GW to remove blisters from stores in future

[Kaine]

Interestingly enough i was in GW today someone mentioned in the future the majority of blisters would be removed from the stores to make way for boxed sets.

Hence the metals moving to 5 piece boxed sets rather than 3 peice blisters.

Apparantly only a small number of character blisters will be stocked in store and the rest will be mail order.

Makes sense for WFB now the units are 5 man ranks.

[catbarf]

Interesting. What about heavy weapons troopers and the like?

[fracas]

i am surprise that it is cheaper to make and stock boxes rather than blisters

[The Phazer]

Yes, I've also been told this is happening shortly.

Phazer

[ThousandPlateaus]

It'll probably also have something to do with changes to UK packaging laws whereby packages stocked in stores will have to be made from one material only - I think the foil pack special blisters from earlier last year where a trial for alternative blisters, but didn't prove very popular.

[superknijn]

Well, it's an observation everyone can make. GW's reducing the amount of blister packs, and is putting more and more in boxes. I don't think that all blisters will be replaced by boxed sets soon; you still have single miniatures, characters mostly, that can't be put in a boxed set. Fantasy, for example, has reigments that previously consisted of a bunch of 3-man blisters turned into 5-man boxed sets, with a command boxed set. You can't do this with non-plastic (special/named) characters, though, although it does become viable to put them in a (small) box when they have lots of parts (Shadowsun) or bring some extra chaps (Space Pope).

Hmmm, the Space Pope and his Chaps. That would have been a great name for a 1960's mainstream rock band.

[DartzIRL]

Most stuff's going plastic these days, or needs to be bought in bulk anyway... A lot of Blisters are finding themselves superfluous. Why by ten Blisters of Three steel Grots, when you can have a boxed set of twenty for the same price?

Also... Twenty models in one cardboard box is cheaper per model to produce than the equivelent in Three per Blister..., and more convenient to buy. A Boxed set can have a higher profit margin than an equivelant set of Blisters

Also, BP's do limit the size of some miniatures, as the Parts all have to fit inside what is a realatively small space.

Where Blisters have their place, is for single model Impulse buying... just going in and whipping a single model you like or need off the shelf. If you need to make up the numbers in a squad, and there's just the one model you need to do it...

It'd save you buying an entire Tactical squad just for the Seargent..

[Ironbreaker]

Gosh, Games Workshop has changed so much since I played in 2001.
A couple of months ago I was very upset when I was looking at the blisters and couldn't find anything apart from a few Dwarf Lords and Heroes. Then I saw the Hammerers etc. on the shelves below.

Boxes make more sense to me anyway. They're far easier to browse and the presentation is a lot better.
If you compare the fairly new Lord and Battle Standard Dwarf box it's a lot better than, say, the King Alrik Blister from a few years ago. Perhaps this conflicts with the impulse buy factor that you've mentioned, DartzIRL. They're not going to produce a box for one metal figure but the set £12 is less of an impulse than say the Runelord blister for £6/7.

I'm mostly in favour of the boxes as long as it doesn't lead to single models being hard to buy or mail-order only. What's the point of the shop then when I can buy it online (and from a 3rd party at a discount)?

[Etienne de Beaugard]

From a marketing standpoint, boxes do a couple of good things:
*It shows off the model in painted form, which is much more appealing than the 'lump' effect that some unpainted minis convey.

*At least the large and mid-size boxes are a bit tougher to shoplift than a blister.

*Psychologically, paying $15 for a single model in a small box seems so much more reasonable than paying $15 for a little blister.

[Hicks]

I could even see GW making character boxes to eliminate blisters totally. You know similar to the assassin and ennemy/heroes of the imperium boxes they made for a limited time, but for a single army. This way they can get rid of blisters and force people to pay for minis they might not even want.

[Arjuna]

Well the OP must be pretty new to the hobby because the move to emphasizing boxes of plastic over blisters of pewter has already happened.

Since the current skeletons, first modern chaos multipart kit (already departed and updated) and those awful jungle fighter models came out there has been an explosion of plastic boxes. Prior to around the time of release of the boxes I mentioned, most plastic figures were in small boxes of 5-8. Beatmen with halberd, dwarfs with spears(i think) the crappy elves chaos dwarves and a few others are some that I remember. At that time a well stocked shop would have 5 or more times of wall space devoted to blisters.

