That whole frame of thought came when retailers stopped ordering the RTS lines to make room for the movie toys. Since then, the retailers are the bane of collectors' existences.

 

Usually in the twilight of a line's lifecycle, the few remaining items get shunted into the clearance isle. If the store doesn't have a clearance isle, or if they've run their course in the isle, then the manager pulls them, fills out some paperwork, and sends them back to the distributor.

There's a little hierarchy there. Rarely does anyone ever intervene in the way things are run. Honestly, Hasbro reps may send folks in to stores about once or twice a year. Other than that, the only time they go in is to do their shopping.

 

Cool. Thanks for the info. Here's a cool story for those who give the retailers too much credit. This came from one of the Hasbro panels. They originally created the figures you are talking about Fracture/Big Daddy/Grindcore/Jolt/Breakaway/Crankcase to be the first waves of a new filler Universe line. But Walmart came to them and wanted more movie toys, not some new "useless" line. So they took the figures and put them into Movie packaging. Walmart was happy and orderd a whole ton-load of them.