Not disagreeing with your right to not like repaints. Were I diving into the Masterpieces, I could easily get tired of the umber of times Sideswipe came out and we never even got Sunstreaker, although he's way different enough that's a good thing. That all aid, I've been more interested in Tiger Track, Road Rage, and Exhaust than I was in Swipe, Tracks, or Wheeljack.
Wheeljack808 wrote:2)Saying they fund the new molds is a redundant statement since there is still going to be the production costs to pump out the retools as well as the modifications to make it a retool. In other words, ANY masterpiece will net profit and thus fund more molds.
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Yes and know. Let's throw out an extimate that the retool cost is 20% of the original production cost for a new head, a new gun, and a new accesory (since we're not getting Raoul?)
A new poroduct(s) comes out, it has to pay for
[*]The initial Tooling Cost
[*]It's own Material Costs
[*]Shipping, Packaging, yadda yadda yadda.
Usually, the tooling is paid for by the first figure or figures depending on run size. So being conservative with numbers, let's say Tracks paid off 80% of the original investment in the mold, and Takara expects (reasonably, given run sizes--See below*) for Road Rage to pay off the remaining 20% of the INITIAL mold, plus the 20% for her new head, gun, and accesories. Assuming she doesn't qite sell as many as Tracks, becauce she is a more diehard fan type figure, let's assume that the gross eraning for Road Rage gives the Tooling Cost budget 60%, an extra 20% of tooling costs that can be flipped to the next figure.
Said next figure's entire tooling cost is concievably already down to 80-85% if it's more complex than Tracks/Rage was or Road Rage doesn't sell as many numbers. That figure then only has to split 80% across the initial, and the repaint. And if there's two repaints, then you have essentially two figures that pay the mold off completely, as above, and another figure who pays for his own materials, accesories, and supporting infrastructure costs, but since he's not paying for the initial tooling cost,
he can bring in 60% like RoadRage did, minus the 20% for his "toys", =40% investment in the figure after HIM.
*And before anyone says it:
"If a figure cannot pay for it's initial tooling, it's a failure. Businesses call that a loss."
Yes, and no. Often times, these Toolings are investments that are expected to pay back slowly. IE, two figures. Or three figures. Hasbro and Takara fully expect a tooling to NOT be paid for by one figure alone. The price of these things are simply too haigh, when you figure on a
10 12 14 16 dollar figure. That's why we get the Pre-tools.
And with COmbiner Wars, I expect the re-skinning of frames is more a matter of simplicity than mold cost recuoperation. Why reinvent the wheel?
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