Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenith27
I work in manufacturing and deal with plastic parts somewhat similar to what are in Transformers and I can tell you there are some extra costs involved that you are perhaps not considering.
While the amount of plastic in the newer releases remains similar, the increased articulation adds a lot more cost. Each mold needed has a fixed cost to produce/use/store.
You may be able to machine a mold in half the time now, but you need to machine 3-4 different molds for an arm for example, where you used to use 1-2. Also, all those molds now take up more setup time and cost more to store (storage/shipping of molds can be a considerable cost).
Each arm now takes double the assembly time, add increased paint apps like the most recent bots and the cost can increase significantly.
Not saying they're not making more money off us rich collectors rather than dumb kids but I don't think they're COMPLETELY evil. They certainty need to amortize the setup/design costs over fewer unit sales to collectors. Maybe the Vietnamese workers are demanding better wages these days as well.
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When I could simply look around my office and name probably 20 to 50 figures from barely 5 to 10 years ago that have a huge number of parts and such, have almost no gaps, have great weapons that are full and shoot missiles or such, add to the fact that the molds most certainly were more difficult to produce and if any mistakes had to be redone would have driven the prices higher, and yet we didn't see it then.
When we see that prices (for deluxes as example) jumped from around 12$ to 15$, and then again to 20$, from one series to another in the last few years, but then jumped at 30$ instantly with Siege, there is absolutely no justification.
The only possibility would be that they had been loosing a huge amount of money due to under-pricing, but they have always been making huge profits, so that kills that "possibility".
And again, the 3rd parties (those that aren't selling at insane prices), are selling at easily 1/2 the prices and still making enough profit, to warrant making them.. They have the same expenses as Hasbro, molds, plastics, development/design teams, etc.
Everything has "extra costs", I've rarely seen a single project that manages to avoid such.
That kinda kills any argument or justification.
I'm not trying to yell "evil Hasbro" but that they are simply over-pricing, and being cheap as hell...
I would be happy with these prices IF the figures were gap-less and had better weapons/accessories.
