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. |
Shelfwarmer is a colloquial term for a toy 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, 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.
A related term is pegwarmer, used to refer to toys packaged on cards (which thereby hang on pegs), rather than in boxes.
Shelfwarmers and you
The inherent problem with just coming up with a list of shelfwarmers is that... well...it varies from locality to locality. Some toys will sell like gangbusters in one state or country, and 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, whereas European stores get those toys in solid cases, with nothing but multiples of the same one or two toys.
Toys might even shelfwarm based on the store to which they're distributed, disappearing instantly in Target, but sitting for months in Wal-Mart.
This has led to some heated (or at least obstinate) debates online over which toys are/were vicious shelfwarmers. But nearly everyone agrees that Injector just wouldn't go away until he was only available for a buck.
Shelfwarmers in Generation 1
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 Eighties, any given toy could stay on the shelves 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—toys that outstayed their welcome—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 be 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.
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 was changing, and the distribution system as well as a consequence, and toys no longer had the multi-year shelf lives they had in the 1980s. Toys now shipped in multiple waves per size class, and toys that were on the shelves an entire year were suddenly unsuccessful.
Toys that were noted for their shelfwarmosity in Beast Wars included Inferno, Injector, Scavenger and Transquito. Some reports even had Transquitos holding six or seven years after their initial release. Now that's a shelfwarmer.
Shelfwarmers in later series
As the fandom became more aware of the concept of shelfwarmers and Hasbro changed its strategies in selling toys to retailers, documenting what is a shelfwarmer and what isn't became more and more acute. Toys had much shorter shelf lives, which Hasbro extended by adding redecos and retools, and by revamping lines and packaging on a much swifter basis. Armada had the "Unicron Battles" as a mid-line subline imprint with a new packaging style roughly halfway through its lifespan, and then the entire line became Energon roughly six months after that. Turnover times have become swifter and swifter.
In addition, fans have become more and more impatient with toys. In more recent times, the term "shelfwarmer" has started to become more specialized, basically to mean, "Toy that stays on the shelves longer than its casemates." That said, there are still some toys that just didn't sell, even in the more recent Transformers series, and which haunted shelves for many long days. In addition, as said before, distribution is slightly different in other countries than it is in the USA, so some toys don't have any casemates their turnover frequency could be judged against — which is also part of the problem: For example, Armada Scavenger, live-action 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.
Each series has had its own quintessential shelfwarmers to varying degrees. In North America, Armada clogged shelves with flocks of Laserbeaks and fleets of Smokescreens; Energon made sure you couldn't help but find Ironhide; Cybertron gave us unmoving armies of Mudflaps.
Demand vs. availability
As was already touched upon earlier, there are some toys which were very hard to get in some regions, but available so freely in other regions that they warmed 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 barely shipped to retailers. As such, it was very hard to get; so rare, in fact, that the online store Big Bad Toy Store made a large special order for them from Hasbro—but despite the fandom's previous clamouring for the toy, they're still sitting on a lot of that stock.
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 was very difficult to get. Fans of the Alternators line who really, 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 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.
The new movie and shelfwarmers
As stated before, Transformers fans are much more aware of shelfwarming than in previous days, and they are very quick (if not too quick) to call toys shelfwarmers. Any toy that sits on a shelf longer than its casemates is likely to be labeled as a shelfwarmer by the fandom nowadays. (Silly fans. Wait...this article is written by fans. Uh...)
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. That said, even some of the least popular and most expensive toys shifted incredibly quickly around the Christmas period. Then the movie hype ended.
Movie hype is a very fickle thing, indeed; toys which were incredibly popular months before suddenly were out of the public consciousness. This meant (depending on your region, and availability, remember) that some of the later 2007 movie toys would stay on the shelves for months and months, and in some cases even as the 2009 movie toys hit the shelves. And more often than not, share the same shelves with their new counterparts, dooming them from ever getting out of the store. Think about it, would you rather have the original leader class Megatron or the shiny new one from ROTF?
