Hello fellow diecast collector,s. I KNOW this question has probably been asked MANY, MANY times allready, but i am just dying to know?? Why the hell did jl, pm?? Or whatever the company call,s itself now ship all the damn johnny lightning,s to Canada?? I have nothing against our friend,s to the north and have several buddie,s i trade with up in puckland:, but am just curious as to why in the hell they done this stupid stupid thing?? Any answer,s would be appreciated, and if you wanna flame me for asking this question, FLAME ON, i have skin tuff as whitleather(for those of you who know what that is??) thank,s and answer,s would be GREATLY APPRECIATED, Russ rssada@aol.com :confused:

I didn't know this. This is all new news to me. Perhaps they were getting more buyers there don't cha know eh!

Not Flaming Ya , But Have You Ever Seen The Pegs In Puckland - Nothing Compared To What I've Seen In Numerous States. Other Than That Not A Freaking Clue -.

As near as I can tell it was a distribution problem JL had. They DID NOT know how to distribute them and they were backing up the warehouse apparently. Made a deal with Wal-Mart Canada for .25 cents each and BAM! Your wearehouse is cleaned out of JL cars. Excellent deal for our Canadian friends.

Figured Wal-Mart had something to do with it!!!!!!! :mad: I try not to shop in their peice of doo-doo store,s no more than possiblle!!!! Somebody need,s to whittle wally down a notch or two. They don,t have a durn thing made in usa in there store,s hardly, i know i look!!!!!!!!! Wouldn,t hurt my feeling,s if the sob,s (wal-mart), went out of business!!!!!!!!!!! That,s my story and i,m sticking to it!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :roll: :mad:

I suspect this thread will be deleted quickly, or at least the language within. Let me try to reason with a theory first.

They had inventory they needed to rid themselves of. They needed it gone fast to make room for the new stuff for the re-launch. No one south of the US/Canada border wanted it, but low and behold, Wal-Mart in Canada did.

The advantages for RC2 (what it was called at the time, now Learning Curve) was two-fold. One, moving the inventory, two, possibly gaining a new customer base in Canada. Looks like it was successful and turned out to be possibly the best thing they could have done in the situation they were in.

As far as complaining about it, do you think for one second that RC2 did not want to sell all those cars at retail and get them on the shelves for you and me? It was not all their fault. The only thing anyone could blame them for was making too many cars too fast, so fast that the retailers could not keep up with equal sales.

Now if you had a garage full of junk and just bought a restored '57 Bel Air convertible to put in it, how fast and what loss do you think you would clear that garage out? RC2 could not afford to have the patience to find retailers willing to buy the inventory, especially at the size they needed to push, just like you would not have much time to clear out that garage to make room for something better.

The language used in this thread is offensive and not called for! Don' forget there are younger members that may visit this site! I just rejoined - but vulgarity of any nature will cause me to seriously consider if I continue on this site!

Unless I am missing something, I see only one (somewhat) bad word in this thread so far. And I am not talking about "damn", and "hell", as they are words spoken within religions and the bible.

As for the subject of the thread, I agree with Wyatt. RC2 had to dump a bunch of
inventory, and WM Canada was the high bidder.

Cozmictoys

Too bad they couldn,t ,or wasn,t offered to give the :oppoturnity: to sell this stuff to the us market. U.S. Wal-Mart and (whoever was in charge at jl)l both should have gotten together and figured something out, instead of doo-doo,ing on the us collector,s!!!! I certainly APOLOGIZE to the little ones who might read this and take my vulgarity out of context, also :us: older kid,s who might have taken my remark,s offensive, Russ rssada@aol.com :eek:

how do you know the US WM wasn't givin the opportunity? maybe they said no? maybe they tried all US venue's, and when noone wanted to buy them in the lot RC2 was trying to sell them at, they ventured to possible offers up north.

Your only seeing the results, but the actual reasons that lead to the results are really unknown.

I'm pretty darn sure RC2's executives weren't like: "Hey, lets sell all these cars to Canada! Not only can we make our US customer base mad at us, but we could also take a huge finicial lose at the same time! All in favor "AYE!"

To think that a company would not try all options before just liquidating stock and taking a lose is just what i would call tunnel vision.

The reason they had to clear out their warehouse was due to the fact of the new packaging they switched to, they didn't want the new plastic mixed with the old cardboard on the same peg. Hence why at the same time, WM's in the US were clearancing out all JL's they had that were the carded variety... to make room for the new plastic.

my 4.42 cents.

Last remark,s on this subject.DarkCutlass, HOW do you know they were?? Apparently you have some new,s that i don,t have??(which isn,t saying much, i am not in the know!!) I am SURELY no expert, but i think there is more going on than meet,s the eye here. About the time this happened jl were drying up faster (least here in Mississippi), than a squash in the middle of a looooong dryspell!! Maybe it IS all about money and DISTRIBUTION, but i find that hard to believe, but as i said i surely am no xpert on this matter. Why don,t someone who (IS IN THE KNOW??), speak up on this matter. Matbe Wyatt is in the know ?? I am not trying to be a smart-aleck or anything just like the proverbial cat(curious??) FLAME ON!!!!!!!!!!! Russ rssada@aol.com :wave:

Very interesting !!! I didn't know this... I have had no problem finding them here in Blacklick, Ohio !!! I always seem to find them at: Wal-Mart, Toys~R~Us, Meijers, K-Mart, and Target stores !!!

