Their Tsum Tsum choices have been weird for several of the sets. Only four for 101 Dalmatians, no Pongo or Perdita?? Suzy, Perla, and Bruno in the Cinderella set instead of Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters??? A FREAKING DUCKLING IN THE LILO AND STITCH SET INSTEAD OF NANI?????? So the NBC ones are kind of par for the course with these things (some sets are perfect like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin...though I would have loved a Carpet tsum
), NBC just has some odd choices (I would have traded the vampire doll for Oogie Boogie personally....and Mayor would have been nice too but that would balloon the set to 9 as I wouldn't want to give up any of the characters that are in it).
Anyway, Tsum Tsum Tuesday is now officially batpoop insane in the greater Vancouver area. By opening, and they opened about 10 minutes early, there was, by my guess, about 60 or 70 people in line for the tsums. And there was hardly any stock to go around. I don't get it. The store was sent hardly any Aladdin tsums compared to two months ago for Inside Out and even Lilo & Stitch seemed to have more with the only one selling out before everyone who was there who wanted them being Scrump. The castmembers came out and let us know that they didn't get Sultan at all (so Prince Ali, your store wasn't the only one!) but they actually DID get Sultan....only they got SO FEW they didn't realize they had him because he was hidden packed with some of the others. So, I guess the tsums are manufactured and packaged up in China in clear plastic bags of 10 (of the same character) and then stores are sent so many bags of 10. My store got exactly ONE bag of 10 Sultans. The limited quantities on these things is getting ridiculous. Disney either needs to start manufacturing more or sending more to high volume tsum tsum stores such as in greater Vancouver, most likely the Seattle area and all alone the Pacific coast. I'm just guessing that because it seems cities with high Asian-Canadian/American populations will have more demand since these things originated in Japan and seem to be even more popular there if that's even possible. I was third in line and one girl ahead of me only reserved the doll and bought one Rajah tsum so I was able to get the whole set but Sultan was gone very, very quickly.
I was there at 6am so I guess I shouldn't feel too sorry for the people who showed up at 9:30 expecting to get anything but it still seems dumb that these silly little bean bag plush that aren't a true limited edition are MORE DIFFICULT TO GET THAN THE ACTUAL LE ITEM RELEASED TODAY. My store got 15 Jasmines which is a weirdly huge amount for pre-order of a LE 5,000 doll (it's usually 8-11) and I think they only sold about 7-8 by the time the tsum tsum crowd cleared out so she's (was? still is?) available. The Aladdin tsum tsums though? FORGET IT. They were all spoken for by about 8:30 this morning.