Shelfwarmer

This article is about toys from a long time ago that still haven't been sold. For toys that have lots of kibble, see Shellformer.

You know something is wrong when you see toys from no fewer than four different lines, released several years apart, all side by side on the same store shelf.

Shelfwarmer is the colloquial term for a toy or product that either fails to sell well or is over-produced, leaving residual quantities on store shelves for months or even years after its original release, generally far in excess of other toys from the same waves. Just like a "benchwarmer" in sports, one who contributes nothing to the game except sitting on a bench and keeping it warm with his butt, a "shelfwarmer" does the same thing to a toy store shelf by sitting on it for prolonged periods of time.

The related term pegwarmer refers to toys packaged on cards, which thereby hang on pegs, rather than in boxes that sit on shelves.

Shelfwarmers and you

Sometimes shelfwarmers are a localized phenomenon, occasionally even limited to one particular store.

The inherent problem with just coming up with a list of shelfwarmers is that it varies drastically from locality to locality. Some toys will sell like gangbusters in one state or country, yet warm shelves forever in other places. On occasion, a toy that's considered rare and hard to find in the United States can very well end up as a shelfwarmer in other countries (Energon Ultra Magnus is a rather infamous example of this.) Usually this is due to the toy being only shipped to US stores in limited quantities, often even getting shortpacked, while European stores sometimes get those toys in solid cases, with nothing but multiples of the same one or two toys.

Toys might even shelfwarm based on the chain to which they're distributed, disappearing instantly at Target but sitting for months at Walmart. Sometimes it's even just one particular store that still has leftover stock of certain toys that all other stores in the area (including other stores belonging to the same chain) got rid of ages ago. Maybe the chain put the remainders on clearance but that one store never got the memo.

This all has led to some heated (or at least obstinate) debates online over which toys are/were vicious shelfwarmers. But even then, nearly everyone agrees that Injector just wouldn't go away until he was marked down to only a buck.

Supply vs. demand

As was touched upon earlier, there are some toys which were very hard to get in some regions but available so freely in others that they warmed some very cold shelves. Certain toys were in desperate demand in the fandom when they were difficult to get, but didn't do so well when released more widely. One online example of this phenomenon is Battle Unicorn. This Beast Machines toy was part of the very last wave of that series' product and was thus barely shipped to retailers. As such, it was very hard to get. It was so rare, in fact, that online store BigBadToyStore made a large special order for them from Hasbro — but despite the fandom's previous clamoring for the toy, they were stuck sitting on a lot of that stock for quite a long time.

The original releases of Alternators Autobot Tracks and Meister, which only shipped in two waves each, also demanded a high rise in aftermarket prices... until Hasbro decided to re-release them as part of a semi-relaunch of the Alternators line. Now, Tracks and Meister suddenly became major shelfwarmers.

A similar thing happened with Alternators Nemesis Prime: In North America, he was released only at the San Diego Comic-Con and via the Hasbro Toy Shop website for the few people who were able to get him from there, and so was very difficult to get. Fans of the Alternators line who desperately wanted the toy were furious about its release only at a non-Transformers convention and complained at length about it not being easily available. Then suddenly the toy turned up in Australia. It hit the retail store Toyworld in massive numbers, and at half the price of usual Alternators. But... no one there wanted it. The American fans had gotten over it by that point, and no one in Australia gave a damn.

Boy, did that thing sit around for ages. It was still available in some stores as of September 2009!

Another example is the 25th Anniversary Unicron figure. When it was released as an Amazon.com exclusive in the US, it sold out quickly and was subject to much scalping, but when it was released to mass retail stores in Canada and South-East Asia, the demand wasn't as high, and there he warmed shelves.

Shelfwarmers in Generation 1

Cartoon-accurate or not, you sure weren't buying the two-pack for this guy.

