Toy purchase disappointments

RichardSimmonsRobot said:
I buy doubles of stuff I genuinely like for that specific reason. Stuff like the classic Nightcrawler from 5 or so years ago I bought 4 of. Certainly they've come out with pinless bodies since then and I'm more limited on the figures I'll buy duplicates of due to space and cost, but when I first got into Marvel Legends with the Apocalypse BAF wave, I was buying doubles of all the major X-Men and 4 of characters like Gambit and Nightcrawler. McFarlane's sunsetting the DC license will save me a lot of money that can be saved or redirected back into my original "I'm only collecting Marvel Legends X-Men figures" promise; a promise that was blown long ago. But at least I'll be all good on DC stuff as Batman stuff commands its own budget.
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I've bought doubles of really beloved figures for Legends or Classified, yeah, but I don't have the money or space for doubles of those high-end figures. I think at the end I may just be more a toy-guy than a collector-guy, because the regulations toy manufacturers have for safety actually mean the material is less brittle. I see more breakage or QC stuff with those rare expensive figures I get once in a while than I do on the less expensive mainstream stuff.
 
docsilence said:
So as I snapped the leg off an expensive and irreplaceable figure tonight I think my biggest disappointments will always be expensive and irreplaceable figures. We complain ENDLESSLY about big retailers and deservedly so, but man... "Fuck, I just broke my Spider-Man, let me go on Amazon and buy a new one for 22 bucks" is so much less stressful than "fuck, I just broke an 80 dollar figure that is now going for $250 on eBay, guess that collection is dead" is way worse. I think I'm just over scarcity collecting. I don't want to chase figures anymore and I REALLY don't want them to be unfixable or irreplaceable, because in the end I just want to enjoy the figures I buy and not worry about them.
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Don't leave us hanging. What was it?
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Don't leave us hanging. What was it?
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Oh, I already whined about it in the Frazetta Icons thread. I broke Teegra just bending her knee.

I'm also still struggling with the neck peg on Jessica Aster. 2026 may be the year I don't spend over a specific number on a single figure.
 
Not a disappointment, per se, but more a surprise. Got my first Trick or Treat Studios Scream Greats figures the other day- a local FYE had 2 of the 3 Killer Klowns from the first wave on clearance on top of an additional sale, so I got them both pretty dang cheap. They're nice looking- definitely have some presence to them, but I was pretty shocked to discover that their bodies are just hollow plastic. At full price, they're about $40-$50 depending, so I was just expecting something a bit less....cheap feeling? Don't think "cheap" is quite the word, but maybe a bit higher quality? For anyone who has any of the other Scream Greats figures- are they all hollow, or is it just something for the Klowns, since they're more bulbous?

Was just surprised, because I have the Goosebumps figures they released last year, and those feel pretty nice and sturdy.

The real disappointment was seeing just how far FYE has fallen. Used to love that store, but they've been wildly overpriced for a while now. This was probably my first purchase there post-Covid?
 
One of the few FYE stores still around my area is going out of business and I peeked in to see what they had. Their discounted price on most of the toys was still higher than MSRP. And it wasn't one of those situations where the liquidating company went in and jacked up the price to add a clearance tag, the old stickers are still present and they were charging $40 for standard Legends releases like Brother Voodoo. Incredible the store was around as long as it was.
 
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The last non-clearance item I was able to buy from FYE was the carded ML Hulk. It was about BBTS price + shipping. I bought the first Mirage Turtles there! They were a good spot for Neca before TRU had a collector's section and before prices got crazy, my mall had an Fye with a large footprint and a separate Fye for videogames. Both had action figures. Then they closed the game store, down sized the large store, and closed last year.
 
I'm amazed that the FYEs in the handful of malls I visit are still around. Everything is more expensive, to an absurd amount. $50 for Legends and Black Series, including ones that are dirt cheap elsewhere. Their sales are usually very sneakily worded so that you end up paying- at best- about the same as you would anywhere else for something. Every now and then, if there was something that I absolutely just can't find anywhere else, I'd pull the trigger, and a handful of times it actually ended up being cheaper than the sticker price, which was nice, but even still. They're just really not worth it, and I feel bad for anyone who falls for those sorts of prices.
 
