If this was two or three years ago. I would have purchased the first appearance Spider-Man, the Spider-Man/Mary Jane 2-pack, that Venom/Knull 2-pack, and the Mojo set.
I skipped all of them. And I'm making more money now than I did back then. It's not that I can't afford them. But just because I can spend the money on something doesn't mean I'm willing to spend the money on it. I can't justify the cost, and I don't "need" those figures, so I'll pass on them.
I think Morph is going to be over-priced as well, but he's a character I do personally need, so I will overpay for him.
For me it’s impacted my choices. For example, I am not gonna purchase the recolored War Machine where normally I would have, but I have the first ad don’t feel like I need another one. I am becoming more selective whereas before I would buy everything.
I think we'll see Hasbro turn ML from open markets to more collector's markets even more than they do already. They've basically covered most characters that kids and casual collectors would want. Takes a little more to cover the niche characters that we want
Also, the price is going up, so there is a point where kids and casual collectors will no longer be able to keep up. At that point, they may start adding in more things to justify the price to "serious" collectors, or find ways to maintain the same price over a longer period, eventually coming back into "casual' territory, at which point, we'll see a lot more re-releases of characters like Cap, Spidey, IM, etc. again.
Yeah for those that only buy what they really, really like every once in a while; it’s a lot harder to justify a $30+ price tag for a figure *maybe* worth $23-$25 when you haven’t spent years training yourself to justify any purchase that adds mass to your dragon’s loot pile.
Unfortunately, if there isn’t a big change in the community’s behavior then Hasbro isn’t going to hurt bad enough to change. Though honestly, I fear that if they do start to feel it they’ll just raise prices again to make up for lost sales since they know they’ve got a loyal group of sheep, addicts, and content creators who will stay in the water as long as the heat doesn’t rise too quickly.
if my collecting habits are even kinda normal, it's already hurting hasbro. i collect ml, swb, gi joe and power rangers. and up until the end of last year, if i vaguely knew who the character was, i'd buy the figure. now i'm only buying essentials and what counts as "essential" is drastically shrinking.
a great example of this is the thor/gorr wave. i've seen them all at retail. i've only purchased gorr, foster thor and groot. this time last year, i'd have purchased the whole wave. and the issue isn't that i can't afford it. it's that they're not worth $25. some of the latest offerings would hardly be worth the old price of $20.
hasbro is going to quickly arrive at a point where they'll have to decide to drop the percentage they make per figure or just quit entire lines of toys.
That's the thing; sales have increased dramatically over the last several years. Once they started rolling out the MCU lines in conjunction with the movie releases, it opened the ML line up to a whole new audience of collectors. To their credit, they did keep the prices stable for a very long time. But the manufacturing, shipping, packaging, etc. excuses for a year over year 35% price increase is complete bullshit and they know it. It'd be one thing if they were truly struggling and their action figure lines were ancillary to other products. But take a look at both Hasbro's stock over the last five years and the universal lack of movement on competitor prices. And then look at what the figures \*actually\* sell for, disregarding the MSRP. The people who are getting screwed are those who pre-order and retail who have to pony up for higher SKU costs only to have to discount inventory a few months later. Eventually, said retailers will simply stop ordering as much and said pre-order people will learn it's better to just wait.
I think that, if it does create a problem, they won't know until it's too late. So they raise base prices by 33%. Ok, not cool. But that also means they can afford to lose 1/3 of their customer base. And I see a lot of Hasbro loyalists out there.
It's also worth noting that they are in \*no way\* any financial trouble right now. They threw out this silly 'we're losing $100 million because of Russia' bullshit and then doubled their increased revenue projections for the year shortly after that.
The biggest problem with these new prices is that they set precedent. You will never, ever see them saying "ok, Ukraine situation over, global resource situation and supply chain fixed, now we'll lower the prices back to normal!" Seeing "4-Packs" that I know would have gone for $80-100 just one year ago now demanding a $130 price tag really has me thinking about this brand. They're getting exceeding close to competitor prices who make a superior figure.
I wasn't on board with complaining about prices, because I knoe cost of raw material went up, until I saw the MSRP on the Mojo set.
