[Jmacq1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kylactus

you also have to account for the fact that you can usualy move greater quantities of 3.75" figures. so a consumer who would hesitate to spend 40$ on two unique figures might prefer to get two for 20-24$ and even by jmacq's math that's a 50% better profit for the manufacturer. also, the price of plastic has very little to do with production cost. the PVC composites toys are made of cost less than a dollar a pound. so your average figure of any scale is only a couple cents worth of plastic. the paint costs more. but your big expense is in tooling her there are two issues that make 6" figures more cost prohibitive to produce, size, as a large mold costs a lot more to produce (more metal, and more actual tooling) and, well... size again as you can fit fewer molds into an injection machine per shoot, so you get fewer parts per press, which means more man hours to produce the same number of 6" units as opposed to 3.75", or now 2". you could also factor in things like amount of paint, and detail required to produce something that looks good in 6" scale (the bigger you go the more detail you need), plus there is no way around it, you need more packaging for bigger figures. I just can't see how Hasbro makes the 6" scale more economically viable than 3.75.

If you'd like some further reinforcement for my speculation, see the Four Horseman's reasoning behind making their Mythic Legions in 6" scale rather than 4" scale as originally advertised. They flat out said (in the scale announcement) that the price difference between making them 6" versus making them 4" was not very big due to the complexity of the figures, and so decided to go with the 6" size instead.

All I'm saying is that this business is still run by money. If the 6" figures weren't more economically viable, then Marvel Legends would still be withering on the vine rather than thriving and 3.75" figures would still be ruling the roost instead of getting downgraded or minimized.

Yeah, Dev teams can have their preferences, but all the preferences in the world can't make the bean counters agree with them, and the bean counters are the ones with the real power in any corporation. If Dev Teams genuinely pulled the strings, the toy market would look VERY different, since most Dev Teams are genuinely made up of people who are as much fans of the toys as we are.