Toy Aisle Trolls is a feature highlighting acts of vandalism to in-store toy items. If you find a ruined package, a stolen figure, a swapped-out figure, or any other such acts, take a photo (cell phone photos are fine if they’re not blurry) and email them to poe@poeghostal.com.
Submitted by: Zach S.
Zach writes: “You see something new every day, I guess. At Walmart the other day I noticed this Total Justice Hawkman hanging out on the pegs amongst the new Batman kids’ line from Mattel. I stopped in my tracks and wondered how the hell a toy from 1996 could possibly be there. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, I found that some jackass had scanned, printed out and taped a barcode from the new Batman toys onto the package.
Now, this is much worse than the normal trolling. In normal instances they’re doing it to get a free figure. In this case, the troll is simply stealing money. He’s returning worthless 90’s figures and getting cash for them. That’s no different than going up to an open cash register and taking money out of it. I really hope he tries again and gets caught…this is awful.”
dayraven
i hope when this guy gets to hell, the florida faceeater is waiting for him… and he's hungry.
ferris
Wow, this one's definitely more involved than usual, but I don't know about it being any "worse" than normal trolling… stealing money or figures all seems the same to me. And if anything this is less likely to result in some kid getting screwed over, since it doesn't leave a mislabelled figure on the shelf for parents to unknowingly buy. Still totally messed up behaviour though.
Barbecue17
While it would be kind of cool to walk into a store to find that figure, it definitely sucks that someone is resorting to this to make money off of figures they probably stockpiled back in the 90s.
Dark Angel
"Worthless"??? I am offended! I love that figure, personally, and would gladly pay the $16 for it over the crap Mattel is hawking…granted, I am a bit of an outlier (and whoever did that is still a thief, no bones about it).
nerdbot
Agreed. The person responsible is a thieving #@$%-wad. But, yeah – I would probably buy that for the under 10 bucks price of the new Batman line. (It has "massive grip talons" for cripes sake!) I would first attempt to explain what happened to a manager, in a futile effort to find someone who cares… but then I'd buy it, if I could.