I was thinking, based on the past retail experiences that I've been in, the more a company produces, the cheaper the product should retail, right? That's why places like Walmart, Trader Joes and Daiso can sell things for 'cheap'. They buy in huge numbers (don't mind the business practices of trying to keep regular costs down).

Remember those GI Joe 2-packs we were getting from 2002? They ran between $7-$8 per 2-pack. Not a bad deal, really. It was also stated several times that the Hasbro production #s were between 100-150k units. Based on said above economic theory, that is why we were able to get single figures for about $4 a pop.

Come to the 25thA, we KNOW that the original production #s must've been pretty low. The fans are paying between $5-$7 for a single figure now.

Now here's the question. IF Hasbro was producing the 25A figures in the 150k range, would we still be paying $7/figure? Or is Walmart showing the fans what we should REALLY be paying? On top of that, is it REALLY that expensive to produce single packs? And the new articulation, is that what's also driving the prices up?

It's in my opinion if Hasbro produced more in the initial runs and FLOODED the stores, then we'd be paying prices comparable to Walmart's. You gotta figure that if Hasbro wants to make money back, they need to produce more. *shrug* Sure, the reuse of body parts can work wonders and smart 5-packs will be bought up faster than fresh donuts in an office. I've stated on the JBL that the B&M stores were utterly dumb in how they ordered the stuff. You gotta figure there's about 1 of each figure of a wave in a case. A store gets 1 case, it only takes 1 person to buy the whole wave and BAM, the peg is empty for a week.

It's more than distribution. Hasbro simply didn't make the numbers (they should've leaned on the Big3) and the stores didn't forcast well enough. Maybe 5 cases a shipment would've worked but man... Both sides really goofed, eh?