Like I said, it was gone at least 3 weeks before Xmas (while still being advertised as "available at Wal-Mart and Target" on WotC's splash page the entire time). "Good for the game" is hard to justify unless "not being on shelves or in the online store through most of the Black-Friday-to-post-Xmas period" is unimportant. If all they care about is getting through their limited print-runs, then it's OK, but it's status-quo rather than "raising D&D population levels", and the whole making-it-into-Walmart thing was meaningless.
Also, "making room for D&D", "pushing competitors off the shelves" etc. wasn't even a consideration in this case; the Red Box was stocked with the CCG stuff and was clearly "borrowing" shelf space from MtG for the time I saw it there (i.e. it was sitting directly under the booster pack racks and was totally surrounded by premade decks, booster/deck boxes and whatever). The first thing that I checked after I noticed it was gone, was whether it had been moved to the toys/games section... I agree that "Hasbro would have kept it on the shelves if it had been selling." But turn that around (contrapositive): "It wasn't on the shelves, therefore it wasn't selling."
If we're going with an optimistic interpretation here, we'd be saying that Red Box was underprinted, completely sold out in Oct or Nov, but no one bothered to reprint it for Walmart/Target even though it was popular (and that those stores chose to take down the item entry on their sites, rather than leave it up with a will-ship-when-available option). I lack confidence in that version of events.
Also, "making room for D&D", "pushing competitors off the shelves" etc. wasn't even a consideration in this case; the Red Box was stocked with the CCG stuff and was clearly "borrowing" shelf space from MtG for the time I saw it there (i.e. it was sitting directly under the booster pack racks and was totally surrounded by premade decks, booster/deck boxes and whatever). The first thing that I checked after I noticed it was gone, was whether it had been moved to the toys/games section... I agree that "Hasbro would have kept it on the shelves if it had been selling." But turn that around (contrapositive): "It wasn't on the shelves, therefore it wasn't selling."
If we're going with an optimistic interpretation here, we'd be saying that Red Box was underprinted, completely sold out in Oct or Nov, but no one bothered to reprint it for Walmart/Target even though it was popular (and that those stores chose to take down the item entry on their sites, rather than leave it up with a will-ship-when-available option). I lack confidence in that version of events.