30
May
I spent all day yesterday on an epic adventure/mission...
I was determined to find all of the G.I. Joe figures I wanted/needed from the new Retaliation line. The reason this mission was more urgent than most is, as most of you have heard, the movie has been pushed back to make it 3D (which I think is a stupid idea…but that a whole other story). As a result, all of the major stores have been told to send back the toys…but they’re choosing to sell them anyway.
So, at 8AM yesterday morning I got in my car and drove all over The Bay to check every single Target, WalMart, and Toys R Us for the toys. (I’d found a few in Walnut Creek the day before so this seemed like a good idea at the time.) And I found…nothing. Absolutely nothing. A decidedly depressing level of nothing.
See that? That’s an entire end cap filled with everything EXCEPT the toys I was looking for. Both pegs EMPTY! And, it was pretty much the same at all of the stores.
I drove from one end to the other and couldn’t find a single figure I was looking for. 
Bob FAIL. After 4 really depressing hours I decided to head home with the knowledge that the last few toys I wanted just were not available for sale anywhere in The Bay.
But, before I went home I decided to stop at a Toys R Us I had checked the day before that didn’t have any G.I. Joes in stock at the time on the off chance they had been visited by the stocking elves while I slept.
They still appeared to be out of stock of every G.I. Joe and I thought, “What the heck…let’s just go ask them.” I’m so socially awkward, I generally never ask. When I do, it never goes well.
So, the adventure went a bit like this:
Me: “Hi, I’m looking for the G.I. Joe Retaliation toys. I’ve been driving to all the stores and I’ve found some but I’m looking for a few toys. I’ve looked in all your aisles and I can’t find your G.I. Joe section. Could you show me where your Retaliation toys are?”
Her: “Oh, which toys are you looking for? Let me look them up online and see if we have them in.” *She beings the painfully slow process of looking up the toys on ToysRUs.Com. and reading them to me one-by-one.*
Me: “That’s the first thing I did this morning before I started driving. Could you please stop googling and just point me to the section?”
Her: “Oh, well it’ll be in one of the blue asiles with the boys toys.”
Me: “That’s the first place I looked. I didn’t see them there. I must be missing something. Could you show me where they are?”
Her: “Oh, then maybe we don’t have them. We get trucks every so often, we may not have gotten our shipment of them yet.”
Me: “They were just released. You should have them. They should have been sent to you weeks ago and been street-dated for release. Every other store has them. The Toys R Us in Dublin has a massive end-cap of them.”
Her: “Oh, ok let me get a guy.” (Because, really, who better to know about “guys toys” than the all-knowing expert: “a guy.”)
Me: “Ok.”
Guy: “G.I. Joes? Let me show you where the section is…”
My hero!
We walk over and he discovers the section is empty. Undeterred, he says, “Let me go check in the back and see what I can find.”
He came out with a dolly/cart/golden chariot FILLED with the single-coolest thing I had ever seen. A stack of UNOPENED shipping boxes. 
He let me open the boxes and rifle through them…giddily squeeing the whole time. I was able to get 2 of the 3 figures I still needed—including the difficult to find blue-caped G.I. Joe Trooepr. 
I’m still missing the Blue Cobra Commander…but, I still consider this a win and that man: MY GOD!
via jeffreyshek
via g33kgasm
