cloudballoon wrote:To complicate things further, (not specific to this Santimus Prime) there's also the Exclusive Retailer tax, production volume vs designing cost tax,the target audience size tax and more that needs to be factored into whether a niche product (licensed or not, and whom is the license holder, I bet a Disney/Marvel/DC license cost far more than a car license per figure) is worth its MSRP.
I think most of us don't think of the production cost factor of a TF product that much, but each of us do have a range of acceptable "cost v price" ratio to gauge whether a product is worth it.
I always take production costs into account when talking about prices. Exclusives typically don't cost more than their wide release counterpart, "exclusive" isn't the same as "limited" and can't be used interchangeably (Target will fill two pegs and an endcap with just one exclusive character because they're getting enough to cover other retailers that can't sell them). Target audience for Collaborative is expected to be large as that's the expectation when they're made. And Hasbro doesn't charge higher prices for licensed figures in the 6" lines, be it Marvel Legends, Star Wars Black, or G.I.Joe Classified they're all around the same price.
As far as design costs go they've already cut costs with the majority of figures be based on existing figures. Maverick is the only figure that's a wholly new mold, but that one was always going to get a second run for the sequel. They got away with JP93 being an entirely new mold because they offset it by packing it with another figure that just has a new head.
Emerje