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.