[Joe Moore]

Masters of the Universe Giants Sub Launches in September

[Galaxy Of Rust]

If Jakks Pacific can make 30" figures for $20-$30 & Mezco can make 16" Thundercats figures for $30-$40. Can somebody please explain why Gentle Giant & Mattel need to charge around $80?

These MOTU giants are very "GIANT" at 12". Judging by the example above it looks like the smaller the figure is, the larger the price tag. Can somebody try to make logical sense out of this? Pricing doesn't usually work this way. It's supposed be the larger an item gets the more it costs, not the other way around.

[Joe Moore]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galaxy Of Rust

If Jakks Pacific can make 30" figures for $20-$30 & Mezco can make 16" Thundercats figures for $30-$40. Can somebody please explain why Gentle Giant & Mattel need to charge around $80?

These MOTU giants are very "GIANT" at 12". Judging by the example above it looks like the smaller the figure is, the larger the price tag. Can somebody try to make logical sense out of this? Pricing doesn't usually work this way. It's supposed be the larger an item gets the more it costs, not the other way around.

Tooling costs, materials used, factory used, and size of the run will all factor into the costs. With Gentle Giant those are fairly small runs of figures, especially compared to the Jakks stuff.

The Jakks stuff also uses a much lighter plastic to keep costs down so that they're more appealing to retailers, which Mattel and Gentle Giant don't do with their collector figures.

[Galaxy Of Rust]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Moore

Tooling costs, materials used, factory used, and size of the run will all factor into the costs. With Gentle Giant those are fairly small runs of figures, especially compared to the Jakks stuff.

The Jakks stuff also uses a much lighter plastic to keep costs down so that they're more appealing to retailers, which Mattel and Gentle Giant don't do with their collector figures.

I still don't believe Mattel when they say their MOTU figures need to be so expensive. They had the 2002 figures in stores for $7.99. That line failed because they are stupid & they loaded the stores with a billion He-Man & Skeletor variants that NOBODY wanted. Not because of production costs like they want us to believe. Then a year or 2 later they couldn't produce the figures for less than $20. $8 to $20 or $30 in just a year or 2 is total bullshit. Inflation doesn't work that way. NOTHING goes up that high that fast. Bullshit works that way! You can make all the excuses for them you want but I believe they're greedy pricks that are gouging the crap out of their customers. The same goes for Hot Toys & Sideshow. I love how toy collectors believe every line of BS the toy company feeds them & never add good ol shit sucking greed into the equation. Oh these toy companies are good honest folks that only have the customers best interests in mind. They would never do anything dirty, dishonest or underhanded. Oh no sireee!

I know a thing or 2 about pricing. You throw the highest numbers out first. See what sticks. What number are people willing or stupid enough to pay? It has nothing to do with material cost or any of that. You basically pull a number out of a hat & see what people will pay. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Just look at what happened with 12" figures. BBI was making high quality Cy Girls for $19.99. As soon as they started getting popular Sideshow & Hot Toys showed up & jacked the $19.99 price tag up to $150-$200. And detail & quality wasn't that much better. BBI was making high quality clothing, rooted hair & tons of detailed accessories same as Sideshow & Hot Toys. Toy collectors were stupid enough to pay the $200 even though they knew they were being ripped off. And that's all there is to it! They tossed out a ridiculously high number, people were stupid enough to pay, the rest is history. Now 12" figures average around $150 when they used to average $20. There is nothing in between. No gradual rise (inflation). Just a huge jump from $20 to $200 overnight. I was there, I was big into 1/6 figures. I had to quit collecting because Sideshow & Hot Toys made collecting 12" figures cost prohibitive overnight.

Mattel is pulling the same exact thing right now. They're looking at Sideshow, Hot Toys & Gentle Giant saying "Hey! If people are stupid enough to pay those prices for oversized crappy 70's Star Wars figures then why don't we blow up our crappy MOTU figures to 12" & gouge the crap out of the MOTU fans??? They're so hopelessly trapped in nostalgia that they'll pay any price!"

