Kd_Bunchanumbers wrote:Very weird. Maybe Australia was the leftover haven for toys from both America and the UK. Cuz I definitely seen exclusives from both countries here...
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! We have a WINNAH!
In fact, Australia and New Zealand were where the bigger toy companies would dump leftovers back in the day of cheap water-freight. These days two common things happen to "didn't sell this season": One: dump at deep discount. Two: destroy. Very rarely it is Three: Donate. Usually the paperwork involved (proving the truckload of toys you are sending to Shelter House is not the ones you were ordered to get rid of because they are from China and loaded with lead paint and radioactive plastic) is too much for companies to bother with.
But back in the day the idea of destroying all these toys was unthinkable. If stores didn't take them, they got loaded in a shipping container and sent Down Under, where they would appear in stores just in time to be completely out of fashion back in the US/UK, thus providing Ozzie and Kiwi kids with a lesson in life about how the Big Countries would never send them anything nice.
On the other hand it does solve the question why so much "European" vintage exclusives pop up on Australian Ebay and how the heck I came to get some of them.
