[Trivial Psychic]

To be fair...once upon a time, exclusives were mostly re-paints. Something changed over the years to alter this point of thinking, but I think the only good it did was just cause rifts in people's collections. Honestly, the return of the re-paint exclusive/variant is one I'd love to see happen, as it's just better for everyone all around.

A great example of this is Playmates. This year's TMNT exclusive is the Bebop trike with some chrome parts. Before that, it was the black and white Leonardo and the chromed Shredder figure. All of them were re-released at some point, allowing people to keep their collections complete for the most part without creating a hole, but still offering a nice option for the hardcore collectors who had to have them all.

NECA is the company that's has driven me insane over the years with exclusive figure releases. Thankfully they haven't been too difficult to get (although I think this year's exclusives will be impossible,) but we all know that's not the same with everyone else.