Panic at the Retail: Reports From Last Week’s Lorcana and Pokémon Drops

At BOXED, the mission has always been to give players the best collecting experience possible. In recent years, that mission has grown to include protecting them from the increasingly wild world of retail. Kind of like how Piccolo trained Gohan to fight back against season one Vegeta. Except instead of an evil Saiyan, Vegeta is the line outside of a Target.

Just last Friday we’ve got the release of the new Pokémon - Pitch Black set as well as an ultra limited drop of Lorcana Curators Collection: Heroines Card. And if you went out there today and survived, then we applaud you, because we’ve seen some crazy things around these drops.

Ravensburger is one of our favorite companies when it comes to limited edition drops, and their exclusive Heroines collection for Lorcana is no different. This set of gorgeous variants featuring some of Disney’s most iconic heroines like Elsa, Anna, Mulan, and more all with new borderless art, was sure to become a hot ticket item.

To make the drop feel even more special, Disney opted to limit the physical retail release to a handful of stores either at Disney theme parks, or designated stores like the Disney Store on Oxford Street in London.

Reports say that fans started forming a line outside the store as early as 12 hours before the Oxford store was set to open. As someone who’s sat out in the cold for midnight launches before, there’s a lovely feeling of friendship that comes from lining up early for a drop. Unfortunately just as the store was set to open, things got crazy.

According to Insidethemagic.net, resellers soon invaded this peaceful line, attempting to force their way through the front doors and even hijacking the ticketing system to get an unfair advantage.

Ultimately, in order to protect their staff and customers, the Oxford Street Disney Store announced it was cancelling the retail release of the Lorcana Heroines Collection altogether. The right call, I’d say.

On the Pokémon side of things, it’s been getting harder to get Pokémon boosters and boxes at retail for years now, and you know us, we’ll be the first to congratulate anyone on scoring a new drop. But a W on Pokémon cards ended up being an L for their car.

Reddit user u/Minimum-Idea115 was apparently lucky enough to score a stack of new Pokémon - Pitch Black blisters and an ETB box from their local Walmart. Nice! Unfortunately when they came out of the store local grandma and possible menace totaled Minimum-Idea115’s Honda Civic and four other cars at the Walmart parking lot.

“Hopefully I’ll have better luck with these packs,” Minimum-Idea115 says in their post. We hope so too, Minimum-Idea115, we hope so too.

If you want to try and score cards from the new Pitch Black set while keeping your car safe, I’m told we’re going to have the set on BOXED in a week. For everyone else out there hoping to win big this weekend, stay safe and good luck!