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Toy stores weren't better.
Toy companies were better, as production used to be year round. So you had 4,6, or even 12 months to be able to get a figure that was released. Around the same amount of figures were released in that time vs today where there's a new wave of toys every 2-3 months.
Toy companies were also producing more toylines every year, so there was more variety.
Adding to that variety, there were more toy companies too.
What changed? Companies like Walmart started dictating that toy companies release toys in shorter waves, in order to get kids/parents to buy toys in every visit, creating a "shortage" of sorts. People are more likely to buy products if there's a limited time (2-3 months) they'll be in stores. This is an artificial shortage and is why scalping is so prevalent today.
Walmart also started ordering only the top5/10/20 of products, so toy companies couldn't produce as many toylines as before and smaller toy companies couldn't get their lines on the shelves anymore.
In addition, Walmart started demanding toys to be released under a certain price point (wholesale and msrp). This limited budgets, so there were fewer paint apps being used, accessories became more limited, and samefag bodies became the norm. See NECA's first few Pacific Rim releases, where NECA was bowing down to Walmart's every demand, yet still couldn't get Walmart to order the line.
This also killed some popular toylines, like when Hasbro killed the 1:18 GI Joe Vs Cobra lines and started the larger scale Sigma 6 figures. Bigger figures to increase prices, thus more profit per square inch on Walmart shelves. This is also why Hasbro switched to 1:12 being the main toylines and 1:18 being almost nonexistant.
In short, Walmart is the devil.
PS, didn't even mention that Walmart killed competitors through various means.