I wish toy collectors would just STOP with that rising oil price urban legend/myth. They just don't want to admit that these toy companies are legal criminals jacking the prices up & robbing them blind. They report earning $$$BILLIONS$$$ for 1 quarter & then piss & moan that their profits are down. Earning billions & then have the balls to complain about it when millions of people are homeless, starving & suffering with horrible minimum wage jobs??? C'mon people! This world is so full of BS am I the only one left that can keep it real?

And you're actually going to play the "tooling" card when we're talking about MOTU? Are you serious? MOTU is all about repainting the same exact figure over & over & over again. Out of all the toy lines out there MOTU has to be the cheapest to produce because the whole line is 1 figure printed a million times in different colors. How the hell can anybody defend Mattel's prices? If we were talking about Hasbro's Transformers it would be a different story. Transformers have millions of tiny parts & except for a few repaints, every figure is a brand new mold. Compare a Transformer to a He-Man figure. Leader class Transformer =$40-$50. Plain boring no detail 12" MOTU figure that reused the same molds over & over again =$80? And I'm the only one calling bullshit on this?

[Joe Moore]

Hyperbole and bluster do not equal fact. As someone whose worked with, and covered, assorted toy companies over the last dozen or so years, I can say that you can exclaim all you want about "greed", but if you stop to do even just a bit of research, you'll gain just a little bit of perspective on how this industry works. Talk to any of the industry guys on Facebook or twitter, go to a con and speak to toy guests there. A lot of those guys can be pretty open about the woes of rising manufacturing costs. You will see that your numbers don't add up.

For starters, you cannot even remotely compare prices of retail releases versus limited online releases. Yes, MOTU 200x was like $9 - $12 per figure. Those figures were also being produced into the high tens of thousands and being released globally, at retail over a decade ago. That $9 figure in 2002, not factoring in rising costs of production or materials, would cost $12 today. Material costs have been doing nothing but rising in the last decade as well, which also factors into the cost.

The larger the number of figures you produce, the lower the cost per figure is to produce. If you reduce the number of units being produced, the cost goes up, and it can go up exponentially. If you're a company producing less than 1,000 units per order, then those costs can get pretty brutal. That cost, then, has to be passed onto consumers, otherwise, there's no money to be made.

You're not looking for an explanation or discussion on the cost as much as you're looking to lament those costs (which is perfectly fine) and chastise those who try to offer a bit of rationale (which is not so fine).

[RKillian]

Reprinting press releases doesn't convey omnipotence any more than watching the nightly news qualifies one to negotiate a cease fire in the middle east. Anyway, the part about low production runs is true but only to a point. A new company with low production runs does have a vertical climb ahead of them. A large corporation like Mattel, on the other hand, has the infrastructure in place to mitigate many of those costs. Of course, as with all things ToyGuru, we all know exactly who'll get blamed when this ill-conceived subscription doesn't sell out on day one.

[Joe Moore]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RKillian

Reprinting press releases doesn't make anyone an expert any more than watching the nightly news qualifies one to negotiate a cease fire in the middle east.

Very true. And presuming to know someone solely on the basis of their hobby of reporting toy news doesn't make them an expert on their life outside of that site. However, working for a toy design studio (which I have done), free lancing for larger and smaller toy companies (which I have also done and still do), and working in rights licensing (which I do now), gives one a more accurate perspective on the costs and trials associated with producing products for mass marketing.

And again, many of the people in the industry are very open about talking about the production of their products; especially the smaller guys. Talk to guys on their FB pages, at SDCC, Botcon, Joecon, local cons and you will be surprised at what they are and aren't willing to talk about. Guys like Boss Fight flat out said what their cost to produce the figures were.

Also, I'm not claiming to have inside knowledge of all costs to a company. Just that I've been fortunate enough to be able to work, at times, in an industry I enjoy and have seen how rising costs and production numbers and manufacturing can effect the final cost of a figure.

[Dr Kain]

Simple, Mattel is greedy and thinks anything with the MOTU name on it is worth gouging. I cannot believe they are doing a sub for this though.