the vynsane asylum

...have the same shitty pack-in and exclusive figure strategy that figures collected by adults have?

They make Galactic Heroes-sized Sesame Street figures. Not many characters. Only sold in two-packs. Every single one includes an Elmo, and not a different Elmo.

The Toy Story Buddies (again, same scale) have to include one of the main characters (usually Woody or Buzz), usually a resculpt. Call me nuts, but I'd rather Disney get Hasbro and Mattel to play nice on this one thing so there could be a fucking Mr. Potato Head in that size.

The Dinosaur Train figures are a true clusterfuck. They come either one figure and one train car, or three figures to a pack. After the first wave, all the three-packs have been one new (usually high-demand) figure, and two re-releases. Not usually anything different; they made Junior Conductor versions of two characters, but otherwise straight re-releases.

And now I've discovered the parental abuse that is Thomas and Friends. There are three different fucking scales, not counting the big ones that are less for kids and more for real model train enthusiasts. They have similar packaging, and similar set designs. Baby 'Nark is into the Trackmaster scale, mostly because Grandma got him one of the fucking mack daddy sets for his birthday, and we figured better to stick with one size. Don't get me wrong, these are actually pretty damned awesome toys I would've killed for as a small kid, but, holy shit, do you have to fucking army-build Thomas. It's fucking insane.

All of this is seriously as bad as the whole "you have to buy POTF2 Cantina Han and Vader to get one new figure" bullshit from Hasbro.

Well I think it boils down to who's buying the shit - grownups.

Is that the same Hasbro that made 3 Iron Man/Thor/Captain America movie figures per every other character in the line? Can't imagine why they would make so many Elmos. At least in the Little Pet Shop line Hasbro had the decency to repaint the same mold different ways before repackaging it. Glad my kids have lost interest in those things. Now they are into Lalaloopsey. They repack the same figure occasionally...once as a single figure, once potentially with a vehicle or playset, and once in the special multipack that contains all of the figures from that wave. That's my understanding at least. They all look the same to me.