william-james88 wrote:It will, but there is still some validity to people complaining about rising prices.He will be cheaper on amazon japan and other japanese retailers (and japan retail as a whole) but when comparing the price Ironhide sold at those places, I can see the issue. As we can see from the pic, Ionhide is bigger, we can all agree he was rather complex and he had a TON of accessories (the most we have ever gotten, number wise). And his MSRP was "only" a little less than 10000 yen and he was being sold at Japanese retail for $75.
Since it will be easier, and we are looking at the full on price and what its sold in North America (since those are all the listings we have), Ironhide was sold at TFSource for $99
https://tfsource.com/masterpiece/mp-27-ironhide/That is $60 cheaper than this Hound. I would love to get a hold of this Hound, I think he looks amazing. But I am currently priced out and thus will not be preordering it this year.
I don't think Ironhide is necessarily a very complex Masterpiece figure. He's certainly nowhere near the level of Inferno's "ladder magic." Both Ironhide and Inferno are of similar size and mass, but Inferno sold for more. Ironhide did come with a TON of nice accessories, but most of them are just single pieces, not complex parts that need to be assembled. Hound is part of the "next generation" of articulation and complexity that started with Sunstreaker, who was also much smaller than Ironhide, came with fewer accessories, but was way more articulated and way more expensive than the likes of his brother Sideswipe. (Hound also seems to have some "magic" of his own going on with his rear tires.) I think Sunstreaker is a way better benchmark as to how much Hound "should" cost. Yes, the price of a Masterpiece Autobot car has gone up recently even compared to Sunstreaker, but the difference is about half of that between Ironhide and Hound, which seems much more reasonable, considering the price hikes of all Transformers products over the past couple of years since Sunstreaker was first released.
Another thing to keep in mind is the "redeco/retool" potential of some Masterpiece figures. Optimus Prime will always have a Black Convoy redeco to fall back on, and every color of the rainbow for BAPE exclusives, so you get a lot of use out of the design of "one" figure. For Hound, though, the options are much more limited. Detritus, maybe? Compare with Sideswipe, who was turned into Red Alert, Tigertrack, Deep Cover, and then rereleased with a new paint job as anime edition Sideswipe and Red Alert. Even Sunstreaker has more options. We already got Cordon, but we can still potentially get a Diaclone red Sunstreaker too.
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