darkSpyro

I was at Gamestop/EB Games and Walmart for a while and analysed the Skylanders shelves. And I have collected information for skylanders shoppers about specific figures that stay on the shelves or sell out and not up for a few months. Here I have a timeline of Skylanders Swap Force waves to this point. It's probably working like the same marketing as Giants last year. So I'll use information on the Giants timeline to predict what's going to happen in stores in the future. Note: I don't know if this goes to all skylanders shoppers, but I'm sharing what I saw. At least a few others seen this before.

October, release of Swap Force - All of the Wave 1 skylanders were ready to be purchased in stores. A few days later, Wave 2 skylanders are out and there are plenty of them.

November - Wave 2 skylanders are sold out and will be hard to find. Wave 1 skylanders are still up on shelves.

End of December - Most skylanders in stores have been wiped out by the Christmas rush. And it's staying like that for a while.

January - Not many skylanders from Wave 1 are in stores. Most of the skylanders you see will be the same ones for a while. Meanwhile, some Wave 2 skylanders are coming out at times. And parts of Wave 3 appear from several release dates.

April - Wave 4 skylanders are released. Some of Wave 3 is also common to buy. However some skylanders of Wave 1 are not seen.

May (IIRC) - Doom Stone is released. Several of them were from Toys R Us like Ninjini. But later, it was tricky to find in stores.

Here's where the predictions come in. Using information from last summer to early fall

Late August - Many different skylanders from Waves 1 and 2 appear on shelves. This is a good time to go shopping if you missed getting any early skylanders. Doom Stone also has a higher chance of showing up in stores.

After the release of Trap Team - The swapper skylanders sometimes come from shipments. These swappers are most likely to be ones which were difficult to find in Spring. There should be plenty of Doom Stones from these shipments.

This is cool, but don't forget about the Black Friday legendary figures. That's when they were released right?

Eh. I don't recall seeing any legendaries released on Black Friday. I know the second half of legendaries were released about a month after SSF's release. I was at TRU at the end of November and found all the SSF legendaries but Night Shift. So he's probably the hardest to find.