US City Exclusives... Now Less Exclusive

On the heals of the UK Disney Store Online's release of the London exclusive Vinylmation, the US Disney Store Online has followed suit with select NYC exclusive figures now available for cyber purchase.

Only two of the 9" figures are available... Hey Taxi and New York, New York

The interesting note here is the price. Although $44.95 is the original price, if you were to go to the NYC Times Square Store to purchase them, they are discounted to $30 as of about a week ago. Vinylmation are not the only city specific items popping up online. The Disney Store Online now has a full section of the website dedicated to some of their big city Disney Stores.

You can go online to purchase select merchandise from NYC, Chicago, San Francisco and Hawaii. No Vinylmation in any other city yet, but look at this ad:

Vinylmation is the product they feature on the generic ad for this section of the online store. This leads me to believe other city specific figures will be online soon as well. We do know, the Honolulu, Hawaii Disney Store will take mail orders for the Tiki Mickey due out October 4. So since they are already willing to ship, I suppose the thinking is, why not make the process easier for Disney, and the guest, and let everyone purchase them online. I'm not a big fan of this shift. A NYC tee shirt or Chicago coffee mug are one thing, but placing collectibles online like this takes away from that specialness of the item. We talked about this on the latest podcast after finding out about the London vinyls. What are your thoughts on city specifics being made available online?