The unfortunate thing with anything "exclusive" is that you get into unit numbers and cost per units that make the whole thing untenable in a small scale.
The GIJOE club faces this kind of thing all the time........and its why things like their convention sets are so expensive.
Its not a matter that any of these given toys costs "just a couple of bucks to make"--they only do so if they are produced in great numbers.
Per unit costs on runs that the GIJOE club handled are on the order of about 10-50 times what you'd expect.
With small retailers like those mentioned, you'd have to have a balance between the order number ( the club says they are compelled to make orders between 1000 and 5000 units) and the cost per unit.
Simply stated, is anyone here ready and willing to pay for a $50 or $100 "exclusive" if it went to a small retailer, because that is probably what it would cost?
Hasbro probably tells the Canadian retailers that an exclusive offering to them would required a set amount of units purchased, probably at an amount the retailers do not think they can sell. Usually, retailers doing the exclusive thing pay for the whole deal up front, so if there's too much product and not enough buyers, the peg/shelf- warmers sit until discounted and the retailers take the loss.
Any time we do see exclusives up here, its usually an offering that is so large that the US chain diverts some of it north to the chains up here, like TRU etc ( who are separate from their US stores) and essentially lets us piggy-back along on the order.
But the risk of over-ordering is still there--and more than a few exclusives end up being very common ( ML Crystal White Queens anyone??)
This is why we do not see those kinds of offerings up here as much anymore, and will probably not see at all in the future even if the property is crazy-hot at the time. Given the market climate right now, the retailers up here are taking ZERO chances with things like exclusives, because they simply cannot absorb a potential loss like that.
There's a big difference in marketing a product (or movie) online and using online response as a guage for consumer demand. I'd bet that the online community represents less than 10% of the actual in-store shoppers.
I used to think the numbers were 1 in 10 myself, and they used to be.
The industry folks i have talked to over the past year say that number has changed, drastically......to the tune its now somewhere between 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000.
The online communities tend to radically overstate their populations and the interested parties--and its easy to understand why. We, as a community, have such a vested emotional interest in the stuff.
But........the reality is that, as a consumer demographic, we represent a VERY small, albeit mostly dedicated, segment and Hasbro and most of the major retailers know this.
The thing is that the casual consumer base needs to express more interest for certain lines to offer more--which is why some GIJOE items have not made it up here as yet in any sizable amounts.
