I think the suits are getting raises. That is why the increase in price.Even thou they do no work sitting behind a desk

Hey Rob, good to see you branching out.

And good memory. I remember Archie comic books, but no chance I remember specific story lines.

That’s some interesting food for thought.

It reminds me of an old Archie comic book from my childhood. ‘Pop’ was concerned about falling sales at his ice cream shoppe. Jughead suggested he could lower the price to one cent for an ice cream cone, as that would guarantee brisk sales. Pop followed the suggestion, and – as expected – the entire town filled the shoppe and sales went through the roof and the cash register was BRIMMING… with pennies lol
Moral to the story? Find a balance between volume and profit margin : )

But here is something I have pondered recently. With this latest round of price hikes coupled with the divergence into two separate lines – one for kids and one for adult collectors, have we finally hit the point where Hasbro and their retail partners now see the “collector” line as purely low volume niche products. I mean for a commodity item, you need to keep the price low to keep units moving, but once that volume evaporates you need a bit more margin to make it viable. Low margin + low pricepoint + low volume and you wouldn’t have a reason to carry the goods in your store.

What may be happening is that retailers (Target) realize that a $10 action figure is not a commodity item and that most of the devoted collectors that are still buying these at $10 will also still buy them at $13. In other words, whatever small loss in volume they see they will make up for in the price hike and wind up ahead. I think we’ve crested the ridge where for what these cost to make, they can’t be sold for a low enough price to hit the commodity market anymore. Do these now belong on the “adult collector endcap” rather than in the toy aisle?

Holy cow, $1.45?!! I’m still paying $2.29 in the Northwest. My toy hunts took a drastic drop since 2012. In the days of SOTDS there always seemed to be plenty of toys to find or at least dig through at the various retail chains. But since then store pegs started becoming very stale and gas prices began creeping up to $4.00 a gallon. I would still hunt, just less frequently and closer to home. Now, it is more about there being nothing new to find. I’m using this lull to take a deep breath.

It’s an opinion blog.

I’ve questioned the whole pricing jump too, but there’s plenty of room for differing opinions without being immature and rude about it.