I went to my local Walmart the other day and noticed they had removed the 25th pegs (all 2 of em). I had an opportunity to chat with the inventory controller for that store and this is basically what he said;
He said it is great that the toys sell out the day they come in, but not so much when they only get 8 units once a month or so. He said that by the time they pay someone to bring them off the truck, someone to inventory them and put them on the shelves, and then someone to check inventory and ok the order for more, they are not making anything on the firgures at all. It's just not a viable product next to the other toys that they get a lot of and sell a lot of. He said that with the movie coming out, it should change all that, but for now they have stopped ordering refresh cases (for that store at least).
It is kind of interesting and makes a lot of sense, unfortunately.
I work for a WalMart and our toy dept manager was suprised when the status of the line was changed to "GO" which happened shortyly after ordering a case. She called head office to get an explaination considering how well a case sells out and the answer she recieved basically boiled down to, by my understanding of what I was told, is that WalMarts will recieve new cases whenever the warehouse sends any out. But that could just be to cover their behinds on saying they can't get enough stock. And unless your Walmart is employing people to just unload/inventory/stock/reorder the Joes, the excuse you got sounds like a load of garbage.
