[littlewolvie]

Okay, at first I thought people were exaggerating... until I took a closer look at the pictures. I hope these are early prototype pictures of an unfinished product. The holes in the shoulders really ruin this figure. I'm also not a fan of the red/blue deco. Doesn't add anything to the figure for me.
As for the price, it more or less follows the trend of current Hasbro prices. Hasbro really upped the prices on all of their figures. It's even more apparent here in Europe where we went from 22-23 euro a figure to 29-30 euro. That's quite a price jump. Hasbro of course bring up the usual excuse of more expensive materials, manufacturing, shipping etc... And there's probably some truth to that. But I don't see the same price jumps from other manufacturers. Mattel and McFarlane don't seem to have raised their prices and are actually a lot cheaper these days. I don't buy many Mattel figures (the occasional WWE fig, but that's about it), but the MOTU figures in my store are quite a lot cheaper. Also, my McFarlane figures are still around 20 euro, which is about 10 euro less than what I pay for the average Marvel Legends or GI Joe fig. So, my guess is that Hasbro is simply using this as a cheap excuse to make some quick profit and to please their shareholders.