Fortnite’s store is pretty unique in the industry in that they don’t have a permanent slate of items you can buy whenever you want. Rather, the store rotates daily, encouraging purchases because you don’t have any idea when a skin might rotate back around again. Possible in a month, possible not for over a year.
Usually, Fortnite is pretty good about cycling most old skins back in, but with so many new skins being added to the game every season, some things are getting lost in the cracks. Redditor u/GeneralGrievous has a rather interesting project where they keep track of all the skins, items and emotes that have not been in the store for a very, very long time.
It’s a useful tool because if you see any of these crop up in the store, you’ll know that they’re pretty rare and you may want to snag them. Right now there are 25 skins in this list that haven’t been in the store for at least 100 days, with a few that haven’t been in the game for over a year. I bet you won’t guess what #1 is.
25. Trooper – 100 Days
24. Fortune – 104 Days
23. Backbone – 106 Days
22. Tricera Ops – 112 Days
21. Rex – 112 Days
20. Soccer Skins – 119 Days
19. Leviathan – 121 Days
18. Wild Card – 123 Days
17. Recon Scout – 129 Days
16. PANDA Team Leader – 130 Days
15. Fireworks Team Leader – 130 Days
14. Far Out Man – 136 Days
13. Dreamflower – 136 Days
12. Crimson Scout – 138 Days
11. Fly Trap – 154 Days
10. Mullet Marauder – 157 Days
9. Jumpshot – 191 Days
8. Triple Threat – 191 Days
7. Star Spangled Trooper – 196 Days
6. Star Spangled Ranger – 196 Days
5. Sgt. Green Clover – 282 Days
4. Tracker – 303 Days
3. Codename ELF – 351 Days
2. Ghoul Trooper – 415 Days
1. Recon Expert – 431 Days
As you can see, some of these make sense because they’re holiday offerings like for the Fourth of July or St. Patrick’s Day. Others seem destined to be on this list indefinitely. Halloween came and went without the return of Ghoul Trooper, for instance, and it seems unlikely that we’ll see her before next Halloween, if ever.
I remain perplexed about Recon Expert, who has been one of the rarest skins in the game for a long time now, and is just sort of a random military model of no real significance. I wonder if Epic is purposefully leaving her out of the rotation as a running joke, or if that skin has been retired for some reason. But if you see someone with it, you know that they’re a true OG.
Some of the more modern skins I feel may have been left behind because they weren’t that popular. I’m looking at Fly Trap specifically, as that is one of the ugliest skins in the game, and I wonder if skins just don’t sell well, that they don’t return. That might be true of the two hippie skins as well, skins that probably wouldn’t not sell well to Fortnite’s Younger-skewing crowd who doesn’t even understand what they’re supposed to be.
None of these skins are…particularly amazing, really, as they’re either really old, back before Epic was making truly memorable skins, or they’re just not that great, and poor sales may have left them out of the rotation. Still, it’s an interesting list to see all the same.
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