I was thinking that a lot of people here doesn't really know how these things are made. I thought I would share a video that I was watching today showing an interesting printing process. I'm betting that this video below is very similar to what Shapeway uses to make their Skylanders, other than the taking photos of people part of course.
If you rather not watch the video, basically a machine layers very sandy powder into a tray and does this many, many times. With some tech wizardry the figure is formed very slowly in the center of the tray. At the end of the process you get a box of dust which they recycle, but in the center of it all is your figure. Then they clean and process it and you're good to go.
I am rather envious that these guys are printing out WAY better looking 3D character figures than what we've been getting. I checked online for a price range and it's not that bad. Seems to be $95 for a figure the size of a Skylander. Honestly I would gladly pay $100ish for a figure which manages to get glasses to look like glasses rather than huge eye obscuring goggles, wings to their proper size and other things which makes them more like what we see on the TV screen instead of fuzzy chibis.
Something I picked up from the video is that it takes a day for them to print a figure. I'm using a bit of logic here to assume that Safeway probably has the ability to print out only "X" figures a week. They surely only have so many machines and staff on hand to attend to these things, right? After that magic number, the website shuts down orders until the queue clears up and then they open the website again for more orders.
I got my order in on a Tuesday, so it's possible that Monday or Tuesday is when the queue is freed up and orders are accepted once again. And they probably sell out pretty quickly within 24 hours. Just a hunch for anyone wanting to buy one to check back on those two days.