[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).