Very few people in those days could afford to play IG or skaven simply because the cost was outrageous!

[Cypher]

This rumour has been kicking for a while, and the fact that even most metal models are now sold in boxes supports it. It also makes sense in that blisters rarely have the right number of models to make full units (packs of 3 aren't much good for 10-man units).

[spaint2k]

Apart from impulse purchases, the other big advantage blisters have over foil or boxes is that you can look at the figure your getting to see if it's a better cast than the others on the shelf.

Blister packs also give you a free paint palette when you get home.

Steve

[OrlyggJafnakol]

I will be sad to see the end of blisters... Purely for nostalgic reasons though. As a child I'd walk into my local stockist (Wonderworld in Bournemouth) and gape at the mass of blister packs that would dangle from the shelves. Times change. As long as GW keep producing great models for me to collect and paint it doesn't really matter what the products come in.

[muskrat]

Originally Posted by DartzIRL

Most stuff's going plastic these days, or needs to be bought in bulk anyway... A lot of Blisters are finding themselves superfluous. Why by ten Blisters of Three steel Grots, when you can have a boxed set of twenty for the same price?

Because you'd be getting the thirty models for the price of twenty boxed. thats 10 free

Or am I missing something here? ten 3 model blisters for the price of twenty boxed sounds like a deal that gw would never do.

[Kaine]

Quote

Well the OP must be pretty new to the hobby because the move to emphasizing boxes of plastic over blisters of pewter has already happened.

Its not so much i'm new to that hobby (i'm not) and i've seen the same trends everyone else had.

Its that i was sitting in store and the staff actually offhand mentioned it when casually talking. It also matches another thing i heard them say about not restocking/only restocking same lines of blisters on the shelves when they ran out.

[Dr Death]

I'm partially in favour of boxes over blisters. However one disadvantage i have found is that since most metal ranges only have 4 variant models each box has (in my experience) exactly the same content you end up with a majority of repeats of a single model. This i find to be greatly irritating.

If however in future GW boost each of these 4 peice ranges a single new sculpt (similar to the dwarf slayers) then i would be perfectly content. GW so far do appear to have tried as far as these go: their command boxes generally include different poses to the repeat you get in the rank boxes.

On the whole though i am in complete agreement: the individual boxes look very slick, provide you with a complete rank, and the multiples of 5 make for nice 'round numbered' units.

Dr Death

[Count Zero]

the benefit of boxes it easier to stack and you can show a nice picture on the front, plus painted pictures and assembly instrcutions on the back.

the down side is in blisters you can see the models, see if anything is bent (spears etc) and actaully see which poses you are getting as you may want specific ones. i doubt GW would let you open the box in advance to check. also as mentioned can use them for paint/ink mixing.

if its to do with UK packaiging law then surely it doenst make sense, more raw material must go into a box than a blister, both use card and plastic, the blister may have foam but not always. i know there were changes in the law bout empty space inside the packaing, but i would have theough the blisters were already pretty good for that, it was more aimed at things like memory sticks which come in a gargatunan card + plastic case with is impoisible to open without industrial cutting gear.

[1truegod]

Well if you go to GW Lincoln this process is happening, it is one of the few GW in the UK which this is happening to, it is running as a experiment before they might introduce it to the rest of the country or maybe not.

The Good news is that it has made space for the tiny store but the downside is that some models haven't even been packed into the shop thus making GW direct order it to the shop costing sometimes money in our case we get free posting to the store but it also costs time. And you can't see the condition of the models

[junglesnake]

For those of you that are green like me - this can only be a good thing. Replacing plastic that takes hundreds of years to degrade with cardboard that can be recycled or be made from recycled/sustainable sources.

The only thing I would say is that personally I like to see the miniature for myself before I buy it. This is because I don't trust painted models.

Those of you that play any other game system or historical wargames will know that some of the figures are painted so well that in some cases the detail you see on the painted figure is not actually there on the sculpt. So for that reason I prefer to see the metal models for scale etc there.

However for the abover reason and the fact that I can see most units ending up as either plastic kits in their own right or perhaps expansion kits that offer different heads etc. And we know what the quality of GW is like - it is for the most part consistant. The worse figure in the current rang is easily the bandanered catachan demo charge guy, I have two now and his right arm is badly sculpted with little shape.