When Wizards of the Coast first switched over to limited-run Secret Lair drops, it’s safe to say it didn’t go well. The first few drops sold out insanely quickly, leaving tons of MTG players disappointed as they weren’t fast enough.
Thankfully, over time, Wizards did get better at predicting demand, to the point that most sales don’t sell out immediately. There are still a few problems for ultra-high-demand drops, of course, but for the most part, things are better.
Unfortunately, it now seems that Wizards may have tipped the scales too far in the other direction. Whether it’s due to overprinting or a lack of demand, the last few Secret Lair drops have seemed surprisingly unsuccessful.
Slow Sale Into Surprise Disappearance
Frustratingly, it’s hard to quantify what a flop actually is in Secret Lair terms. Wizards very rarely publishes any information about print runs or Secret Lair profits, so exact sales numbers are vague at best.
Due to this lack of concrete information, the success or failure of a Superdrop is measured by how quickly each drop sells out, by the community, at least. This usually correlates to queue times, too, with a one-hour-plus queue immediately sparking concerns of a fast sale.
Sadly, these queue times are the norm for most Secret Lair drops, as there’s usually at least one gem everyone wants. After this, it’s not uncommon for sales to slow, but a good deal will still be gone by the end of the day.
Recently, however, the Secret Lair Countdown Kit: Marvel’s History of Heroes bucked this longstanding trend. While this did have a fairly long queue to start, with the dreaded “more than one hour” message, actual queue times ended up being much faster.
Curiously, following the initial sales rush, this latest Countdown Kit remained on the Secret Lair shelves until recently. Until Sunday night, there wasn’t even a low stock warning before Wizards seemingly pulled it without fanfare.
Notably, we don’t have any official confirmation that Wizards pulled this, as there could have been a miraculous overnight sales surge. The fact that many other “unsold” drops also got pulled at the same time, however, does make it look like Wizards was spring cleaning.
Even without any official confirmation, MTG players were quick to jump on this oddity, shaming Wizards for the slow sale. In the eyes of many, it looked like Wizards was trying to make this drop seem better than it actually was, which is never a good look.
Back-to-Back Flops
As if one Secret Lair drop seemingly flopping wasn’t bad enough, now there’s two of them. Judging by early queue times, the demand for the Star Trek-themed Superdrop “Set Phasers to Superdrop” seemed exceptionally low.
In stark contrast to recent sales, MTG players on social media reported queue times of mere minutes, not hours. The speed of the drops selling out backed this up, too, as, so far, nothing has sold out an entire day after release.
Technically, while this does look really, really bad, we don’t know the exact cause of these slow sales. There’s a non-zero chance, for instance, that Wizards simply overprinted this Superdrop and the Marvel Countdown Kit, too.
Realistically, it does feel like this is the case for the Countdown Kit, if nothing else, as queue times did start bad there. This, however, just makes the possibility that Wizards pulled it from sale so soon that much more surprising.
Potentially, as some MTG players theorized, the Countdown Kit could have been pulled since the promo changed. Once again, however, this hasn’t really happened before, so we’re still left scratching our heads.
Getting Over It?
Due to the lack of clear information around print runs and sales numbers, we don’t know for sure if these are actually failures. Still, even without any hard proof, it’s easy to speculate about why this might be happening.
In theory, it’s easy to point toward Universes Beyond fatigue as an obvious answer here. Having Star Trek off the back of Marvel while players are still digesting Reality Fracture is a lot, but that does feel flimsy.
All it really takes is one look at Wizards’ profits to know that Universes Beyond sets, and their many products, sell like hotcakes. This is usually true of their connected Secret Lair drops, too, so it’s not like they’ve never hit.
With this in mind, the idea that MTG players have suddenly gotten sick of Universes Beyond does feel a bit far-fetched. In reality, myriad factors could have caused this, such as players not liking the art or reprint equity.
Between each of these factors, it’s very hard to tell what, if anything, caused this sudden slump in Secret Lair performance. For now, we can only really wait and see if it’ll last when future Superdrops are released.
Thankfully, given Secret Lair’s remarkably relentless release schedule recently, we shouldn’t have to wait long to find out. We already know there’s a Doom-themed drop coming up soon, which could be a key barometer.
Until then, it’s hard to complain too much about Secret Lair drops being available for longer than usual. So long as Wizards doesn’t keep pulling drops from sale, things not selling out doesn’t seem so bad.
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