The expectations some of you have for a fledgling toy line is totally divorced from reality. No retailer wants to carry and maintain shelf space for 52 separate figures concurrently. A rolling blackout of the less popular characters to make way for new waves was the only way this was ever going to fly. "I can wait until later, they'll still be around" has never, ever, ever been a sensible purchase plan for damn near anything related to collectible figures; It's unfortunate, but it's business as usual that toys don't stick around long.
It's too bad the effect the scalping mentality that's setting in is probably going to have on 'em going forward. People are bellyaching about not being able to buy everything a month after the fact, but generally speaking, if you went in search of a full set within the first few days these came out, assembling it was very doable. Easy, even. You can't say that about many toy launches. In a world where the initial hunt for new toy releases is a guessing game of when something will be shipped and put out, what's been short-packed, and what retailers will even carry it, it was a remarkably well-coordinated and well-stocked release in a world usually marked by chaos, uncertainty, and misinformation.
But now with all this fooferah about discontinuation, that initial wave of sanity has been washed away and we're gonna have jerks with dollar signs in their eyes swooping in immediately to buy up all of the likely short-run characters as soon as new waves hit shelves, and the continued mania in threads like these only guarantees it. Continually parroting "this one is rare, this one is probably going to be rare" is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy; Every time that type of thing is repeated you're helping to paint the scalping jagoffs a crystal clear roadmap to what they should be buying up so that you can't and selling you at a markup.
If everyone interested in certain Wave 2 and 3 figures would have just shut up with the speculation and shown up to get the ones you want the first couple days they hit shelves, you'd have had little problem doing so. But you keep vocalizing for weeks beforehand about how it's a sure bet these one are going to be rare, how everyone should jump on so and so the second they see one, you've painted a big ol' target on it and made everyone's hunt that much harder.
