Now, while that is the official price from Takara, not everyone will or has to pay that price. The MSRP, as in the US, is just a guide and a price point to extract other prices from (like the cost per unit to sellers). It is not necessarily the price on shelves and, in Japan, the retail market for Transformers usually has them at 15%-30% off the MSRP. So the actual retail price is consistently lower than the MSRP for non exclusive toys in Japan.
That is no different for this Optimus Prime. His current price on Japan's biggest toy retailer, Amazon Japan, is about 35,000 Yen, which is closer to the $300 USD mark and indeed 70% of the MSRP.
So then why are all the preorders we saw last week more like $450 USD? Well, the thing is that Takara can only sell Transformers toys in Japan. Hasbro owns that trademark for every other market on the planet and thus only Japanese vendors can buy directly from Takara. That means the price is as cheap as it gets but if someone outside Japan purchases from a Japanese seller, they will have to pay any shipping and import charges from Japan to their own country. I have an example below of an order placed for MP 44 Optimus Prime and you can see that while I as a Canadian can get him from a good price from a Japanese seller, Amazon Japan in this case, I still have to pay shipping (about $10) and import fees (about $50!!!!). Of course these fees can differ from country to country but the point is they are YOUR responsibility. In my example from Amazon Japan, importing this toy myself would come out to $360 USD.
And if your toy breaks, well you have to deal with the Japanese seller you got it from. Takara's customer service is useless to foreigners since they only support Japanese residents (since they only sell to the Japanese). My Takara MP Dinobot's head broke off and I had to deal with a Japanese seller for 3 months until I got a replacement. FUN!
So to help with all this importing business, domestic companies like Big Bad Toy Store or TF Source, will do all this importing for you. They cannot buy directly from Takara as they do not reside in Japan, so they have to get a middleman to buy from Takara at wholesale prices and then sell to them. And they have to deal with any import fees and above all shipping a crate of these from Japan to the US. These costs (middleman, duty, shipping) add up and a toy that would have been $300 locally becomes $450 elsewhere because the company offering this service to you (i.e. TF Source) needs to make some money. If you think it all sounds inneficient, well it is. That is the cost of market exclusive IP and region based contracts and it results in all these workarounds to get the toys we love, where money must be spent at every step.
But at least you dont have to bother with importing and if a piece is missing or something is wrong, you can speak to someone locally, who speaks english, and they will deal with the problem themselves.
Of course Hasbro can import and release the product themselves in the US, which they do in China through Hasbro Asia (we have an example below from Robot Kingdom), but as we have seen with the likes of Masterpiece Beast Wars Megatron, it usually comes out to the exact same amount as other local importers like TF Source.
Below is a breakdown of the different price points available for this toy depending on its location of purchase.
Low end price, import from Japanese at $305 USD
Mid Tier price, import from China at $370 USD
High end price, already imported for Americans at $450 USD
This is of course a very simplified look at the different markets for MP-44 Optimus Prime and certain details may have been glossed over but hopefully it helps you understand what the options are and why the price range can be so vast.
