AllNewSuperRobot wrote:There is a difference between price increase and price hike. The hike comes from Hasbro picking a random number out of the air IE MP-44 and the fanbase enabling them by throwing money at them. Which leads Hasbro to grow bolder with prices in the future. While selling people on the party line about more moving parts and detailed designs being the actual pricing factor. Which it isn't. Because retail price never even nears that of manufacture. The difference between the two is just gross profit.
I don't think Hasbro is picking random numbers. The price is based on what it would cost to produce and ship 10K plus profits since they are in the business of making money. The price is as "made up" as any from any company for anything anywhere. By your logic the cost of food, cars, houses and anything else is "made up". Even if Hasbro sells 30,000 of these they're probably still selling less world wide including Japan than any Commander Class figure, therefore the price increase of $125 each/$250 for the pair makes sense.
Also should be pointed out that Hasbro didn't price MP-44, Takara Tomy did for their market like every other MP release (outside of MPM releases which are Hasbro's to begin with). When Hasbro stopped doing their own versions of MPs and started "importing" them from Japan they had to go with the Japanese prices to prevent Japanese fans from reverse importing from the US.
Emerje