“Well that was incredibly ant-climactic.”
These were the words of a man in Bend, Oregon’s Target store at about 12:03 am on September 4, 2015, or “Force Friday,” as it has been dubbed. Someone in his group had informed us earlier that they had been there since 3pm, eagerly awaiting the chance to be the first to get their hands on the newest merchandise for the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While the borderline insane amount of time he was waiting might have been setting himself up for disappointment, I found myself agreeing with him, and I’d only been there since 10:30.
Sean (my roommate you met in my board game review earlier this week) and I had spent some time earlier in the evening checking out videos of the new toys in anticipation of our venture across town, and the obvious stand out was the $150 smart phone-controlled, voice-recognizing, environment-mapping basically-actual-droid BB-8 toy from Sphero. We weren’t sure how many–if any–our local Target store would get, so we decided to head over a little early. Our upstairs neighbor David (who will be contributing some music-focused articles in the future) tagged along with us as we headed north to the unknown.
After a quick stop by Sonic Drive-In for milkshakes, we arrived at a largely-empty Target parking lot. Assuming we’d shown up way earlier than we needed to, we entered, and were greeted by Chewbacca, who growled as we walked by. Lamenting the state of the galactic economy that such a capable Wookie would need to be working at Target, we made our way to the farthest corner of the seemingly customer-less store. We arrived to find only eight people in front of us, and grabbed some cushioned boxes from the adjacent “off to college” aisle and sat down to occupy ourselves by playing Pokémon Shuffle on our phones. We were content with our line placement, assuming that we were close enough to the front that there shouldn’t be too much problem getting what we were after.
Sometime shortly after catching an Eevee–probably about 11:15–a steady flow of people began forming a long line behind us. We were pretty pleased with ourselves that we’d timed our arrival so well, not having to wait since 3, but not at the end of what became a 50 to 60 person line. As the fateful hour approached, the unfortunate Target employee in charge of telling us the rules let us know that they weren’t going to allow scalper-like behavior and to “be reasonable.” With such clear limitations as those, what could possibly go wrong?
“It was an absolute joke,” an anonymous Target employee told me the next day. “Anything worth waiting for was gone immediately or never made it to the shelves.”
And how painfully true that was. Sean, myself and David were the ninth, tenth and eleventh people in line, and we were informed by the Target commanding officer that we’d be let into the aisles in–you guessed it–groups of eight. Midnight hit and the first group was allowed in to pillage, and pillage they did. While we stood in line and joked with the nearest employee about dead younglings in the toy aisle (where there was a separate line that wasn’t responding to her on radio), the shelves were picked through, in what some might have said was an unreasonable manner.
When we finally got in there, pickings were slim. Black Series figures? Gone. Half the selection of Pop! Vinyls? Gone. Sphero’s BB-8 toy? I think you know where this is going.
“We got twelve of those in,” said anonymous Target person. “They were gone within 30 seconds.”
So Sean and I were unable to procure a new droid for our apartment, and what we were left to pick through–even being within the first ten people in line–was nothing worth writing home about. I did manage to get one of the last few Target-exclusive Kylo Ren Pops, as well as one of Captain Phasma and a First Order Stormtrooper, which I’m happy about, but couldn’t help but feel that my time was utterly wasted. David got a couple of t-shirts that could’ve been purchased before anyway, and Sean grabbed the Millenium Falcon quadcopter, but we haven’t had a chance to fly it yet. I’ll be sure to have a report on that when we make the Kessel Run with it in a few days. The consensus among people I talked to was that we could have done this on any number of days for the next several months and been less tired and irritated and probably had a better selection.
All in all, Force Friday was a huge waste of time thanks to poor stock, vague rules and employees who didn’t care enough to stop people from being “unreasonable.” Our hunt for BB-8, however, remains undeterred. He is the droid we’re looking for.
Matthew Funk runs NerdFunk, and is finishing a degree in American Studies at OSU Cascades. He has previously written for Bleeding Cool, Fables for Japan, and has self-published a comic anthology, “Blank Page Comics.” He has five years of experience talking comics and movies from behind the counter of comic book store Pegasus Books of Bend in Bend, Oregon. Follow him on Twitter @Professor__Funk (with two underscores) and on Instagram @Professor_Funk (with one underscore).
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