The toy industry and the fandom were very different things during the original toy line's run. Due to the much much slower turnaround time on retail toy shelves in the '80s, any given toy could stay on the shelves (or simply continue shipping to replenish stock) for two, three, or even four years and this would be a sign not of shelfwarming, but of the toy's longevity and success. Toys like Optimus Prime and Starscream stayed on the toy shelves for many years because they were popular, not because they weren't, with chains getting new shipments of older product on a regular basis. This makes it hard to gauge if there were shelfwarmers compared to the toys in modern lines, which are only meant to have a shelf life of a few months.

That said, there certainly were some Transformers which stayed on toy shelves during Generation 1 for way longer than should have been expected. The most prominent example would be the Jumpstarters, over-produced in such numbers that even today they are legion in the aftermarket. The smaller Insecticons were also seen to hang around on shelves long after they had ceased to ship. During the 1986 and 1987 Christmas shopping seasons, animal-based Transformers such as Sky Lynx, the Decepticon Headmasters, and the Predacons, were known to linger on shelves longer than their more popular vehicular counterparts.

Shelfwarmers in Beast Wars

It was Beast Wars that stuck the concept of shelfwarmers in the fandom's head. The fandom was maturing, communicating thanks to the internet, and starting to notice these sorts of patterns. At the same time, the attitude of retailers (and the distribution system as well as a consequence) was changing, and toys no longer had the multi-year shelf lives they had in the 1980s. Action figures now shipped in multiple waves per size class, and toys that remained on the shelves for an entire year were suddenly unsuccessful.

Toys that were noted for their abnormally high shelfwarming capacity in Beast Wars included Injector, Scavenger, Transquito, and even show character Inferno. Some reports even had Transquitos holding six or seven years after their initial release. Now that's a shelfwarmer.

In the United Kingdom, both Cybershark and Claw Jaw struggled to sell due to being packed several per case in multiple waves and not featuring in the TV show.

Shelfwarmers in later series

The same German TRU store as in the photo above, two years later. Generations? Hunt for the Decepticons? Why, buy ROTF Wheelie instead! Still plenty left!

As the fandom became more aware of the concept of shelfwarmers, Hasbro changed its production strategies to avoid both the reality of toys sitting around for months, and the perception of certain toys as 'warmers. (Because any toy which clogs shelves must suck, right?) Toys had progressively shorter shelf lives, so Hasbro leveraged their molds by adding redecos and retools, and by revamping lines and packaging on a much swifter basis to sell more of the same toy. Armada had "The Unicron Battles" as a subline imprint with a new packaging style roughly halfway through its lifespan, and then the entire line became Energon six months after that. Turnover times have become swifter and swifter.

Due to fans' impatience, the term "shelfwarmer" has started to become more specialized to mean "toys that stay on the shelves longer than their casemates", regardless of whether they've really been there a long time. That said, there are still some toys that just don't sell, even in the more recent Transformers franchises. In addition, as we said before, distribution is slightly different in other countries than it is in the USA so some toys don't necessarily have any casemates to be judged against. For example, Armada Scavenger, Movie Swindle, and Bonecrusher ended up as royal shelfwarmers in many European stores because they were the only toys from their respective size classes those stores would ever get from Hasbro. It didn't help that the latter two shipped after the movie line nominally ended.

Each series has had its own quintessential shelfwarmers. In North America, Armada clogged shelves with flocks of Laserbeaks and fleets of Smokescreens. Energon made sure there was no shortage of Ironhide. Cybertron gave us unmoving armies of Mudflaps, who often stayed on the shelf long enough to sit beside their redeco, the first movie Mudflap (itself a shelfwarmer). In the Universe toy line, any of the Cybertron redecos stayed on shelves for years on end, and you could still find Dropshots on the shelf at some Walmarts years after its release.

With the 2007 Transformers movie, the playing field was changed slightly. Suddenly, Transformers were big again. Toys were in short supply and any toys that stayed on the shelves for very long did so very conspicuously. During the Christmas shopping period following the 2007 movie, Payloads could be found in hordes, even as everything else Transformers (including leftover Cybertron and Classics stock) was disappearing from shelves.

