Toriko was promoted like the next big thing in WSJ. It's sales however showed very little signs of that. It peaked in 2011-2012 and then started dropping with about 40k-70k (give or take) being reduced each year(from the peak 550k initial print for it's volume). Anime got ratings partially because of the timeslot. If the anime was so popular, whatever happened to the poor to average performance of the movie? Ever since the movie released, the promotions and boost Toriko has been getting in WSJ reduced considerably. I would say that the movie was the last chance Toriko got to push itself up.
I'd argue that Toriko had a decently sized Franchise but I would also say that's part of the push Toriko got from WSJ. If it was indeed a big hit on TV, then they would not have stopped it, irrespective of what they did to the story since they were aiming for kids with the anime.
Your rationale is faulty!
First Toriko was a big thing in the magazine, but it wasn't in the volumes. The promotion it got was because of that, just like Black Clover. Is important to note that the magazine alone makes more money than the sales of all the volumes together.
Also to note that like Togashi, that has special treatment because it made Yu Yu Hakusho that was one of the pillars of the magazine before, Shimabukuro also got that special treatment by being also one of the pillars of the magazine with Leader Den Takeshi. Also the fact that the mangaka started at the exact same time as Eichiro Oda(Leader Den Takeshi began 1 issue before One Piece). That, and the fact the worlds of both series are likewise crazy and the anime in the same animation studio, is the reason of the crossovers(both manga and anime).
The volumes never sold that much, in reality that is an aspect of Shimabukuro works, they are really popular with kids in the magazine(And that is way Toriko anime was targeted to them), but they don't really sell that much in volume form.
The becoming a Naruto and One Piece is a stupid western way of thinking, a business man has to be a retarded to expect that a series performing how it was performing would get the jump to reach those series.
Also while the timeslot matter, if a series is not well received, it doesn't matter the timeslot it will get bad ranking, look at Denpa Kyoshi, got a timeslot way better than that of Toriko and ranked horrible, rarely even appearing in the Top 10.
Also the series in 2011 reached the Top 100 character Merchandise in position 86 with 19.9 Billion Yen. Majority of Jump titles and other magazines title, for that matter, don't reach this top. Toriko wasn't a explosion of popularity, but saying it was a flop is also wrong.
The reason the series ended was because Toei was bringing a way more popular series. Dragon Ball. There is not even comparison in terms of the series popularity, Dragon Ball was in expansion at that moment and the always(I believe) was bigger than Naruto as a franchise.
Here is the print data of Toriko before the anime and a comparison with big series(like One Piece, Naruto and Bleach):
17,000,000 - One Piece volume 1-11
16,899,000 - Hunter x Hunter volume 1-10
12,000,000 - Naruto volume 1-13
10,000,000 - Bleach volume 1-14
*5,500,000 -. Toriko volume 1-13
*4,200,000 - Toriko volume 1-10
*3,500,000 - Toriko volume 1-9
*1,300,000 - Toriko volume 1-4
*1,000,000 - Toriko volume 1-3
Still after the anime it jumped from
*8,000,000 - Toriko volume 1-14 (Jumped 2,600,000 Million copies in an additional volume)
and later
12,000,000 - Toriko volume 1-18 (The series needed 13 volumes to get to 5.5 Million copies in print without anime, but with the anime it only needed 5 more volumes, 2.6 times faster).
