Why Don't They Advertise These Things Better?

[the_other_sandy]

I've been really sitting on the fence about getting the season 1 DVD set of Heroes. Then I was surfing around LJ and tripped over the news that Target had an exclusive special edition that included the Paley Festival panel and some Tim Sale artwork. I figured I'd be totally out of luck since the Heroes set has been out since last Tuesday, and the similar Supernatural DVD set that was exclusive to Best Buy pretty much sold out on its street date last year. However, either Target ordered a lot more special edition copies than Best Buy did, or the special edition of Heroes isn't selling as well, because there were tons of copies still available yesterday (so if you have a Target near you, don't pay $75+ on Amazon or eBay--there are still copies out there).

So, I'm now getting very annoyed with these special editions of DVDs that are only available from a specific retailer. I never buy DVDs from Target because I live about 5 blocks from the Deep Discount DVD shipping facility, which has an attached store that's open to the public, so I never even would have thought to look there even if I'd actually been in Target, which I rarely am. I didn't hear about the Supernatural special edition set at Best Buy until I'd already bought my set from Deep Discount. So why aren't these special editions advertised better? The production companies should know that the fans (like me) are going to want them, but we can't buy them if we don't know they exist. And we can't seriously be expected to visit every store on earth that sells DVDs on the off chance that one set might be different. So I say to TPTB, either advertise your special edition sets better so that people know they exist without accidentally tripping over the news on LJ, or stop making the special editions exclusive to one retailer so that we will discover these sets exist (and buy them) no matter where we shop.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Paley Festival disc to watch.

Comments

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

What? A special edition on the first day out? Crap, the nearest Target store is, geez, I have no idea as I've never seen one in this area.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

See? There's my complaint right there. The distributors have been releasing simultaneous editions, the normal one and a second one with bonus material (mostly the show's panel at the Paley Festival, so far), and the deal is retailer exclusive, so if you don't have access to that retailer, too bad for you. And then they don't even bother to advertise the special edition widely so even fans don't know about it, which takes some work. Seriously, you know how hard it is to keep secrets from fandom.

I just checked Target's website, and I didn't see the collector's edition listed. If you want one, I can probably pick one up for you. I'd have to pay sales tax on it, so the total would be $48.36, plus whatever it costs to mail it to you.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer, but I did pass on HEROES when it showed here as the sale price is the same offered by DDD, so I can catch it later. Don't want to spend all my paycheck now! Buying SGA3 and ADB in a few weeks, plus Black Sheep (about killer sheep, sounds great!)

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

No problem. I was going to do the same thing, but I really wanted the Paley Festival disc. I have SGA season 3, Animaniacs season 3, The A-Team season 5, Emergency! season 3, Supernatural season 2, and Robin of Sherwood set 2 on my list. I'm waiting for a good Christmas sale on some of these.