The Energon Pub

I'm not a marketimg guy. I know diddly about economics. I just wanna get that out there befor I bring this up.

I hear members complain alot about the rising costs of TFs. I myself realy haven't noticed a real drastic change. When I started collecting again buying Beast Wars, Deluxes where $9.99.
Currently, Deluxes are still $9.99

Hell I remember G1 KickBack costing me $8.99 and my dad seeing it as a waste of $8.99(whatever)

So anyhow, I was shooting some collection pics today, and I noticed something on my G1 SkyLinks. It was a price tag for $34.99



Granted his Encore release is going to cost a near vintage price. However if he was say part of the Movie line or Animated, I bet he'd still cost around $34.99!

Well, People who know more than me on this matter can rant and point out flaws in this all they want. And yes forgien countries...

Whatever.

I'm just saying, outside of loosing things like motorized gimmicks, we've been pretty lucky

Very true man. Inflation is a bullshit excuse for any rising cost. The government and businesses use that as an excuse to suck more money out of you. Thankfully for us, Hasbro hasn't fallen into that scheme (yet). Though some stores that sell the figures have. TRU sells (in most stores) deluxes for $12.99.

TheMuffin wrote:Very true man. Inflation is a bullshit excuse for any rising cost. The government and businesses use that as an excuse to suck more money out of you. Thankfully for us, Hasbro hasn't fallen into that scheme (yet). Though some stores that sell the figures have. TRU sells (in most stores) deluxes for $12.99.

Around by me KB Toys are the only guys realy doing that.

TRU is fine, Kmart is the one who charges 3 extra dollars, and they're going out of business left and right.

True enough. Thank you Target for putting those morons out of business. Because I refuse to thank Wal-Mart for anything except carrying MP Screamer.

K-Mart was fine till Sears bought them out, but yeah, stores that are taking on a few bucks over suggested retail like K-Mart and KB are closing all around me.

I have a K-Mart 2 blocks away from me, I want them to close so bad cause they have this awesome deli slicer, a deep fryer, and a whole bunch of other industrial kitchen stuff that I need to see go on clearance!

I know it's off topic, but Liege likes to cook

Liege Evilmus wrote:Well, People who know more than me on this matter can rant and point out flaws in this all they want. And yes forgien countries...

There's no flaw, not sure why you needed the attitude though. You raise an issue, expect people to not agree with it. Shame on you for not knowing that.

But you are right, the US has been lucky.

Personally speaking as an Australian, we've been extorted left right and centre. 2000 saw a drastic overhaul in the taxation system which saw a number of unlabelled taxes removed and replaced with one, the goods and services tax. 10% on pretty much everything (barring residential rental, certain government services and food which needs preparation).

However, even though we were getting slugged 10%, the removal of all the other taxes meant prices should actually go down.

And they did on a number of items, tv's and other audio/visual equipment in particular saw a marked reduction.

Toys like Transformers however, no such luck. The price stayed the same and with the increasing cost of fuel the prices have gone up again. In fact I personally pay about $1 more than Trunksy. Why? Because he's in a capital city while i'm a good 24 hour drive from a capital city.

Getting back to taxes though, not all taxes were removed. In fact the "fuel excise" (a tax on fuel for whatever reason) was increased. But the whammy here is that the excise it's self is also subject to GST.

So i'm not sure how much the taxes have changed in the US over the last 20 years, but Australia has had a fair few and on top of that, retailers marking up their own prices to match the removal of old taxes. The Government was going to monitor such things but i'm sure TF's back in 2000 weren't a high priority.

Inflation probably is a bullshit excuse. I blame taxes and retailer greed for Australia's ridiculous prices.

Very good to know BURN. Believe me I have no attitude, and actualy look forward to learning something here.

Just whenever price, distribution, or sales get brought up that are involving The US, right away we get the whole, "dam america, they have a sale, we haven't had one since last week, what the hell!?! & "Oh your so lucky...."

Hence, , we're subject to tax and policy same as anywhere else, it gets old. I was just bracing for the hit

As for here, well sales tax varies from state to state, and rarely rises. The reason being is the out of state and tourist dollar is always factored into the equasion. Raising sales tax scares people away.

