If you went to The LEGO Batman Movie Experience at Walmart stores yesterday in hoping participate in the event, a majority of you were probably met with disappointment. For many of the 600 stores listed that were set to partake in the event, nothing actually happened there. For those lucky to have a functional event, there was a lot of activities to do including getting the free Accessory Pack (5004930) which is the same as the one as you get for doing the LEGO Store Batman Search & Find. For others, they were met with cardboard cutouts and empty tables.
I’ve had plenty of comments by readers who said that Walmart knew nothing about the event and blamed it on the third-party vendors. It’s not sure if the vendors were part of Warner Bros. or LEGO or just contractor but nobody showed up and people, not surprisingly, were upset to put it nicely. Some readers even took an extra step and called ahead to confirm if their stores were participating but were still met with frustration. Even LEGO had to come out and comment on the events page on Facebook to clarify what was going on.
Clearly, there was very little communication between companies and it’s surprising to see that especially for very anticipated movie like The LEGO Batman Movie. Obviously this hurts the LEGO brand even if it turns out that they weren’t at fault as people were excited about the event and took time to go there but were letdown. Hopefully they can take this as a learning experience for future events.
If it’s any consolation, Toys R Us will be having their own minibuild event to build Emmet’s Bat-Car this Saturday. Be sure to get there early as I predict that it will be a very popular event, even more so since the Walmart one was a failure.
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There were two participating Wal-Marts in my area; only one did it, with the other shrugging and saying that the vendor never showed. The one that did have it only had a table, the cutouts, and a small pile of the Accessory Pack, which we took. I’m told there were comic books, but we didn’t see them.
That said, the response by a lot of people on Facebook was less-than-charitable. I don’t know if this was Lego’s “fault,” or Wal-Mart’s, or the third party vendor. This was ultimately for a freebie, and one that many of us already got at the Lego Store. Lego does a LOT of free promos, and I’m sure I’ve gotten a sizeable collection of bricks from all the MMBs and Toys R Us builds I’ve taken my daughter to. So while I’m sorry this didn’t work out for a lot of people, I’m not going to hold it against Lego in the long run.
Was this the first time an event like this took place at Walmart? If so I have a feeling it will be the last.
It’s the first I’ve heard of that had anything to do with LEGO. One employee asked me if I saw any tents outside in the parking lot because that’s where they do NASCAR events (I pointed out that there’s snow in the parking lot at this time of year). The screwy density of participating locations was actually a bigger problem right off the bat. 12 states (including Alaska) had zero participating locations at all, and several cities in Texas and Florida had more participating locations than almost a dozen of the states that _did_ make the list. In Michigan, if you drew a straight line from the crook of the thumb to the Indiana lakeshore, I think Battle Creek would be the only location that falls above the line. Even in Metro Detroit, the majority of them were in the northern suburbs, with two (that didn’t happen) south of Detroit, and none in the western suburbs until you cross the gap to Ann Arbor.
Meanwhile, when TRU runs one of these, every store participates, the events are run by TRU staff, and I’ve never heard of one failing to launch. Oh, they’ve had some that were so popular that they ran out long before the two hours were up (the TLM event that took place right after the movie premiered blew through their stock so fast they had to run a second event for all the people who missed the first one). I lucked on the NAIAS build event just because I was circling the giant Speedwagon to take better pictures, and that was still going strong a week after the event opened to the public (Chevy had to have been going through an insane amount of parts and tiny tote bags).
So, yeah, either this will be the very last time Walmart runs one of these events, or next time they’ll make sure it goes off without a hitch. It also wouldn’t shock me if they announced a makeup date for those locations that failed to happen.
I’m sure LEGO is now on Walmart’s ass like butter on toast. LEGO can tell Walmart to get with it or no more exclusives for them. However I worked at TRU, never during an event, but they never remembered to stick out the boxes for the free promos. But the LEGO rep came in quiet often and told them exactly how they wanted there displays and if they didn’t have enough of one set.
Well if I remember correctly, there was a similar event to this but for Nexo Knights back around the same time last year and it had a free gift (which was the NK accessory pack that had already been given out at the Lego store) and I didn’t hear anything going wrong with that event which also took place at Wal-Mart. Although, Batman is a lot more popular than a new (or at the time was new) Lego theme which adds extra pressure for the event to go right because the amount of attention the event will receive because of Batman, is double that of any Nexo Knights event.
If the whole thing was being handled through a third-party organization, and they failed to even show up, Walmart is probably actually safe from their wrath on this occasion. Also, LEGO reps hit _all_ the major stores to reorganize the LEGO aisle, shoveling non-LEGO product out the space set aside for actual LEGO sets, generally tidying up the sets, and making sure they’re all moved back where they belong.
Walmart is horrible for this kind of stuff. A few years ago when KISS releases “Sonic Boom” it was a Walmart exclusive, and on release day they were suppose to have a section with a bunch of stuff and none of them did. I asked them and they also said they didn’t know anything about it.
I live in a major market, the second city, and not one of the stores in my area participated, drove out to a distant store, they were just handing out the same promo we already have about a dozen of from visits to TLSs. I was hoping for a new item, like the kiss kiss keychain. They were not even building any of the sets like the last lego event.
I went to two stores in my area and each said the same thing. Apparently the “vendor” is actually just the company that handles their store sample handouts. One explanation I received when I arrived at 3:30 and found nothing was that they don’t pay overtime and expect them to be out by 4pm.
You have to show up for all the regular time before you get to earn overtime.
people didn’t get their free stuff, yet the world didn’t stop… shocking.
(it is a little surprising that this happened… like everybody was expecting someone else to take care of it, to the point that they were pointing fingers full circle.)
I hear there is an event at Target on 2/18, any info coming on that?
I’m holding off on reporting on the Target and Barnes and Noble events until there’s more info on them. I’ve seen no details about them so far.