Line must go up. it must always go up.

 

Leaders were never 35. They were 40 when Energon introduced them and were bumped to 45 during rotf where they stayed all the way up to potp.

 

This thread is all the more reason I'm glad I'll be slowing down heavily on collecting.

 

I also believe that some of it was to offset the complete and utter incompetence of retail, distribution, and marketing. They're in a vicious circle where they raise prices to make up for lower volume, resulting in even lower volume upon which prices must be further raised, and so on. Distribution has been bad for a _long_ time, not just the last three years. Arguably, "wholesale" has been a shitshow for some time too. But it's like everything else, people at the top want to believe what they want to believe and will keep doubling down on destructive behavior until it bites them in the ass.

 

I remember when eggs were a $.79 and milk was $1.79…wait that was only a couple years ago?

 

All these people saying they’re slowing down collecting/being more selective would read a lot better if the prices weren’t still increasing. I’ll just stay away from the boards when the price of a deluxe figure inevitably increases to $30

 

No matter the long term damage, line must always go up. Never level, always up.

 

Right, wrong, or indifferent, this is why people get annoyed:

2006 - Cybertron Deluxe - $9.99
2019 - Studio Series Deluxe - $19.99

2006 - Hasbro - revenue $3.2b, profit $230m
2019 - Hasbro - revenue $4.7b, profit $650m

By my sketchy math, revenue increased by about 52%, while the profits from that revenue almost tripled.



This is obviously an overly simplistic comparison, but we’re paying more than inflation would suggest for less actual, physical stuff.

If I’m Joe Average Consumer with no knowledge or regard to pipeline costs, retail markup, commodity prices, shareholder value, or macroeconomics, all I know is that I’m paying twice as much for a bag of Doritos that has half as many Doritos in it, that PepsiCo is making a lot more money than they used to despite me getting only 50% as much extreme nacho flavor, and it certainly feels like gouging.

 

Nice point out. We're paying more, yet the size of the figures keep getting smaller. Hasbro's profiting from this! The windowless box scheme is yet another way to drive up profits by saving 1 penny per packaging.

 

Interesting thread. The 9.99 and 19.99 price point were pretty consistent for a little over 10 years, beginning around the introduction of size classes in the 90’s.

Officially, Deluxes and Voyagers went up in price for the first time with the ROTF toyline. However, I never remember paying that new MSRP till DOTM came out a few years later. Most retailers at the time still charged the old prices, probably with the exception of Toys r Us.

Since DOTM though, I’ve known about the increases, but they happen so frequently now I’ve honestly lost track of when and how long a price sticks. Post-ROTF, the longest we’ve had MSRP stay the same has been from 2018-2021. I’m pretty sure the $20 deluxe and $30 voyager still remained until the first wave of 2021.

 

Not certain how often folks use it for these purposes, but the “Toys” subsection of the site does a really good job of archiving most of the lines (including year, class, and price) for anyone who wants to do a super deep-dive on it. The data goes way, way back (at least to Beast Wars in ‘96, with deluxe pricing at 9.99).

 

I'm already paying $30+ for deluxes at Walmart. It sucks.

 

The plastic gets brittler, prone to yellowing, more hollow, increasing the use of clear plastic. buT mUH MInI mAsTeRpIeCe! Yea, MP has also gone this route

 

Not quite sure how to take that... (Guessing negatively, since I see it's been edited by a moderator.)

 

Exactly, now i have to justify it to myself if i want it now or a year from now cheaper.

 

That's how I've always purchased Transformers and any other collectibles.

Is the price worth it?
If YES = Buy
If NO = Don't buy or wait for sale

 

Everything costs more and gives you less, that’s by design. The core ideology of modern business is to sell you the minimum product for the maximum price. We saw it happen starting in 2019 where corporations had a convenient scapegoat for their greed and that became the narrative.

It’s a much larger problem than Hasbro.

 

Yeah, when the richest people in the world doubled and tripled their wealth over the last few years since covid hit, you know something's wrong.

 

Under the guise of scale with G1.

 

Oh I meant painful to see they were that cheap