Hasbro’s U.S. Star Wars product release messaging and transparency continue to be as confusing as ever when it comes to preorders and release dates. At SDCC, they stated during their panel that the Halloween Black Series figures wouldn’t be available for preorder and would be “on-shelf” for Halloween season. Preorders did in-fact happen as the Walmart Wookiee went live today, but the kick in the pants of it is it’s expected to arrive a month and a half AFTER Halloween (est. Dec. 10, 2022) and the Target exclusive Clone Trooper is now live (unannounced) for preorder but the release date is open ended. Sure, release dates are continually up in the air still because of Hasbro’s distribution problems (which were prevalent well before the complications of COVID) so orders may arrive sooner (or later) than that, but holiday dates are still a fixed point on the calendar. Fix your production and distribution schedules so retailers can sell your merch in stores and have them for your customers BEFORE the holidays. Last year’s Christmas figures are being recycled for this year because the delivery window was missed and instead of blowing them all out at clearance and discount chains, they pushed them to the 2022 season. Smart, if not ultimately clumsy because they didn’t even acknowledge those holiday figures when they started to surface last year. High prices and piecemeal preorders are tough to navigate as it is, please don’t continue to muddy the waters with unnecessary online release/in-store date confusion.

For weeks and months now, much of Hasbro’s merchandise, Star Wars in particular, has been held up at the Port of Long Beach due to contract negotiations with union workers. Hasbro isn’t alone in this matter either. Click on through to read an email I just received from Sideshow claiming this same delay problem with one of my orders.

Thank you for pre-ordering the Captain Rex: Phase II – 1:6 – EXCL with us.

I’m writing today about an issue that Sideshow has encountered that will delay the delivery of your item. Sideshow receives all of our items from China via containers shipped into the Port of Long Beach. These containers are then trucked to Sideshow’s warehouse where they are shipped out to our collectors. Unfortunately, the Port of Long Beach is experiencing serious delays due to a work slowdown caused by dock workers looking to influence contract negotiations.

Currently, Sideshow has more than twelve containers of product stuck at the port. Your Captain Rex figure is in one of them and unfortunately we are not being told when the containers are going to be released.

We appreciate your patience as we wait for the port to expedite container movement and make deliveries. We will continue to keep you updated with the latest information about your item. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Maybe with this additional evidence, we collectors can give Hasbro a bit of slack in their claims that product has shipped to the US, but a lot of it is/maybe held up due to this dispute.