Instead, they raise highway tolls, housing expenses and of course fuel prices. Cigarettes go up like $2 a year! Which makes me glad I don't smoke.

As for what you're saying about having to pay more because you live in a rural area. I guess it's alot like the state to state sales tax difference. However in New Jersey, the average rate is 7%, but in certain lower income areas(like where I live) it's only 3.5%.

However, tax aside, I stand by my initial statment, at least here, the base price hasn't risen realy at all

Liege Evilmus wrote:As for what you're saying about having to pay more because you live in a rural area. I guess it's alot like the state to state sales tax difference. However in New Jersey, the average rate is 7%, but in certain lower income areas(like where I live) it's only 3.5%.

Yes and no. For this area it got worse around two years ago when we got hit with Cyclone Larry.

This area is one of the larger banana producing parts of Australia, the cyclone wiped them out. So we'd have trucks bringing stock up from down south, but they were going back empty. Because of that freight increased (as their profits were down from making a empty trip back). Bananas are back, but surprise surprise, prices haven't gone down.

On the plus side, I can generally find what I want provided i'm patient enough.

See around here only high end items like cars and housing are effected by the productivity of the local market, but it's a double edged sword.

I'm in a heavy industrial shipping and producing area, so property values are highly exadurated because the land if converted into something commercial has near unlimited earning potential. It boggles my mind though that the only things that ever open though are hair salons. The one on the corner from me has changed hands 5 times in the year I lived here!?!

With all that said though, the only people this area is apealing to are local workers. So although the property values are high, the rents are cheap, cause owners are looking to get whatever they can.

Realy it's the only reason why I live here. If I stayed 2 towns over where I use to, the rent on an apartment this size would be at least double, and the idea of utilities included would be right out the window!

So basicly, I'm taking advantage here. Yeah I live in the ghetto, but I live good in the ghetto!!!

But I understand about the local market being a issue in general costs of living which would trickle down to something even as simple as toys.

I have alot of friends in farm areas who have the same concerns. Literaly, their local market comes down to one or two cash crops.

People in my are are lucky though. We have a fluxuating market, but due to the fact that we are a hub for local, national, and even worldwide comerce...

Well, fluxuating as it may be, there's always someting going on that can pick up the slack.

Rent is a major issue around here at the moment, has been since the cyclone.

Because so many properties were damaged, accommodation became scarce so those rentals that were liveable became highly desirable. Up went the weekly rent!

Now with the town effectively fully recovered, and with more properties available, they should be coming down. But they're not.

Makes you wonder why I live here still.

TheMuffin wrote:Very true man. Inflation is a bullshit excuse for any rising cost. The government and businesses use that as an excuse to suck more money out of you. Thankfully for us, Hasbro hasn't fallen into that scheme (yet). Though some stores that sell the figures have. TRU sells (in most stores) deluxes for $12.99.

Huh? Conspiracy theory to explain inflation? I could get into this, but I don't feel like typing out a paper right now. But no business will ever choose to charge a consumer more if it can avoid it. Most business lines these days are extremely competetive and operate on much thinner margins than in the past.

Hence we are seeing so much outsourcing to South America and Asia. It is to try and keep these costs down. Soo many things contribute to the rising costs though. You could make a list a mile long. Everything from interest rates, to market performance, to the incr. in min. wage, to property value, so on and so forth.

Things like TRU marking up their toys a lil more is not a root cause of inflation. Their mark ups are just behind the times and will result in lower sales for them, as we are indeed seeing.

Back to OP's point though. We have been really lucky. Inflation over the last 150 odd years has averaqge 3% a year. Sky Lynx came out in 1986 at $34.99. In today's dollars that is a whopping $70.88!!!

Hasbro has obviously done an amazing job of cutting its costs. They're basically twice as efficient now as they were 20 years ago. I have a feeling that if Sky Lynx was reissued by Hasbro, we actually wouldn't be paying even close to 90 for him.
I agree with LE, I bet we would indeed be paying around the price of an Ultra for him these days if he was in the animated or Universe lines.