Hasbro’s U.S. retailer partnerships with Walmart, Target and Amazon for exclusives are synonymous in the collecting community for being an absolute joke in terms of execution, reliability, ridiculously short preorder windows, and unknown delivery dates.

Sadly, nothing of which I’ve listed above is new to long-time collectors, especially within the past few years, and personally, I feel only so much can be blamed on the lingering effects of the pandemic. More and more collectors are throwing up their arms with the “work” that goes into their hobby, skipping preorders completely, and rolling the dice to see if they can find it at retail later — if at all.

Also, why does Hasbro issue press releases with definitive preorder dates/times only to have retailer do their own thing and launch them (fully or in part) 5-7 hours early? Is the communication between retailers and Hasbro that “off”? Why do new orders (not just Walmart) ship often before preorders that were placed months prior? Why does there have to be technological hoops for customers to jump through in order for us to give those partners our money? We won’t even get into the shipping issues as we all know the greatest offender in that regard.

These days with such long lead-times from preorder to release date (if known), some have forgotten products are even coming or that they were even announced at all. Plus, with rising prices on everything (not just toys), many have succumbed to the fact that Star Wars collecting at its most basic level is more hassle than it is worth and is rarely a “positive preorder experience”.