and there were just a few groups in already looking at Swap Force stuff, and then a few more after me. The employees gave me a lot of grief about combining the 20% off coupon with the pre-order bonuses, and in fact I didn’t end up getting one of the figures I expected to get for free. I’m still working with corporate to get that taken care of. But I got LC Hex and Legendary Free Ranger there along with my starter pack. I’m also trying to clear up some problems with my receipts to ensure I get the Green Gill Grunt bonus figure.
I pre-ordered Enchanted Hoot Loop because it was free shipping, and I, like you, not knowing what to expect supply wise, wanted to make sure I got it while I had the chance. It should be delivered tomorrow. Overall, things went pretty well. Now I’m just waiting for some of the other variants to be released.
Activision and everyone has learned a lot from S;SA to now. I got into skylanders right after Christmas when S:SA was out. Figures were easy to find until I started looking for them. :/ We went about a month or a month and a half without anything on the shelf. I even remember TRU having a sign up saying to come back on March 16th for new figures. They have done a much better job now having enough stock. It is to the point where some people are a little unreasonable when they can’t find a certain figure. (See Bash S2)
I started out at TRU, I got there about 20 mins before midnight, there were probably 10 people in line before me. I was surprised at how many people brought their young children. Overall by the time the store opened there were probably 40 to 50 people. TRU had a ton of everything and had two sections so there was no crowding. I was also surprised b/c TRU also restocked a lot of the spyro’s adventure and giants. So not only did I pick up most of the figures but I also picked up skylanders to help fill in the blanks to my other collections.
On Sunday morning I drove over to Target I got there about 5 mins before opening and there were probably about 10 to 15 people in line. When the door opened there was a mad dash to electronics, I was able to get nitro magna charge and snake shake (the last one).
At 9 am I headed to Gamestop to pick up my pre-ordered dark edition starter pack.
Kind of off topic but here is a picture of a new triple pack Sprocket, Chop Chop, and Scorp…http://www.gamestop.com/toys/skylanders-swap-force-triple-pack-3/112206
And another http://www.gamestop.com/toys/skylanders-swap-force-triple-pack-4/112205 Trigger Happy, Star Strike, and Gill Grunt
Matt, thank you for your loyalty to Best Buy. As a Best Buy employee and a very loyal and avid Skylanders fan I had a similar experience collecting my pre-order from Best Buy. They had issues with my Frito Lay coupon, trouble ringing up my Light Core Hex, but then they realized they needed to scan the pre-order first then the Light Core hex, with out the pre-order code the Hex would show up as do not sell. I did have similar experiences as well at Target, no one else there, fully stocked with Nitro Magna Charge two packs (I got the Rattle Shake one) and my Toys R Us opened at like 7:30 instead of 8:00 (they were not a midnight release store) and they had about 80 legendary lightcore hex’s and free rangers and picked those up from there. All in all, no hassle, no missed out figures. I did notice a lot of places sold out of Lightcore Smolderdash’s real quick. Still haven’t seen restock on them and I am wondering when Wave 2 will hit the other retailers (Best Buy, Wal*Mart and Target).
My guess is somewhere around Nov. 1st. As far as Lighcore Smolderdash if you need her let me know. I think she is still at my Wal-Mart.
Actually latest word on the street is October 27th for the official release of Wave 2.
A little bit sooner than anticipated, but are you really surprised?
Not really. After that I would expect we would see something at TRU on Black Friday and maybe another variant at Wal-mart the same day. Then possibly a few days before Christmas have a few guys released. Following the same pattern as last year but that might change.
My experience was almost flawless. I started my October 13th around noon. I live in Canada so we have EB Games here instead of Gamestop to pick up my pre-order of the Dark Edition. That was accompanied by my free Hex LC and they gave me two sidekicks too ( Gill Runt & Terrabite ). From there I walked over to the Wal-Mart in the same plaza and they must have had 40 – 50 of the Enchanted Hoot Loop. Since Target only recently made it’s way into Canada, we don’t have all that many stores that are actually open yet. So I went to the Target nearby to get a Nitro Magna Charge only to be told that they were all sold out. I was a little bummed and spoke to the staff about whether they may have any more stock in the back and when they might be getting more. I was humoured to find out they had a HUGE line up of people before the store opened; some apparently had been there since midnight ( the store opened in the morning at regular business hours ). They told me some people were buying 8 – 10 pieces at once. She told me those people explained that they would be able to eBay them the next day for over triple what they paid. Good for them. They sold out literally minutes after opening. From there I headed over to my TRU. They, like Wal-Mart, had plenty of stock of all wave 1 offerings including the TRU exclusive Legendary Free Ranger and Legendary Lightcore Grim Reaper. Since then I have visited Best Buy and couple other Wal-Marts. The Wal-Marts were all nicely stocked while the Best Buy barely had anything on the shelves.
It’s always fun to go skylanders hunting while in the rural areas. Recently my wife and children were in cottage country and picked up a Glow in the Dark Zap for $9.99. Needless to say, I told her to look around and see if she could find any more 😉
i’m from belgium so my experience is from 2 days ago, i went to the first store and the skylanders weren’t on the shelves yet, then went to the second store and they just had the regular figures, nothing special, then the third store, where i asked about swap force and the guy said they were still in boxes so he was going to put them on the shelves for me…unfortunately still no variants, then the fourth store were i got my dark edition pack and the same as in the previous one, not on the shelves but the guy did it for me…a bit larger supply but still no variants, then the fifth and last one, there was an even larger supply and they were already on the shelves, there i bought boom jet and roller brawl…but also no variants there…
i also didn’t see any double packs at all
now i’m regularly checking the webshops to see if there are variants
I have not seen any word of variants other than the legendaries from Toys R Us. I am not sure if they have released any at this point or not. Good to see you seem to had good luck, The only double packs out here are the ones with Nitro Magna Charge. Which they don’t even offer a price break on.
well, i was looking for enchanted hoot loop, nitro magna charge and the legendaries(some legendaries are also available in other stores then toys’r’us(here there is only a toys’r’us-webshop))
i bought legendary bouncer and legendary stealth elf in another store and i also saw legendary lightcore chill in a store :p
All of those are pretty common over here. They are only available at certain retailers and their online store. Good luck!
yes, but with skylanders: giants and skylanders: spyro’s adventure the specials were also ‘pretty’ common in belgian stores :p