[hrothgars]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shortysben

I watched this video and thought wait wait...so the figure costs 25$ to produce and their selling it for 25$? Thats either a flat out LIE, or Mattel wants to go bankrupt...

Quote:

Originally Posted by DHeezy81

Exactly! Flat out lying to our faces. You don't need to be an economics major to understand you can't sell something at cost and stay in business. He also says they've been taking a loss on international shipping. Another lie. No business as big as Mattel is going to do anything that loses money intentionally.

He is speaking off the cuff. At the 00:43 mark he does indeed state that it "costs" them $25 to make the figure, but at 01:48 he confirms that there is a profit margin built in. He goes on to say even with the increase, Mattel's profit margin is smaller than ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DHeezy81

These things are made in China, & thanks to NAFTA Matty gets to have them made over there and shipped back here w/out paying any duties on the import. I can see these costing so much if they were being made in the US. But that's not the case.

Splitting hairs, but NAFTA applies only to relaxed mutual tariffs in "North America" and has nothing to do with this. Every major toy manufacturer has outsourced their productions lines to SE Asia for years.

These cost more because they are smaller production runs. The factories have to be re-set, molds traded out, assembly lines changes, for each run of figures. When you are producing product for every store in North America, the runs are in far greater quantity and duration than a sole-source online-sales-only subscription. More changes to the production line, and fewer economies of scale for the size of the line diminish the return on investment in the production process.

At small runs, the farther left-of-Q (higher) the costs will be:

Quote:

Originally Posted by DHeezy81

Hasbro can make quality figures such as ML, and they're still only $15 and that's AFTER the retail outlet mark up. Matty has no retail mark up. So to sit here and lie to our faces saying they cost soooo much to make, is insulting.

This is the same sentiment. When production runs are small, costs are high. When you have a popular line or a popular subset of figures (Justice League A-listers, for example), you can put figures in every store and the figures can be made more cheaply (at Q).

Put simply, the subscription model is the only way we will ever see C-, D-, and E- list characters or obscure alternate versions of our beloved characters. If it won't garner enough support, the model won't work and we won't get them. I for one hope that we do, but it isn't looking especially good right now for many of the subs.