New Zealand Marvel fans will finally get their hands on a sought-after collectable after Fair Go went looking for the missing products.
Wade McKenzie-Campbell is one of 25 Kiwis who paid a $400 deposit for The Sentinel – said to be the biggest Marvel Legends action figure ever made.
The 67cm figurine was made available to pre-order by toy manufacturer Hasbro in 2020. Its size only matched by the price tag, approximately $800.
The product was crowd funded - needing a certain number of people to back it in order for it to actually get made. It ended up garnering the support of 22,000 backers from around the world.
Wade says he had to order through electronics retailer, EB Games, which had exclusive rights to the New Zealand market.
The robots were dispatched to fans around the world in late 2021. But Wade and the other New Zealand customers were left scratching their heads when their collectables never arrived.
Wade says his questions to EB Games went unanswered for months.
Eventually, EB Games told Wade there had been a supply issue and the New Zealand order had been cancelled. The retailer refunded his deposit and threw in a gift voucher and merchandise for free.
But by then, limited stock has pushed online prices right up. The cost for Wade to buy one through an online store and ship it to New Zealand would cost around $1600 – essentially double what he would have paid for his original order.
Fair Go got in touch with EB Games and Hasbro to find a solution - and the missing Sentinels.
A spokesperson for Hasbro Pacific admitted they didn't pick up on a system error until it was too late, but have “since reviewed our process to ensure it doesn’t happen moving forward".
EB Games says when its order wasn’t fulfilled, it tried "all means possible" to secure stock, but “as investigations can take time, we felt it was in the best interest of our customers to refund their orders immediately and compensate them for the inconvenience".
Hasbro says it never stopped working on a solution behind the scenes and has now managed to source enough action figures to send to the New Zealand customers. It’s asked EB games to reach out to customers in the coming days.
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