Pat Fuge of Gnome Games in Green Bay, Wisconsin saw the ICv2 interview with Upper Deck's Cory Jones (see 'Interview with Upper Deck's Cory Jones, Part 1'), and feels that recent actions by the company contradict statements made in the interview:

Less than two weeks ago Upper Deck's Cory Jones stated the following on ICv2:

ICv2:  'Earlier this year, Upper Deck announced that it would be ensuring that shipments of game products sold in both hobby and mass channels would hit the hobby channel first.  Is that part of Upper Deck's new over-all strategy of category stewardship, or was that done for other reasons.?'

Cory Jones responded:  'This is absolutely part of a strategy to support and help the hobby channel to grow and develop stronger ties to its customers.  The last thing we want is a nurtured hobby channel consumer driven to big box retailers because of product availability.  There is no value for Upper Deck in hobby channel consumers purchasing product at retailers that don't actively engage in driving that consumer deeper into the TCG community.'

Today I purchased a Warrior Structure Deck at the Wal-Mart in Green Bay, WI.  This product was co-packaged with Tournament Pack 6 by Legends from Rochester, NY.  The UDE published Warrior Structure Deck finance date for hobby was October 17th.  As of today hobby stores still do not have the new structure decks and we don't expect that we will see them until next week as the Upper Deck solicitations indicated that the finance date for hobby retailer that purchase directly from Upper Deck (from emails dated October 14th) is October 19th, with expected arrival date of November 2nd.  Thus Wal-Mart will have the product for almost 2 weeks before we get it.

To add insult to the injury, Upper Deck saw fit to allow a non-tournament-running distributor to package and sell the latest tournament pack as part of this latest fiasco that blatantly disregards the hobby market completely.  Why should a player go to the hobby stores for tournaments if they can buy tournament packs from Wal-Mart? 

When I called UDE today and spoke with an entertainment representative I was told that he knew about the Warrior Structure Deck issue.  Yet the management at UDE didn't feel it was important enough to let us know about it, I speculate because they knew we would scramble to cancel our orders.  I know I would have.

We've also been under-informed in other areas -- like the following:

For those stores that are waiting for your Tournament Season 5 and 6 store trophies - here is the latest from UDE.  From a UDE representative via email on October 7th, 2005:  'There are no prizes or trophies for any of our Seasons anymore.  We will be trying to set up something where stores that want trophies for their players can purchase one in the near future.'

This was only offered in response to our question as to where the trophies for season 5 and 6 were.  UDE was not forthcoming and did not offer this information in good faith to the stores that purchased tournament packs in expectation of trophies for the players.  It is another case of UDE withholding information in a desperate effort to get the last dollar out of the hobby market.  Well they have succeeded.  They just got the last dollar out of these hobby stores.

I really don't expect UDE to do anything except a bit of damage control, however I do expect that Gnome Games will remove all support of any current and future UDE products from our offerings.  Perhaps we can even talk a responsible manufacturer or two into doing a 'trade in your Yu-Gi-Oh! cards for a real game' deal.  If we coordinate the event with the removal of Yu-Gi-Oh! from afternoon cartoons on Kids WB in January, we can just say goodbye and good riddance to Yugi and hello to the more hobby-friendly Pokemon, Xaiolin Showdown, One Piece, or Teen Titans.

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.