Oho, that's where you're wrong! have you ever seen the wonderful world of "item swapping" that's taken off? People return boxes with shit that very clealry isn't meant to be in them, and stores take them anyways and put them on shelves. It's been happening for a while now, but it's only gotten more intense/worse as years have gone on. Like many things that affect a lot of collectibles,
there's a transformers wiki page explaining it for some reason.
Target's management does weird fucking things with the stock in a way that I'm 100% is tied to some form of internal corruption shit. NECA exclusive figures and the cobra island Gi joe figures never made it to shelves a lot of the time but mysteriously showed up on ebay for 100-200 dollars. I have SCANNED items that are fully stocked on shelves and they'll say "out of stock" despite being clearly in stock, and then the next day that shelf will be barren or filled with stuff that's not supposed to be there. If the last 7 years are anything to go by there is something very fucking wrong at chain retail stores.
Yeah, Target has a weird inventory system and I say that having worked backroom for the local store for a few months while trying to get a white collar entry job.
Though the weirdest was probably last year. Managed to find a Real Grade Wing Gundam hiding in the collector corner area from when they used to sell lots of Gunpla, brought it up to the register and...wasn't in the system. It literally had sat long enough that the entire database had phased that item out. Managed to find it on sale somewhere on my phone and the nice lady rang me up for $20, probably because I was being patient on the matter and generally the ideal customer. But the model kit
should have been pulled off the shelf instead of just deleted internally.
I know that looking for logic in Chris' actions is a fool's errand, but what's the end game? Is is just about him playing pretend? Or, as someone upthread suggested, is he selling his versions of these things, and this is his absurd way of drumming up hype?
It seems like a huge pain in the ass to sneak all those boxes of toys into a Target. Even if he's just bringing in collapsed empty boxes or individual drawn pages that he sticks on top, there's a lot there. It would take a normal person a long time to set all that up, never mind a 'tard like Chris. Wouldn't he attract suspicion loitering in the toy aisle fiddling with the merchandise while dressed like a colorblind 10-year-old girl?
Does he just leave the toys like that when he's done? Or after he's taken the picture, does he revert them back to normal and take his drawings with him?
It's his retarded way of trying to force things into reality through the internet.
Oh, hey, look, all these toys that
totally are getting made by Hasbro under this sub-line that anybody who even gives half a shit about would have pulled the distribution notes about weeks in advance are now appearing at
exclusively Wal-Mart, as opposed to literally anywhere that would stock these figures like Target or specialty toy stores.
By staging this stupid game of pretend, Chris ultimately is trying to convince
other people that it's legitimate. Because then he has assuance that what he wants in reality is, in fact, real. This is why he got taken for a ride by the Idea Guys and later Praetor, because they fed into his delusions. They played along. And to Chris, if other people are talking about it, then it MUST be real.
The fact he's dressed like a weirdo hauling in likely a whole box of these things isn't going to get attention - store employees are usually busy enough if they're ever on the shop floor. As long as he comes in, takes his little photo session, and then takes his toys home without stealing anything or bothering guests beyond his mere existence in their vicinity, he'll be left alone by staff.