About the prices:

FP charges $20-25 for the G.I.Joe club exclusives. Those are usually 1 or 2 G.I.Joe figures with no remolding. A G.I.Joe 2-pack costs around $7 at retail.

I'd say the prices for Airazor and Astrotrain have followed the same pricing scheme, so I don't get the surprise.

The email I sent Angie, had the following options:

1) Single Package:
1 Astrotrain + 1 Airazor + 8$ shipping. ($137)

2) Two Packages:
Package 1: 1 Astrotrain + 7$ shipping. ($94)
Package 2: 1 Airazor + 7$ shipping. ($49)

But I ship my stuff to Miami, and not directly here, so if you'll be shipping the toys to Singapore (that's where you are, right?), that'd be more.

P.S.: sadly, I had to cancel my pre-order because they charge the card upfront. My card is dead for the rest of the year thanks to our stupid government. I'll try to see if I can pre-order next January.

-airfox

 

I just got a call... My Astrotrain is officially preordered. <G>

 

I'll just say I think that 2000 is a rediculously low number for an exclusive, guaranteed to cause problems in all kinds of areas.

If you're not willing to commit to a run of a run of 8,000 - 10,000 I don't think offering toys is ever going to work. 8,000 of a good exclusive at the price 8,000 units allowed will sell if you focus on making it easy for people to buy.

But FP's business model is all about making things hard to buy and slashing the production numbers, which inevitably raises costs. I'm not especially surprised by these prices, but that doesn't mean I think they're smart.

Phazer

 

I think that the production run numbers would be dictated by how many units they thought they could sell, not by how the numbers would affect the end price.

For example, let's say that there are 2,000 Transformers Club members (an educated guess, since approximately 2000 people showed up for Botcon 2006). They might project that 20% of the membership will buy one set, and maybe another 20% will buy two sets. Well, the math there leads to a projected 1,200 units sold, which is far less than the 2000 unit production run. They might have even gone to 2000 units in order to keep the price as long as they could (without under-producing).

It's entirely possible that FP will end up with excess stock, and Astrotrain and Airrazor will still be warming the shelf in a year at the same price. They might even open them up to non-members at that point. That said, I'm pre-ordering mine now...

Michael

 

I imagine MC has to pay the factories up front (or at least a significant down payment).

Granted making 8 to 10 thousand of an item would lower the individual cost, however that's getting closer to what Hasbro would do for a limited production run. Plus trying to gauge what exclusive figure(s) will sell well and which one won't is like trying to predict an earthquake or the weather 6 months down the road. Having 2000 exclusives sitting in a warehouse is less risky than having 8000 exclusives sitting in said warehouse. As long as MC has been doing exclusives (GI Joe and now TF), Im sure they have a decent feel for how many exclusives the fandom is willing to buy.

 

I'm sure it is. I'm also sure FP could sell considerably more than they do with a better online store, better marketing, not making their product so damned difficult to buy and the resultant price lowering.

The Ratchet Botcon set would seem to me a good indicator that FP have really not got a firm handle on the production amount business. It didn't take a genius to forsee that an exclusive of a popular character in an anticipated repaint with an exclusive retooling would be more popular than two bug drones (when that mold was already used twice in the main set), but FP still produced them in the same numbers.

They're also sitting on a bunch of boxed sets from their first Botcon still, which they could sell out of in a day if they'd split them up, but aren't willing to. It's precisely that lack of flexibility that heavily reduces their ability to move units of toys, and thus adversely affects their guesses on what they can sell.

Phazer

 

And here we find yet another example of why I'm glad you're not in charge of the club. Are you insane? 10,000?

TEN THOUSAND?!?

Good grief, even the eternal optimist Glen Hallitt balked at smaller production runs than that! I would be surprised if there were even 2,000 members of the club. Certainly there's no way in hell there's 10,000 members. Even conservatively there's no more than a couple of thousand active members of the various TF communities, and only a fraction of us are actually club members. And for that matter, not all of those are going to buy the exclusive toys, no matter the price.

This is a club exclusive. You're proposing that they make thousands upon thousands more toys than there are club members. On what planet does that make good business sense?