And yet another German TRU store, where Stomp & Chomp RID Grimlock follows his predecessor Stomp & Chomp AoE Grimlock as supreme shelfwarmer!

Then the fickle movie hype ended. Toys which were incredibly popular months before suddenly were out of the public consciousness. This meant, depending on your region and availability, that some of the later 2007 movie toys might as well have been glued to the shelf, and in some cases shared it with their new 2009 counterparts, likely dooming the originals from ever leaving the store. After all, would you rather have the original Leader Class Megatron or the super-duper shiny new one from Revenge of the Fallen? Further, despite his starring role in Revenge of the Fallen, Deluxe Class Mudflap and his "Tuner" redeco have been known to warm every peg in the Transformers section, like both Mudflaps before it. It got worse when retailers ended up overstocking on Wave 1 of the Dark of the Moon toyline, leading to figures from the line shelfwarming well into the summer of 2013, two entire years since the release of the film. This also had the rather nasty side-effect of leading to figures of Soundwave and Wheeljack being cancelled in most markets, only being released in the Asian market.

The mediocre reception of the Dark of the Moon toyline may also have led to the severely reduced toyline for the Age of Extinction franchise three years later, with a comparatively low number of new releases in each wave. Despite this, however, many unsold Age of Extinction toys still clogged various toy shelves years after the release of the film, especially the non-transforming Dino Sparkers and the oversized Stomp & Chomp Grimlock. Said Grimlock's Toys"R"Us exclusive Robots in Disguise redeco started clogging the same shelves while his predecessor was still there, too.

History repeated itself once again with the toyline for The Last Knight, where like with Dark of the Moon, retailers massively overstocked on Wave 1. It took half a year for some regions to clear out enough stock for Wave 2, and Wave 3 never arrived in some areas. Autobot Sqweeks RC, a non-transforming remote control toy, as well as the Reveal the Shield Tiny Turbo Changers 3-pack were heavily clotting store shelves over a year after the film's release.

The Combiner Wars toyline led to a number of new shelfwarming problems. A number of toys under the line that did not possess the ability to combine with other toys would often be passed over for the combining toys, while redeco-exhaustion and lack of legacy-G1 gestalts may have contributed to the poor sales of Waves 4 and 6 on the Autobot side. Additionally, Combiner Wars Motormaster was re-released with improved hip joints late in the toyline's life, but was a strong shelfwarmer as far as 2017.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, some shops thought that Brainstorm is everyone's favorite G1 character.

The Titans Return toyline saw Scourge and Blurr as recurring pegwarmers in stores, which may have been attributed to their sparse paint apps in comparison to the rest of the line, in addition to continued redeco exhaustion post-Wave 3 resulting in unsold figures. Deluxe Class Twinferno and the final wave of Titan Masters absolutely clogged the pegs of every store imaginable, even into the Power of the Primes toyline. In Asia, the Deluxe Class Brainstorm figure was also a massive shelf/pegwarmer, since department stores like AEON overstocked them compared to other Titans Return Deluxes. Ironically enough, Brainstorm is a Walgreens exclusive in the US, a store that generally carries two to four deluxes at a time with infrequent restocks.

Robots in Disguise had a few strong pegwarmers due to its Combiner Force subline, which was largely composed of reissues, repaints, and less complex engineering in its new offerings. The hotly-advertised Crash Combiners and Team Combiners took quite a while to deplete in stock, while most of the new Warrior Class figures simply refused to move. Combiner Force Windblade, a minor redeco and retool of the original Warrior Class Windblade figure, could still be found in plentiful numbers a year after its original release.