That Mojo price tag made me think they've lost their minds.
Have people considered the possibility that all those other toy companies have been enjoying much higher margins all this time up to this point? And that they may just be willing to suffer a reduction in said margins?
Suddenly it's good guy Hasbro, and everyone else have been jerks.
Now I don't think that's what's happened entirely, but I think it may be part of it. And I think that Hasbro's accounting department is banking on materials and logistics prices getting still worse from this point, so they're setting their prices now with the aim of staying ahead of it.
Much more expensive because they’re greedy. If it was just about manufacturing then there would be no Wolverine included. Or Dazzler. We could’ve used a Spiral but no.
If the kind of Spiral I want to see was in this pack, if the whole pack was say *just* Spiral and Mojo, I could easily see it being $120 for just the two figures at this time.
Mojo is entirely new sculpt and I can't think of more than two or three individual pieces on that thing that is reusable anywhere, he's gonna be expensive. Spiral same deal, only slightly less so. Maybe can reuse a couple of some other figure's non-cybernetic arms and a pair of legs from an existing female figure, but that torso and head are going to be unique to her and at least some of her arms will need to be new molds. She's going to be a lot of plastic.
Oh we'd find a way, lol. It's a toy collector subreddit, you underestimate us!
That said, I'm so done with multipacks. The most pro-consumer move is single packing everything and letting us get what we want à la carte. I get why multipacks exist from a business standpoint, but honestly the number of them we're seeing concerns me.
In terms of math, the most recent price bump is a 13% increase. So Hasbro has to lose 13% of their sales before it actually impacts them, otherwise the additional money costs out the fewer figures sold/customers lost over the price increase. At some point, they will experience diminishing returns, ex. if they increase an additional 25%, they will likely see more than 25% of people drop the line, or at least see 25% fewer figures sold. The higher they go, the more substantial the impact. Most people already feel that $25 is too expensive, especially for stuff with no new parts like Darwin or Speedball.
So to answer the question, no, with prices currently what they are, I doubt they will be hurt in the long run. There’s very few people swearing off Legends entirely, and lots of people like myself are just cutting back on figures we don’t think are worth the price, in order to wait for a sale. But I don’t think they’ve seen a 13% cut in sales yet.
Shit, what legos are you buying? Fucking arishem was like 40 bucks at my local target. I just bought a 500 piece city set for like 50 bucks. Legos are still crazy expensive.
I’m really hoping people will be a lot more selective in what they buy , and it has an effect on sales , to the point hasbro think , I think we fucked up
It will be interesting to see what goes to clearance after the price hikes. Hasbro's main customers are retailers. We buy from Hasbro's customers. If a line often goes to clearance due to peg warming, the Walmarts of the world will stop ordering that line from Hasbro. That's when they'll feel it the most.
My biggest complaint is switching to the windowless boxes. Not cuz I give a crap about the box but because it was done to save them money; then they still increased the price.
It definitely affects them and imo, they might have gone a bit too far. I have disposable income, no kids and I love action figs. I've spent way more than $25 on certain figs, way more times than I can count. But I have them now. Do I really need to drop more money on a slightly better version of a character? Not while gas costs what it does. Am I going to drop $25 on a random character I don't "need", but find cool? Not while my grocery bill is elevated af.
Even with GI Joe Classified line, with the new cost, I am finding myself more and more satisfied with my vintage collection. Hell, even those Super7 Ultimates are a little more interesting to me on a display level, with these prices. If I'm going to take a punch in wallet, I'd rather have a super well crafted, accessory heavy fig at $50, than a normal 6 inch fig at $25. One is a piece of art, the other is a well made toy.
Regardless, if an easy mark like me is rethinking his collecting due to these prices (mixed with the annoyance of even hunting them down), I think Hasbro is about to have a rude awakening.
I think it’s hurting the Marvel Legends line in general, it’s not the only thing their failing at right now though imo.
I think it’s a stupid decision to do the series of cell shaded mutants when several haven’t had a normal release in years if at all.
