As reported,
Hasbro's San Diego Comic-Con 2011 exclusive toys hit Hasbro Toyshop this morning. Rather excited to acquire the G.I. Joe Sky-Striker Starscream with Cobra Commander set and the two 25th anniversary Zarana figures, I headed over to the site immediately. The page was being hit with hardcore traffic so it took a few tries - but I finally made it into the exclusives section. All three toys were in stock! Without hesitation, I added them to my cart. Again, I had to refresh a couple of times, but I finally got to the cart page wherein you're able to put it in your promo code and then "Proceed to Checkout." Fuck yeah, time to secure some awesome G.I. Joe love!
Except for...not. At this point, the website began timing out. With each refresh, I saw nothing but the "connection reset" page on my browser. But hey, no sweat. I already knew the traffic was bad, and at least I'd gotten this far, right? I kept at it, figuring I'd get through eventually. Some 15-20 minutes later, this proved true. But...but wait. I was looking at the cart page again. What?
I'll tell you what. As I sat there reloading in hopes of paying for my items, the Sky-striker Starscream set sold out right from under me. I got an error message from the site telling me it was gone and thus needed to be removed from my cart. Fuckin'
BLERG, man. Though majorly disappointed, I threw a minor complaint about it
on Twitter and kept on. At some point I managed to get the listing of toys to work again, and since I was now 50 bucks lighter, I figured I'd go ahead and add the Spider-Man Mighty Mugg to my cart. Why not, right?
So, now I was 30-40 minutes in. I hit "proceed to check-out" once more. No surprise, but the site began to time out again! In a mirror of my first attempt, I sat and refreshed for 10-15 more minutes. Now a bit before 1PM, the cart page decided to show itself again. Hey, guess what, another of the items I wanted sold out while my order was in the void of the unloadable checkout page! Cold Slither variant Zarana had also sold out.
Awesome.
Around this time, I visited TFW2005 and saw that the Transformers Prime Matrix of Leadership Optimus Prime had finally been listed. I wasn't initially interested, but hey, it's only 20 bucks, and given the fresh spot in my cart post-Cold Slither Zarana, I went ahead and added the thing once I finally got the page to load. Round 3...fight!
I pressed on to the cart page and hit "proceed to check out" yet again. No surprise at all, but it went absolutely nowhere. Refreshed. Refreshed. Refreshed again. Sometimes it would take me back to the "exclusives" page for some reason, meaning I had to go back to the cart and start the process all over again. It just didn't want to work. That "Proceed to Check Out" button offered nothing but empty hope. Even the main page of the HTS site refused to load during much of this. At this point, I felt...why bother?
I had now sat through an hour and thirty minutes of timed out connections, refreshing, starting over, items in my cart selling out before I could get through to pay, and so on. I saw no reason to continue and decided to call it a day. Besides, two of my most wanted items were long gone and all I was left with was a cart of three seemingly un-purchasable toys, only one of which I even cared for that much. (PS, the standard Zarana is gone at this point too!) Any interest I had was pretty much gone. Sorry that you didn't seem to want my money, HTS.
From what I've read, there
are people that have gotten through, but most have struggled with the issues I've listed here and others that arose further along in the process. One guy got to the payment confirmation page, only for it to stop loading before the confirmation button actually came up. Ha. I'm certainly not "raging" over this, but it's a real shame that this couldn't have gone more smoothly. At this point though, I'm embracing the money it's saved me.
Somewhere down the road, I might still try to track down the two Zaranas and a Sky-Striker Starscream set on eBay or some buy/sell/trade toy forum. Perhaps they'll be out there for fair prices once the buzz has died down. But if not, hey, they're just hunks of plastic. I'm pretty sure I'll be ok without them. Still...I certainly would have enjoyed them. Too bad.
