[Lionheart]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kostej

Just to put the things into perspective a little, here is the answer from Impulse Creations I am allowed to post here:
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As for the price itself, unfortunately, this is becoming something of a trend with Hasbro of late as they are making the most wanted figures extremely limited which forces retailers to order huge numbers of unwanted figures.

Unlike some other manufacturers, Hasbro does not allow retailers to order full cases of single figures. They only produce case assortments and there is only one Wasp in each case of 12 from this assortment while 5 of the 12 figures are re-releases which no one wants.

We had nearly 400 reserve account requests for Wasp and 78 requests for all of the other figures combined. That means we have to pay for well over 4000 unwanted figures just to get the needed number of Wasp figures. While some of those extra figures will sell to non-reserve account customers, the vast majority will not. A portion of that cost has to be passed on in the price for Wasp but it would have to be over $100 each to make up our actual cost.

This is a widespread issue though affecting all retailers which is why a quick web search shows that ToyWiz has it for $44.99, CMDStore has it for $59.95, and Toys On Fire has it for $64.95. Those are just the first three I found on Google (excluding eBay sellers) and our price (which we realize is high) remains one of the lowest around.

With manufacturers like Mattel and DC Direct who do offer full cases of single figures, high prices for high demand figures don't happen but Hasbro seems to feel that making these figures scarce will somehow benefit them. Our concern is that the opposite will happen and customers will decide to drop Hasbro figures completely.

I sincerely wish that we could offer Wasp at a lower price but I'm afraid it just isn't possible under these circumstances.

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To be honest, if Hasbro continues like this much longer we may simply stop carrying their products completely as we're already losing money on these assortments and still incurring ill will nonetheless.
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I was going to say that this kind of policy is just going to guarantee that the small retailers will stop buying. Hasbro won't care of course, as long as they have Walmart, etc, but it's exponential - eventually it will kill the roots of the collectors market and then Walmart will drop out too. There is literally *no reason* for Hasbro to do this - none. And when they feign ignorance it's a double insult - you can't tell me there are no employees that are aware of comics or the fan market. To shortpack a new figure, a female figure, and one of the primary characters in the Marvel Universe, and then say "Eh?" when people complain is just insulting - they *know* what this will do, but they don't seem to recognise that the small retailers can't take hits this big time and again (variants and shortpacks over and over and over and over for *no* reason). All we can hope is that the distribution for the new brand is much better and wider based on what they said about retailers recogising the Avengers brand more. If it's not, then it's the same old Hasbro lies and games.

That said; I don't buy that 400 people reserved Wasp, but there were only 78 people who wanted Reaper, Hyperion and Hulk combined. These are new figures (well, Reaper and Hype), and they would be wanted by most collectors. This just looks like Scalper tactics hitting the retailers as hard as the Hasbro ones, as a big chunk of those orders are based on 'she's scarce, I could make some money on her!' which ultimately, Hasbro is still responsible for.