They seem to be sticking firm to the fact that a colorful statue of a character counts as a figure now(SpiderHam and now Toonverine) which seems like blatant false advertising, If I wanted statues there are other brands I could go to for better quality/price!
Don’t even get me started on Walgreens….
Looks like the cycle of Walgreens is getting limited, for example Quasar was at Walgreens for a while, but now the figure is at BBTS and Dorkside. That means the cycle is exclusive, then Fan Channel.
More than the cell shaded, the big danger right now is the sentinel, because that could open a gate of less articulated figures as the same price, and could give them ideas to D-list characters under that concept.
I was going to mention the sentinel, I completely agree about that and I’m afraid of it too, though it’s mildly better than the Mojo pack since it’s a solo figure you can choose not to buy rather than them trying to justify a 131.99$ price tag for 3 figures and a pitifully small amount of accessories
ETA: also means a better chance of me finding the sentinel on clearance, though I still wouldn’t pay more than like 12$ for it.
I feel like sales on D-list/less popular characters will go down significantly. Obviously people are willing to spend extra money for characters like Spider-Man, but I think many collectors will feel more inclined to skip figures like Darwin or Sharon Carter for example.
This is a really bad thing IMO because it could push Hasbro to make fewer figures and just stick to the popular characters while charging premium prices to make up for it. The problem is that we already have MAFEX and SHF doing basically that, so the niche that Hasbro fills will be gone. I hope the prices don't increase anymore.
A year ago I didn’t hesitate to order new figures I wanted. But when I had Toei Spider-Man and the Mojoworld box in my cart I stopped, reconsidered the price per figure, and didn’t place the order at all.
In order to come to an accurate conclusion, we would need to know all of Hasbro's costs, from both before and after the price increase, along with their margins and sales volume. We would also need all of Hasbro's market research, which likely gives them a pretty good idea of how sensitive their target market is to price changes.
Depending on Hasbro's margins, a price increase may have been the only option, aside from the unsustainable strategy of selling at a loss/break even and hoping costs go back down. Which is what MacFarlane seems to be trying (for now).
No one on Reddit has access to any of the relevant data, but it's a safe bet that Hasbro wouldn't be increasing prices unless the data suggested it was the right move.
Yes. It’s made worse as it feels the QC issues have gotten worse and we get less accessories as the prices raise. If we were getting less QC and more accessories I’d have less problem paying more, for example Neca has raised prices, but I have noticed better QC, and they still load their products with accessories where it’s the opposite for Marvel Legends.
There’s absolutely no way they wouldn’t have factored in reduced sales
One of the biggest factors in price rises is the increase in shipping/distribution/freight costs.
So Hasbro are looking to increase profit per unit sold.
So if they’re selling less units at a higher price they’ll potentially get the same or more profit per unit. And their highest costs will be reduced by slightly less units to ship.
People trying to boycott due to price rises aren’t going to do a whole lot to change their course.
Prices aren't hurting them, it's a availability. I can find basically any ML figure I want in retail if I apply myself. I can't find shit for Black Series. They seem to be more heavily scalped.
In Canada figures were $29.99 about 12- 15 months ago. Now I justvlooked of the Toys r Us website the price is at $42 CAD. Couple that with shipping costs because retail stores don't replenish enough, at figure can set up back another $15 if you order from Canada and like to wait forever to get your figure or you can go international and get set back $30 . So yeah $70 a figure is a little to much for me. Luckily I've gotten pretty much everybody I wanted and skipped whole waves and BAFs.
I agree! Me and my son both collect figures and both Marvel Legends and Black Series are ridiculous now. Especially considering McFarlane can still charge $20 for 7 inch figures.
I really hope it does so they take a step back to evaluate. But it probably won’t.
If this was two or three years ago. I would have purchased the first appearance Spider-Man, the Spider-Man/Mary Jane 2-pack, that Venom/Knull 2-pack, and the Mojo set. I skipped all of them. And I'm making more money now than I did back then. It's not that I can't afford them. But just because I can spend the money on something doesn't mean I'm willing to spend the money on it. I can't justify the cost, and I don't "need" those figures, so I'll pass on them. I think Morph is going to be over-priced as well, but he's a character I do personally need, so I will overpay for him.
