Walmart Hopes Exclusive Toys Will Get You To Do Your Christmas Shopping There This Year

Walmart doesn’t want to share — hot holiday toys, that is. In a bid to undercut competitors and attract more shoppers this holiday season, the big box store is betting big on exclusive toy offers.

Walmart announced last week that part of its 2018 holiday sales strategy will hinge on being the only retailer to offer hundreds of toys that your child just might have an eye on.

Of the 1,000 new toys Walmart expects to display on shelves this holiday season, 300 will be exclusive to the retailer.

Some of these new and exclusive items are already gracing Walmart’s top toy list for the season. The company’s top 25 includes five items exclusive to the retailer.

Cutting Into Rivals

By making a portion of its toy offerings exclusive, Walmart is attempting to prevent customers from comparison shopping at rivals.

For instance, customers interested in Walmart’s Adventure Force Light Command Light-Up Motorized Blaster or Disney Frozen Sleigh toys won’t be able to find them cheaper on Amazon.

However, there are a few exceptions to this system. A savvy shopper predicting that one of Walmart’s exclusive toys will be a hot-ticket item could purchase extras and sell them on sites like eBay or even Amazon’s third-party marketplace.

Still, those items might go for significantly more than Walmart priced them to begin with.

Of course, exclusive offers aren’t, well, exclusive to Walmart: A number of retailers have offered specially curated, hard-to-find toy selections in the past.

CNBC notes that Kmart, Target, Toys-R-Us, and others have rolled out exclusive holiday toy offerings in the past.

“Top toys are evolving every day, and we’re continuing to find those great, new items and bringing them with speed to our customers,” Anne Marie Kehoe, vice president of toys at Walmart U.S., said in a statement.

Layaway

In another attempt to get customers through the door and spending a little earlier this year, Walmart will open its layaway program Sept. 1.

The program allows customers to select toys and other gifts, pay for them over time, and pick them up by Dec. 11 or when they are paid off.

While Walmart does not add any fees for the layaway service, each individual item in the order must be more than $10, and the total order must be more than $50.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist