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Monday, April 27, 2009

Not sure who wasted more time...



The guy who went to the store to buy the latest GI Joe Comic two pack featuring Tunnel Rat and a new version of Storm Shadow, then carefully opened the package and replaced the two new figures, weapons, and comic book with a 2004 - 2005 Slice figure, what looks like a version of the Grunt figure from around say 2003-2005, some assorted weapons from other figures, and the comic book from an earlier comic two pack, I believe the one they call #32 1/2 Comic pack. That comic originally came with a Crimson Guard and the Scarred Cobra Officer. Then tried to carefully repackage everything, go back to the store to return the false merchandise.

or

Me who saw this (on two different outings to the same store, two weeks apart) placed it on the top peg, shot a picture with my camera phone, looked up as much info as I could about the figures online, formated the image, wrote some text about it and posted it.

Am I just giving these guys, these "swappers", too much attention, sort of like how our media does for the Octomom? Or am I pointing out a trend that I truly think is stupid on so many levels. I think I'm going to start taking pictures of every one I find and rating them. This one, by far, is the best I've seen, but not the only one. I wish I would have snapped a picture of the DVD set where the thief took The GI Joe Quick Kick out and replaced him with a stripped down Serpentor figure. It was the only figure that was missing the rest were still the ones that were supposed to be in the set, simply amazing.

The thing that makes this that much more beautiful is that he took the time to pose the figures like the manufacturers do, with weapons in hand and in somewhat action poses, then sloppily taped the package back together, over the factory tape with ordinary scotch tape.

6 comments:

Mario! said...

So far, I haven't seen any cases of this in the wild. The closest is the time I received Spider-Man 2 on DVD one Christmas, only to find that someone had removed the disks from the packaging. D'oh!

LEon said...

That is unthinkable! Normally this happen in some toy shop only but not retail shopping center. ToyRus is a safest I assume...

Dan said...

Thats great!

I wish I had a picture of a Full House (old tv show) doll set from years ago. Someone had took Aunt Becky's shirt off and positioned her arms in the air. The box was on a ToysRus shelf for months!

Juliana said...

This kind of toy swopping happens for My Little Pony in the US. The stores need staff who are toy experts to notice the discrepancy. But how many people are really so passionate about their jobs that they can accurately identify all the toys they sell? :P

Dan said...

Excuse me sir, you cannot return this. Clearly the rare Yoda Attacktix has been removed from the box for a common Wookie warrior! Nice try, you are now banned from this fine Walmart establishment.

chunky B said...

So I guess it's all across the board then? I've seen GI Joe and Star Wars swaps, but this is the first I've heard of My Little Pony Swaps. I wonder how many other toy lines we can identify with this problem?

Dan, LOL for the Full House set and the Walmart Wookie block.