If it makes US people feel any better, the wave 1 only just appeared in the UK since the new year, and we got our release completely out of order. It makes sense that the US get wave 1 next and I heard they were at some stores already. It would be really weird if they didn't have a bigger release over there.
I am assuming that the clearancing here is just because wave 2 have been out for four or five months now and they were meant to be wave 2, so stores are assuming they're done with them and moving on to the next. The inserts they came with specifically mark out that they were due to come out later, they just came out first here.