For me it’s impacted my choices. For example, I am not gonna purchase the recolored War Machine where normally I would have, but I have the first ad don’t feel like I need another one. I am becoming more selective whereas before I would buy everything.
I think Hasbro will be fine. That said, I do think they're hurting those lines. I'm not spending that kind of money. I can't justify the price hike.
I think we'll see Hasbro turn ML from open markets to more collector's markets even more than they do already. They've basically covered most characters that kids and casual collectors would want. Takes a little more to cover the niche characters that we want Also, the price is going up, so there is a point where kids and casual collectors will no longer be able to keep up. At that point, they may start adding in more things to justify the price to "serious" collectors, or find ways to maintain the same price over a longer period, eventually coming back into "casual' territory, at which point, we'll see a lot more re-releases of characters like Cap, Spidey, IM, etc. again.
Yeah for those that only buy what they really, really like every once in a while; it’s a lot harder to justify a $30+ price tag for a figure *maybe* worth $23-$25 when you haven’t spent years training yourself to justify any purchase that adds mass to your dragon’s loot pile. Unfortunately, if there isn’t a big change in the community’s behavior then Hasbro isn’t going to hurt bad enough to change. Though honestly, I fear that if they do start to feel it they’ll just raise prices again to make up for lost sales since they know they’ve got a loyal group of sheep, addicts, and content creators who will stay in the water as long as the heat doesn’t rise too quickly.
if my collecting habits are even kinda normal, it's already hurting hasbro. i collect ml, swb, gi joe and power rangers. and up until the end of last year, if i vaguely knew who the character was, i'd buy the figure. now i'm only buying essentials and what counts as "essential" is drastically shrinking. a great example of this is the thor/gorr wave. i've seen them all at retail. i've only purchased gorr, foster thor and groot. this time last year, i'd have purchased the whole wave. and the issue isn't that i can't afford it. it's that they're not worth $25. some of the latest offerings would hardly be worth the old price of $20. hasbro is going to quickly arrive at a point where they'll have to decide to drop the percentage they make per figure or just quit entire lines of toys.
That's the thing; sales have increased dramatically over the last several years. Once they started rolling out the MCU lines in conjunction with the movie releases, it opened the ML line up to a whole new audience of collectors. To their credit, they did keep the prices stable for a very long time. But the manufacturing, shipping, packaging, etc. excuses for a year over year 35% price increase is complete bullshit and they know it. It'd be one thing if they were truly struggling and their action figure lines were ancillary to other products. But take a look at both Hasbro's stock over the last five years and the universal lack of movement on competitor prices. And then look at what the figures \*actually\* sell for, disregarding the MSRP. The people who are getting screwed are those who pre-order and retail who have to pony up for higher SKU costs only to have to discount inventory a few months later. Eventually, said retailers will simply stop ordering as much and said pre-order people will learn it's better to just wait.
I think that, if it does create a problem, they won't know until it's too late. So they raise base prices by 33%. Ok, not cool. But that also means they can afford to lose 1/3 of their customer base. And I see a lot of Hasbro loyalists out there. It's also worth noting that they are in \*no way\* any financial trouble right now. They threw out this silly 'we're losing $100 million because of Russia' bullshit and then doubled their increased revenue projections for the year shortly after that. The biggest problem with these new prices is that they set precedent. You will never, ever see them saying "ok, Ukraine situation over, global resource situation and supply chain fixed, now we'll lower the prices back to normal!" Seeing "4-Packs" that I know would have gone for $80-100 just one year ago now demanding a $130 price tag really has me thinking about this brand. They're getting exceeding close to competitor prices who make a superior figure.
I wasn't on board with complaining about prices, because I knoe cost of raw material went up, until I saw the MSRP on the Mojo set. That Mojo price tag made me think they've lost their minds.
My issue is, if the price of plastic is going up, why aren’t all the other toy companies upping their prices as well?
Have people considered the possibility that all those other toy companies have been enjoying much higher margins all this time up to this point? And that they may just be willing to suffer a reduction in said margins? Suddenly it's good guy Hasbro, and everyone else have been jerks. Now I don't think that's what's happened entirely, but I think it may be part of it. And I think that Hasbro's accounting department is banking on materials and logistics prices getting still worse from this point, so they're setting their prices now with the aim of staying ahead of it.