 

Well, to be honest, I'm not really sure FP is in the business of selling their stuff as much as they are making things legitmately "exclusive". I mean, look at the stuff that OTFCC put out... they were made in such an abundance that you can still find them pretty easily at most online stores or EBay four years after the fact. From what I've heard that Brian has said on the matter -from a friend as I can't afford travel expenses to Botcon at the moment- he wants to make sure that the FP Botcon exclusives are legitimately exclusive for that very reason.

Edit: Something else I just realized. Ratchet and Flareup were produced at 500 pieces each. The Virulent Clones while produced at 800 pieces were sold in two-packs... making only 400 two-packs available for purchase. So... technically, Ratchet and Flareup were more available than the Virulent Clones by about 100 pieces.

 

Yeah, seriously... I was surprised they had made 2,000, that seems too many to me, I can't see all of those sellling, but then again I don't have their business experience in this field... I was expecting a run of about 800-1,000 myself...

 

For the record, the most prevalent previous exclusives by far were the Minibot keychains, and there were only 3000 of those. I've literally seen Rooks littering the floor of Botcon dealer rooms, cast away by careless fanboys like an unwanted bar of soap. All (with the exception of the aforementioned Minibots) were produced in SMALLER numbers than the 2,000 of these FP is putting out.

See G.B. Blackrock's well researched reference on this here:
http://transformingseminarian.blogspot.com/2006/10/transformers-convention-exclusive-data.html

 

Yay, thanks for making up my mind about rejoining the club. Now I can save $40 next year for something better.

 

Hmm... interesting. Although he doesn't have numbers of the guys I was actually referring to. The OTFCC 2003 guys... Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Roulette & Shadow Striker still have a "seeking numbers" next to them. I'd honestly be surprised to see how many were made simply because these figures are still widely available still. Interestingly enough... only 1400 Sentinel Maximus' and Megazaraks were made... and SM isn't easily available any more.

 

Yeah...my admittedly fuzzy memory is that they were somewhere between 1500 and 3000 (nice range, I know), but I can't recall the exact number. They definitely weren't made in larger numbers than the Minibots though.

 

I think the whole club is flawed. $40 for a membership that gets you nothing besides a small newsletter and comic, and a repainted combiner limb that's *free*. The club store is a joke. It's entirely Botcon focused. And they want you to pay thru the nose for *any* exclusives.

So let's just say I wouldn't shed a tear if it folded.

 

Yep, and I'd sell them too.

And here's the rub. Who said I'd only sell them to club members?

Nope. Hence limiting your market is bad.

Sell them via Diamond. Change the packaging a bit if you're really insistant about it, or have an extra accessory for the people who are in the club.

The one where we point out a club product doesn't have to be an exclusive anymore than the Timelines comic was.

Phazer

 

... But clown-pants Astrotrain is so cool!!!

Can he combine with Bendy-Nemesis-Prime?

I DEMAND A BLITZWING-DECO OVERLOAD AND AN OCTANE-DECO BENDY_PRIME FOR A TRIPE CHANGER 3-MAN COMBO TEAM!

 

Yeah, I probably need to see if Glen's out there again. He said (in the thread where I found him most recently on the Allspark) that he'd need to check his notes and get back to me, but I haven't heard anything. I'd like to firm up those 2004 numbers beyond "<1400", too.

 

I laugh at you, Fun Publications, and your expensive exclusives that I cannot see pictures of, thus making it impossible for me to know just what I am paying money for.

 

I was talking to another fan and he said that anyone who is unhappy about this should write in to Brian Savage. I have written to him before and he has always replied quickly. I agree with someone else here that said this: write in. So far it seems MC is listening to us as club members.

I agree the toys are a bit pricy regardless to being limited to 2000 with resculpted heads. But BotCon toys are even more limited and just put in plastic baggies for the same price.
And the BotCon Sovernir toys' prices were raised. If you read in the sovernir book it has a different price than what people paid at the convention. I know someone commented on a post I made on page 7 about the prices not raised. They were. . . .

Plus having these exclusives hit us both at once plus right before Christmas doesn't help.