Expensive toys

Sometimes, it doesn't matter how desirable a toy is if the asking price is too high! Large scale Transformers toys are often too expensive for parents to purchase lightly and are often reserved for special occasions. As a result, they tend to warm the shelves until the holiday season. That said, some duds stay on the shelves well into the new year. Supreme Cheetor was such a flop that Hasbro stayed away from big, expensive Transformers until the tail end of Armada, when they released Unicron. Unlike Cheetor, Unicron was a runaway success, with even the kids who didn't like Transformers wanting to get Unicron. As a result, Hasbro began putting out several large class figures with each line, hoping to find the same success.

For the most part, Supreme Class toys are not shelf warmers in the sense that people don't want them, but that they are waiting for the right time to buy them. Timing is everything for the expensive toys. For example, Cybertron Starscream sat idly for months until vanishing by Christmas. Cybertron Primus wasn't so lucky, since he was overshadowed by the less expensive and more relevant movie toys. Movie toys doubled the prices of Supreme class toys from $50 to $100. Revenge of the Fallen Devastator outraged collectors and parents alike and failed to sell. Age of Extinction's Stomp and Chomp Grimlock also outlasted his toyline.

Masterpiece toys are an interesting case. Despite being stocked in very small quantities, they are so expensive that they can still warm the shelves. While Masterpiece figures of popular characters like Optimus Prime and Starscream are guaranteed to sell in short order, Masterpiece figures of minor characters are unlikely to sell with younger fans who are unfamiliar with them. Masterpiece Skywarp wound up being marked down to $30 at Wal-Mart. Good luck finding a Masterpiece Seeker for that price now!

The entire Platinum Edition line is composed of shelfwarmers. Platinum Edition figures are all retools and redecos of previous toys, sold as store exclusives at such a steep premium that only the most hardcore of collectors seek them out. Among this entire line of shelfwarmers, the biggest dud is the "Autobots United" set from Age of Extinction, which contained five minor redecos of figures that were readily available at the time. The exception would be Platinum Edition Liokaiser, where sales were boosted by the inclusion of characters who had not been released since the 1980s.

Names commonly associated with shelfwarmers

Low sales? A LARGE INFLUX OF BEES OUGHTTA PUT A STOP TO THAT! (Or not)

For whatever reason, toys named "Mudflap" tend to end up as shelfwarmers regardless of the sculpt: Cybertron Voyager Class Mudflap, the first toy using the name, started the trend, which was continued by his redeco, Movie Mudflap (thus accompanying his Cybertron predecessor on many a store shelf). Revenge of the Fallen gave us a Mudflap character with multiple toy incarnations: Deluxe Class Mudflap generally moved more slowly than his twin brother, Skids, from the same assortment. Likewise, Fast Action Battlers Grapple Grip Mudflap was easier to find than Missile Blast Skids, and things got even worse with the Deluxe Class Mudflap redeco, Tuner Mudflap, a colossal shelfwarmer. Presumably, the only reason Human Alliance Mudflap didn't share the same fate was the fact that the toy was stocked in low numbers by stores in the first place, ironically making this particular toy hard to find.

In recent times, Hasbro has had a tendency to pack more kid-appealing Bumblebees into a case relative to his wavemates, and to pad later waves with same-character redecoes of him. This has led to the character's movie and Prime incarnations becoming notorious in the fandom for pegwarming. During 2012, it was not an uncommon sight to see Dark of the Moon and Prime: Robots in Disguise Bumblebees pegwarming side by side. In addition, First Edition Bumblebee was often the only First Edition figure that could be found in American Toys"R"Us stores due to Wave 1 being packed with four 'Bee's per case (which is half of the goddamn case) while Arcee and Starscream were both shortpacked at two per case.

Skywarp has also become a recurring character among pegwarmers. In Seeker tradition, a Starscream figure is released first, followed by a Thundercracker redeco, and barring any non-traditional Seeker releases, finally Skywarp around the tail-end of the then-current line. Such examples include Thrilling 30 Skywarp and the Combiner Wars line's Legends Class and Leader Class Skywarp, which remained on store shelves long after their lines had ended.