[TokuChris]

Note about how the whole "exclusive" thing works...

I was privy in 2007 to attend a private, personalized tour of the Hasbro offices in Rhode Island right before BotCon 2007 (literally me, two other people, and a designer). We got to go to this wonderful place called "The Showroom" ... and it's where they take the buyers from each major retailer and convince them to "buy our stuff!". The wall had graphics of sales for each line, what the line catered to, what marketing the company was planning to do, etc. It was pretty intense. They even had "special displays" built for launch-day promotions, etc.

Exclusives are usually down behind closed doors, sit-down type of meetings where they hash out the numbers of what they'll order, retail price versus suggested, etc. Here's an example of how that conversation could go:

BoA: Hey Toys'R'Us! We'd like to do ANOTHER exclusive with you - this time a GOLD legacy morpher with the 6th Ranger coins from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers!
TRU: Hmm, okay. What's the difference?
BoA: Gold plated! Two coins!
TRU: So...gold plated and two coins, when the first was chrome with 5 coins. Price?
BoA: We're thinking $79.99 to cover the cost. And we're going to do a smaller run on it. If you'll buy 12,000 units we can do it at $xx,xxx.xx!
TRU: Well, the Legacy Morpher sold well for us for the most part. But carrying a "repaint" of a $50 item and selling it for $30 more is kind of steep...
BoA: The collectors will eat it up! The Green and White Rangers were the most popular and most famous Power Rangers ever!
TRU: Do you have any marketing data that shows that you have a substantial collector base and interest?
BoA: We received xx E-mails/Form submissions requesting it.
TRU: Previous successes?
BoA: Uhm....the Legacy Morpher?
TRU: ....

If I, Toys'R'Us, who already struggle in a struggling economy where video games continue to take over the demographic I aim ALL my product for, it's hard to convince me to spend (random number) $75,000 on a toy that, if I sold out of all of them, I would make $80,000 or maybe $85,000. Especially when the last "collectors" item that I purchased did very well but you want me to release THE SAME TOY, only REPAINTED, and with LESS than the first one, but for MORE MONEY.

Look at the TFCC Seacons for you Transformers fans.

Hasbro decided to re-release the G1 Seacons and offer them up as an exclusive. WalMart bit, but demanded they be in those God awful colors to fit with the rest of the product line (at the time "Universe 1.0"). But after Universe 1.0 tanked, WalMart backed out of the deal, leaving the Seacons in proverbial limbo for YEARS until the TFCC manned up and made a VERY limited number of them.

That's how fragile the "exclusive" market can be.

As for WalMart, Target, KMart, etc., biting on Batman/Superman exclusives ... both those franchises had BLOCKBUSTER movies released. Anytime a BLOCKBUSTER movie is released, those stores buy up TONS because even selling 75% of the product means MASSIVE dollars, because you have a 1-3 month window to cash in. And no one wants to miss the "Transformers Movie 1" boat ever again.