I am definitely not in the know but it is good business practice to take as little loss as possible without suffering any long term effects from the fall-out. I can only assume RC2 did expend all efforts trying to move product for the most money and evidently, companies that could have distributed in the US (Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Dollar General, KB/Toy Liquidators, Big Lots, etc) did not bite. Wouldn't that make more sense? What company would not want to move all product at maximum profit? Again, an assumption on my part, RC2 was not in a position to do that so they did the best they could.

Jeeez, it's sure good to finally hear more specific dialog on this matter :thumbsup:
I asked this question months ago on another board with minimal response

Shouldnt this be in the Johnny Lightning section ???
I too dont know what RC2 did to move their product , but the Canada sale was a while ago . Also before that , they did sell lots of them to Toys R Us . TRU had lots of older stuff at $1.99 ? or so and the 2 pacs for $2.97 . This was before the Canada deal , so some was unloaded here in the U.S. How soon we forget ......
The recent unloading of Gold Series cars to Big Lots is also a USA thing - although I found none here ...
I was told ( by a toy vendor ) TRU only bought some of those Gold Series cars & not the whole run , thats why they were so hard to find when new... Guess TRU also did that with the 1/24 & 1/18 cars too ...because lots showed up elsewhere & some were re-boxed .. Must be true with the current Gold Series Cars , as I found more than in the past , but almost no WL's of them show up on ebay ..
By the way rgeezer , I believe you can go back & edit your post of the bad language that was mentioned ..

It's been about eight months now since the $1 dump ..... don't you think it's time to move on????? JMO

It's been about eight months now since the $1 dump ..... don't you think it's time to move on????? JMO I think jl need,s to do something for the us collector. Maybe some us co,s were offered this deal, MAYBE NOT?? I know if i were a major retailer i would jump at the chance to buy a product on such a large scale as this was, at that price!!!!! Wal-Mart and Target and who-ever dropped the ball on this screwed up BIG TIME, JMO

take the beef to Walmart , they bought em or didn't.

well if it makes you feel any better , this canadian didnt buy a single car from the dump bins .
why .....because i had everyone of the cars .that i wanted out of the stuff they sent up here .. i bought that stuff on line ..from the states a long time before it came here .
someone who dont buy on line ....it would be a nice deal for those that never seen the cars before .
our walmart still has a few poker cars, some older junk that never sold anywhere
maybe about 20 cars left from the dump bin .hanging in the isle for a buck and no one wants it .
maybe we could send you guys all the hotwheels ,and jada car,s thats clogging the pegs up here .
as far as johnny lightning cars go, we have got a few new cars up here the last while back . at our walmart , but we have a surplus of rock art cars ,maybe you would like them back 4 of each, rock art cars been there a couple of weeks , or coke cars we have a few left . and if they were a buck each they would still be there .
your cars are a lot cheaper than here .you have more stores to buy them from than we do . and your still not happy . why not go to johnny lightning and tell them .
if i see a car i like ,i dont care who makes it, if its johnny lightning fine
if its a little motormax truck, hood opens ,nice detail ,they get my money . and a couple of bucks cheaper

puckland . well whatever you want to call us . it was an american company that sent the cars here , so why do you resent the fact that canadians got a one time deal .
we buy your products ,keeps jobs in your country going .
hobby talk used to be a fun place, but its topics like this ,that turn people away.
all over a toy car . we all like to collect these little cars . no matter what brand or scale . and most of us come here to relax and see what s new, or what someone has found, maybe an old matchbox car could be anything . we can ignore your post and not reply , dont get involved , well this is one canadians view on the topic .

It's been about eight months now since the $1 dump ..... don't you think it's time to move on????? JMO


yes i agree

The "big Canadian dump" as it has been called by many was a bust in my area.
We did not have a great selection of castings to choose from for the most part.
We did get a very large quantity of the Poker release 1 plus Monoploy release with the dark chrome castings plus a couple releases of Street Freaks.
My local Walmart still has a whole bunch of the Poker castings and some other castings that NO ONE is buying even at a $1.
And we had a huge quantity of the Poker release 1 castings clogging the pegs before the dump.
Yes, I was disappointed in the whole deal.
I did make a few road trips to pick up a few other castings.
But it was mostly a waste of time.
Some areas faired better than others and I believe that had something to do with which distribution centres that the cases were originally shipped out of.
Plus, I believe that if the local store did not sell many of the first offering, they did not receive any more.
Plain and simple.
Different areas and different stores appeared to get different series and releases.
I was in the same situation as Free Spirit, as I already previously had a lot of the castings that showed up locally and regionally in the big dump.
So most of my castings had come out of the US at a much higher cost.
Then you have to factor in the shipping costs plus Customs fees, etc.
It is behind me.
I wasn't upset in the big dump, just diasppointed in not finding some castings that I would have liked to have found.
I was happy for other Canadian collectors who did get lucky.

Time for you to move on, rgeezer18.
You can't change history or the outcome from the past.

Cheers. Cobra