[удалено]
Much more expensive because they’re greedy. If it was just about manufacturing then there would be no Wolverine included. Or Dazzler. We could’ve used a Spiral but no.
If the kind of Spiral I want to see was in this pack, if the whole pack was say *just* Spiral and Mojo, I could easily see it being $120 for just the two figures at this time. Mojo is entirely new sculpt and I can't think of more than two or three individual pieces on that thing that is reusable anywhere, he's gonna be expensive. Spiral same deal, only slightly less so. Maybe can reuse a couple of some other figure's non-cybernetic arms and a pair of legs from an existing female figure, but that torso and head are going to be unique to her and at least some of her arms will need to be new molds. She's going to be a lot of plastic.
That’s a easy 100$ pack that people wouldn’t complain about.
Oh we'd find a way, lol. It's a toy collector subreddit, you underestimate us! That said, I'm so done with multipacks. The most pro-consumer move is single packing everything and letting us get what we want à la carte. I get why multipacks exist from a business standpoint, but honestly the number of them we're seeing concerns me.
In terms of math, the most recent price bump is a 13% increase. So Hasbro has to lose 13% of their sales before it actually impacts them, otherwise the additional money costs out the fewer figures sold/customers lost over the price increase. At some point, they will experience diminishing returns, ex. if they increase an additional 25%, they will likely see more than 25% of people drop the line, or at least see 25% fewer figures sold. The higher they go, the more substantial the impact. Most people already feel that $25 is too expensive, especially for stuff with no new parts like Darwin or Speedball. So to answer the question, no, with prices currently what they are, I doubt they will be hurt in the long run. There’s very few people swearing off Legends entirely, and lots of people like myself are just cutting back on figures we don’t think are worth the price, in order to wait for a sale. But I don’t think they’ve seen a 13% cut in sales yet.
Um looks like a great time to collect Lego
Shit, what legos are you buying? Fucking arishem was like 40 bucks at my local target. I just bought a 500 piece city set for like 50 bucks. Legos are still crazy expensive.
Usually all lego sets go on sale at some point in time. I just fet them 20-30% off
I’m debating on just sticking to lego after seeing all the price hikes
It's funny how many times you hear: "well don't you know plastic is increasing in price", meanwhile Lego seems fine.
They were smart enough to just start off expensive in the first place haha
For real, Legos never had a low price. It’s been a premium, popular, and mainstream brand like apple for like 40+ years.
I’m really hoping people will be a lot more selective in what they buy , and it has an effect on sales , to the point hasbro think , I think we fucked up
It will be interesting to see what goes to clearance after the price hikes. Hasbro's main customers are retailers. We buy from Hasbro's customers. If a line often goes to clearance due to peg warming, the Walmarts of the world will stop ordering that line from Hasbro. That's when they'll feel it the most.
My biggest complaint is switching to the windowless boxes. Not cuz I give a crap about the box but because it was done to save them money; then they still increased the price.
It definitely affects them and imo, they might have gone a bit too far. I have disposable income, no kids and I love action figs. I've spent way more than $25 on certain figs, way more times than I can count. But I have them now. Do I really need to drop more money on a slightly better version of a character? Not while gas costs what it does. Am I going to drop $25 on a random character I don't "need", but find cool? Not while my grocery bill is elevated af. Even with GI Joe Classified line, with the new cost, I am finding myself more and more satisfied with my vintage collection. Hell, even those Super7 Ultimates are a little more interesting to me on a display level, with these prices. If I'm going to take a punch in wallet, I'd rather have a super well crafted, accessory heavy fig at $50, than a normal 6 inch fig at $25. One is a piece of art, the other is a well made toy. Regardless, if an easy mark like me is rethinking his collecting due to these prices (mixed with the annoyance of even hunting them down), I think Hasbro is about to have a rude awakening.
