It will be a priceless experience if I ever get to walk into a Walmart again and see these on shelves.

 

I don’t like how much empty space there is inside the box.

 

Average margin on toys is 23-25% it’s really not that much. The big money maker is electronics, clothes, sports equipment shit like that

 

I'm not saying that you're incorrect, but can you provide sources for some of these numbers? Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that a multi-billion dollar company is doing everything it can to scrape up profit, but whenever I see specific numbers like this without sources, I become suspicious. My inner cynic is inclined to agree with you, but I wouldn't feel right repeating any of this without some verified data supporting it.

I'll certainly agree that plastic quality feels worse than years ago. No way would Kingdom figures withstand the abuse that I put my old beast wars figures through.

 

lol so the 2 have in box mint now worth 39.99 lol 

 

I wonder how the plastics quality differ from the original in terms of frailty and durability.

I would also be curious to see the weight difference.

 

The gorilla toes aren't flipped around in bot mode in those stock photos. I can't see if they're flipped around or not, but I can tell.

 

I would disagree with that statement in beast wars figures. I was 11-12 when beast wars kicked off and by the end I didn’t have a ball joint that wasn’t insanely loose or cracked and i had a lot of beast wars. Nowadays a figure gets that way because it’s overplayed by me(not a negative it means I love the figure so much I wear it out) and only way I get a broken figure now is if it’s fallen off the shelf. My TM waspinator and inferno were held together with glue and faith.

now a days you gotta try to lose parts due to everything pinned together. Back then it was all balljoints and losing something was common

 

As someone who is I'm the toy industry, and aware of manufacturing techniques and costs, this is wildly incorrect.

Although I do agree with you that the plastics quality is not the same, the reason for this is that manufacturing technique and skill has increased dramatically, but what that has lead to is thinner and more lightweight pieces.

I dont know where you are getting your math from , on where your cost and profit analysis is coming from, but its just plain wrong.

I agree the prices are way up, and are pretty expensive, but ultimately there are alot of reasons and factors due to this and the assumptions you are making are unfortunately incorrect.

Do they "manufacture for $9", well possibly. But are you considering the cost of shipping, logistics, warehousing, amortizing over 100k in molding costs per figure, development time among other factors?

I don't want people to read this statement and immediately assume it is correct.

I can post an in depth explanation of the breakdown to explain why or how these costs have gone up significantly, even pre covid but I'm at work at the moment, and reading this just frustrated me.

I'm EXTREMELY annoyed with the inflation of prices on the Toys, I collect them too. And I see the frustration. But you can't just asse its because they are exclusively just making more cash and profits.

 

Uhm.. what in the world is SABS?

 

I might grab one of these guys. Probably Primal since he seems to have some sweet gimmicks. If not than maybe Rattrap, if nothing else than to save money.

Also, if they reissued Inferno... Not saying anymore but you could probably connect the dots.

 

Exactly. I deal with it all time at my job. “Why is this so expensive? Didnt used to be this expensive 10 years ago? You’re just racking the price up for more money!”

okay? I have to live too. I have bills and expenses so fuck you. Sorry folks but that’s how it is behind the scene whenever folks complain about the cost of stuff. People making it have to live too. Cost of living increases so the wages of people doing this stuff goes up too. Don’t like it don’t buy it.

 

I used to work for Toys R Us for years.

By general rule % margins on toys increase by price. TRU made very little on the top when it came to Basics, maybe $.50 a piece but that was ok because we sold a lot of them. Make a little bit more on Deluxes, a little bit more on Mega's, and quite a bit on each Ultra/Super and especially anything Supreme or Titan sized.

Also exclusives almost always had a much higher margin, sometimes as high as 50% or more. G1 Hot Rod for instance sold for $35 but he only cost TRU $18.

What you're seeing on price here is much more nostalgia and low production run fueled than fueled by the actual cost of supplies or the manufacturing process. One of the great things Kenner brought to the TF brand was their simplified low cost structure. You got a lot of bang for your buck as they started to design the figures more universally and efficiently. It is very likely that if these figures were mainline today and produced at those numbers they would barely cost more than in 1996, basically only the inflationary difference. These aren't like G1 figures where there are stark differences in packaging, materials, and manufacturing. No metal, no extra flaps on boxes, etc.

I guarantee you the margins for Walmart on these are somewhere in the 50% range.

And Primal has always had all that wasted space in his box and it has always been a bad look. Megatron required a certain size box though and they wanted some shelf presence so there you go. The combiners and TransMetals do a much better job of filling out the boxes almost to the point of there being no spare space.

 

Highly doubtful

 

Look IDK where you're getting your info but as a person who designs a lot of injection molded parts and associated tooling, I honestly think that everything quoted above is a very crude / false assumption. It has a lot of the words that make laypeoples' eyes glaze over, but all that information is just... wrong? Everything regarding mold costs, engineering costs, product dev, "free details". You're really accepting all the modern advancements in toys as a GIVEN and then pointing out the difficulties associated with such advancements.

 

As someone with no experience working with plastic or tooling, your comment here jives with my gut reaction to that post, and I'm glad it's not just me. Lots of numbers that seem to tell a story but no sources for the numbers and no consideration for alternative explanations.

Like on the point about Ollie's- holding onto old product (such as Earthrise Doubledealer) costs money, e.g. taking up warehouse space that could go to the latest products that you want to sell, so that's another viable explanation for how Hasbro can afford to take a hit on selling to Ollie's, but the poster never brought it up.

As I said before, my cynical mind is inclined to agree with the premise that Hasbro produces these products for cheap and extracts as much profit as possible - that's how companies work. However, its important to remember how many costs go into a product besides the cost to make it- the cost design it, market it, ship it, and store it are all important factors.

 

There's also general overhead for companies that includes payroll, utilities, rent/mortgage on property among other things that is likely baked into the cost for every single product a company releases (I'm an estimator for a construction company and every bid we submit has a baked in markup to cover overhead for the company).

 

All this bitching about price when both Primal and Megatron cost the same as a modern leaders. All while being roughly the same size, having similar articulation, and multiple spring-loaded gimmicks.

Lots of things cost more than they used to. Y'all starting to sound like your parents when they talked about going to the movies with a quarter and getting back change.

 

It's still available to pre-order from Pulse if you want to save yourself the hunt.

 

I got 2x of each, but deep down inside I know I’m just waiting for a rerelease of these shitheads