Recently ive been deploying all over the province (northern ireland) in the hope to see what action figures are on the market these days. My primary goal was to find..dc superheroes, marvel legends, other dc direct related figures, and also rocky figures. All these are popular especially the marvel and dc superheroes…not one store sold any of these..this is not some corner shop, im talking about Toys R Us and Smyths (which is a big toy firm in UK). I think this is appalling that i couldnt even find one of these figures at these listed toy stores especially as their meant to be the biggest toy chains out there. With the exception of one Forbidden Plant toy store i found who had all the toys i listed above and even more rare/american toys. They had a limited number but nonetheless still had some. Is it only me who thinks that these toy firms are goin down the drain and ignoring collectors such as myself and others? The best sculpted, rare, popular toys are not really to be found here at the moment. The internet seems to be my only option which i think says alot. Ofcourse these firms still have a huge selection and appeal to parents for their kids etc but people like me and you..whos hobbies are collecting toys/action figures and yet here i am struggling to find even one from a huge worldwide selection i think they owe us alot. Forbidden Planet for example..a smaller store than toys R us and Smyths and who concentrate on comics as well as books still appeal to me and satisfy me more than a self centered toy store whose primary goal is to sell toys and only toys..yet here i am a toy collector who cant even find one toy from 4 or 5 major toylines
Chris here…
As this wasn’t ThunderCats-related I moved this over to the General Discussion Forum rather than the ThunderCats Toy Forum - please keep all non-ThunderCats toy talk to the General Discussion board. Many thanks! 
In terms of Marvel Legends and other, more collector-based toylines, I definitely agree that some of the larger chains in the UK don’t stock large quantities of these - however, I would say that I have seen a small number of Marvel Legends in UK Toys ‘R’ Us stores. From personal experience, one of the best places for more collector-based toylines has always been a chain of stores known as The Entertainer - I love Entertainer stores best of all, although the last time I went into one, namely the one in Milton Keynes only yesterday, their action figure selection was actually pretty lousy! 
However, as you rightly say, the best places for more collector-based toylines are probably comic stores - not just Forbidden Planet, even smaller, independant comic stores can have good selections of these more specialist toy lines.
Take care…
Lack of Superhero Action Figures
I think what’s going on in Northern Ireland can pretty much be said for toystores and regular stores the world over. Along with the law of supply-and-demand, their philosophy is to go with what’s popular at a given moment in time, and superhero figures fall into this category because they’re tied in with a movie or TV show (ThunderCats, Fantastic Four, He-Man and She-Ra, Transformers, X-Men, etc.). If that movie or show becomes a hit, then you see those figures everywhere. When the film and the TV program lose their popularity, so do the figures based on them, and those items disappear from store shelves, are labeled “nostalgia” or “cult” items, and end up wherever they happen to end up, whether it’s eBay or a comic book store.:bengali:
But comic book stores also go by “what’s-hot-what’s-not”. Marvel, D.C., and anime publications are still popular, but even they have fallen a bit in their popularity, and I know of one local comic book that’s had to include sports figures in their stock to keep going.