My memory of FYE in the 90s and 2000s was as the place I'd find collectibles and CDs I may not find elsewhere and usually with a markup of 2-5 dollars. Kind of expected for a mall shop paying mall rent and tolerable. At some point over the years, they just got out of hand. I see the same thing happening at Newbury Comics where every once in awhile I'll see something I might consider only to be completely blown away by the price. They're the kings of Super7 clearance items, but seem to be getting wise and haven't been stocking much from them over the past year.

I just recalled the last time I think I considered buying something from FYE. It was the quarter scale toon Leonardo from NECA. I was with my kids and we had just done the customary stroll through the store and not buy anything because it's too expensive routine when I saw it behind the counter. I had it on preorder at BBTS, but wasn't sure when it would ship. I almost left because I knew it would be more money, but against my better judgement ushered my kids back into the store to approach the counter and ask about it. As I'm approaching the counter, I'm doing the mental gymnastics to try and justify spending as much as $150 on something BBTS and other places had for $120-125. Was I willing to pay more to get it now? I was in New Hampshire, no sales tax, so there was a slight savings there. When the clerk checked and told me the price was $185 I inadvertently let out a chuckle because even I wasn't expecting it to possibly be that much. I thanked him and left and eventually my order shipped, but for the longest time I'd still see that figure from the general area of the mall when walking by the store. I assume they eventually slapped a sale sticker on it and suckered someone into paying $150 or something for it.
 
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Newbury is another one that's been disappointing me recently. I only got introduced to them a few years ago- my boyfriend grew up with them and introduced me, since we have a couple around us. At first, the prices were decent-to-average, but they're creeping up. Since all the tariff BS, they've only gotten worse. I really do want to support these smaller (in the grand scheme of things) businesses, but they're making it really hard. If it was just a couple bucks difference, I could maybe justify it, depending on the item, but sometimes it's 10-15 more on things as small as like a Funko Pop or something. Just not worth it.
 
Damien said:
Newbury Comics still exists?
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Barely. They don't sell much music anymore and are constantly changing. I guess it's sort of admirable how they've been able to stay ahead of trends for the most part, but they sell mostly collectibles, cards, apparel, and such.
 
Misfit said:
Barely. They don't sell much music anymore and are constantly changing. I guess it's sort of admirable how they've been able to stay ahead of trends for the most part, but they sell mostly collectibles, cards, apparel, and such.
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I'm so old that I remember when they started up and everyone hated them for being like.. the sell-out comic shop. Hilariously, like... too clean, too nice, too well-lit. Too professional, I guess? And they were driving smaller comic shops out of business. I thought Newbury shut years ago. Not sure why I even thought that, though.
 
Misfit said:
Barely. They don't sell much music anymore and are constantly changing. I guess it's sort of admirable how they've been able to stay ahead of trends for the most part, but they sell mostly collectibles, cards, apparel, and such.
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The ones around here and the couple I've visited in Boston all have a decent amount of music. I don't know how much they had before, granted, but the vinyl section, at least, is pretty dang sizable at every location I've been to. The CDs not so much, but they're there, as are a handful of cassettes (which are apparently kinda sorta becoming a thing again?). Ironically, the Comic section is the thing that seems to be dwindling the most; at some locations it's barely there.
 
Which is funny, because they were still kind of dank. At least the Manchester location was. I didn't set foot in any of the Boston stores until the early 2000s as I was a New Hampshire boy. We used to always joke how they were Newbury Comics, but no one went there for comics. It took over as my go-to for music over Strawberries because they always had a better selection and usually bigger stores. Now, they're very squeaky clean and sterile looking. There's no personality to the mall locations. I think the Manchester location is still around, I guess I should see what that one looks like now as I don't know how one would remove the dank from that place.
 
joshsquash729 said:
The ones around here and the couple I've visited in Boston all have a decent amount of music. I don't know how much they had before, granted, but the vinyl section, at least, is pretty dang sizable at every location I've been to. The CDs not so much, but they're there, as are a handful of cassettes (which are apparently kinda sorta becoming a thing again?). Ironically, the Comic section is the thing that seems to be dwindling the most; at some locations it's barely there.
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I'm not sure which Boston one you went to, but the one at Quincy market used to literally be nothing but rows and rows of CDs throughout the upstairs. I think the last room was DVDs back in the early 2000s, but it was very much a music store. I watched all of that slowly get removed over the years since I worked in the area consistently from about 2006-2019. The Newbury Street location was the same with CDs occupying most of the floor space and collectibles confined to the walls.
 
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