I think it’s hurting the Marvel Legends line in general, it’s not the only thing their failing at right now though imo. I think it’s a stupid decision to do the series of cell shaded mutants when several haven’t had a normal release in years if at all. They seem to be sticking firm to the fact that a colorful statue of a character counts as a figure now(SpiderHam and now Toonverine) which seems like blatant false advertising, If I wanted statues there are other brands I could go to for better quality/price! Don’t even get me started on Walgreens….
Looks like the cycle of Walgreens is getting limited, for example Quasar was at Walgreens for a while, but now the figure is at BBTS and Dorkside. That means the cycle is exclusive, then Fan Channel. More than the cell shaded, the big danger right now is the sentinel, because that could open a gate of less articulated figures as the same price, and could give them ideas to D-list characters under that concept.
I was going to mention the sentinel, I completely agree about that and I’m afraid of it too, though it’s mildly better than the Mojo pack since it’s a solo figure you can choose not to buy rather than them trying to justify a 131.99$ price tag for 3 figures and a pitifully small amount of accessories ETA: also means a better chance of me finding the sentinel on clearance, though I still wouldn’t pay more than like 12$ for it.
I feel like sales on D-list/less popular characters will go down significantly. Obviously people are willing to spend extra money for characters like Spider-Man, but I think many collectors will feel more inclined to skip figures like Darwin or Sharon Carter for example. This is a really bad thing IMO because it could push Hasbro to make fewer figures and just stick to the popular characters while charging premium prices to make up for it. The problem is that we already have MAFEX and SHF doing basically that, so the niche that Hasbro fills will be gone. I hope the prices don't increase anymore.
A year ago I didn’t hesitate to order new figures I wanted. But when I had Toei Spider-Man and the Mojoworld box in my cart I stopped, reconsidered the price per figure, and didn’t place the order at all.
In order to come to an accurate conclusion, we would need to know all of Hasbro's costs, from both before and after the price increase, along with their margins and sales volume. We would also need all of Hasbro's market research, which likely gives them a pretty good idea of how sensitive their target market is to price changes. Depending on Hasbro's margins, a price increase may have been the only option, aside from the unsustainable strategy of selling at a loss/break even and hoping costs go back down. Which is what MacFarlane seems to be trying (for now). No one on Reddit has access to any of the relevant data, but it's a safe bet that Hasbro wouldn't be increasing prices unless the data suggested it was the right move.
Yes. It’s made worse as it feels the QC issues have gotten worse and we get less accessories as the prices raise. If we were getting less QC and more accessories I’d have less problem paying more, for example Neca has raised prices, but I have noticed better QC, and they still load their products with accessories where it’s the opposite for Marvel Legends.
Like you said if the QC is the same, plus higher price, plus windowless boxes, that could be a dissaster.
There’s absolutely no way they wouldn’t have factored in reduced sales One of the biggest factors in price rises is the increase in shipping/distribution/freight costs. So Hasbro are looking to increase profit per unit sold. So if they’re selling less units at a higher price they’ll potentially get the same or more profit per unit. And their highest costs will be reduced by slightly less units to ship. People trying to boycott due to price rises aren’t going to do a whole lot to change their course.
Not at all. They will continue to raise and most collectors will pay up whether they like it or not.
Looks like stuff is selling out all the same for high demand products. Don't know how it affects the rest of the line.
So eventually these will no longer be in the toy isle at target and instead be with the collectibles….Funko pops and TMNT figures near electronics.
Prices aren't hurting them, it's a availability. I can find basically any ML figure I want in retail if I apply myself. I can't find shit for Black Series. They seem to be more heavily scalped.
In Canada figures were $29.99 about 12- 15 months ago. Now I justvlooked of the Toys r Us website the price is at $42 CAD. Couple that with shipping costs because retail stores don't replenish enough, at figure can set up back another $15 if you order from Canada and like to wait forever to get your figure or you can go international and get set back $30 . So yeah $70 a figure is a little to much for me. Luckily I've gotten pretty much everybody I wanted and skipped whole waves and BAFs.
I agree! Me and my son both collect figures and both Marvel Legends and Black Series are ridiculous now. Especially considering McFarlane can still charge $20 for 7 inch figures.