I guess I was just overly optimistic about it. There seem to be so many people out there who are willing and able to drop $200 at a time on third-party figures like it's no big deal, and no shortage of people willing to spend $300 on MP BW Megs and $400 on Prime V3. I thought for sure that there'd be at least 8,000 people with more money than they knew what to do with who'd be happy to throw $600 down for Unicron.
I guess what I hadn't thought about was that people have months or even years to plan ahead and save for those purchases, while Hasbro was only giving them a few weeks to pony up for Unicron.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amA case of right idea, wrong size and time? I can't imagine anyone outside the US going for Unicron (the shipping costs would probably add another chunk of change to an already expensive toy) and, to be quite honest, this is asking a lot of anyone interested.
Good point. I seem to recall that people in Canada who ordered it had somewhere around an extra $100 tacked on for shipping/handling, and it sounds like Takara's price was pretty inflated compared to the US one for their preorders. And I'm assuming that any shops in the UK or China that were importing it for their customers would have to tack on at least $100 of their own to make a profit, even if Hasbro is probably selling the thing to them in bulk for less than the crowdfunding price. So for most of the world it's not even a $600 toy, it's more like a $700 or $800 one.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amThe article about tariffs is interesting, specifically Hasbro looking to shift manufacturing outside of China. I'm guessing that might have something to do with the current US/China trade spat, as well as the costs of selling products to an increasingly shrinking market,
as consumers move away from physical toys to online gaming and such (the amount of infants and children with tablets and such seems to be increasing, just from what I've seen when out and about).
Hasbro's been shifting production out of China for a while now. I'm pretty sure most Transformers have been made in Vietnam for the last few years, and if memory serves they manufacture some things in India as well. So if the tariffs are actually having an effect (not just being used as a convenient excuse for price hikes that were being planned anyway) then it's just to accelerate what was already happening.
As for the underlined, honestly I don't really see this happening. Aside from having a little kid myself, I'm surrounded by people with young families and all the kids I know play with toys, even into their teens. They play with video games and electronics
too, of course, but so did our generation. What
has changed is that games are relatively cheaper than they were, while toys have gotten relatively more expensive. When I can buy a Batman video game for a kid for less than a single Batman action figure, something's gone seriously askew in the toy industry. Heck, if your kids have a tablet they can use, a lot of the games they want are free. I think that adds up to fewer toys being bought, but not necessarily less time spent actually playing with the ones that they do get.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amHaving to pay more for general goods and services in the UK post-Brexit (our new PM's gamble to prorogue parliament and reconvene close to the European Summit to force a deal one way or the other and our current preparations mean it's looking ever more likely we're going to leave the EU with no deal and have to set about operating under WTO rules), means toys will be an easy pass for me if they're going to increase again from what I already feel are silly prices (especially where Cyberverse is concerned!).
Serious question -- does the sound of Churchill and co. rolling over in their graves in disgust over the quality of your current political leadership keep you all up at night, or have you all just learned to filter it out?
I honestly can't believe that after three years and the same amount of prime ministers, your government
still hasn't gotten their shit together. The whole thing probably could have been reasonably painless with competent leadership in place, but hell, I don't think it would even be possible to make a bigger mess of things than what's actually happened. I hope things start to turn around for you guys soon.
Clay wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:18 pmSo yeah, they made it a small window of time for the campaign at the same as they limited the buyer pool while also launching the campaign at the same time as the invoices for Convoy 3 would be coming due. Derp.
Good point! Lining it up exactly with the release of the new Prime was definitely a brain cramp. There's bound to be a big overlap between the people who'd be able to afford Unicron and the people who bought the new Prime, and they were basically being asked to spend over $1000 on Transformers in a single week. And Omega Supreme is also due to release imminently, isn't he? That's getting closer to $1200 if someone wants all three.
Clay wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:18 pm
I think it also doesn't help that there
is the existing titan class with figures of similar height, even if Unicron weighs three times as much. Transformers fans, generally, seem to equate size with height, and are completely oblivious to other dimensions or mass. I think that wiki thing still remarks about Animated Lockdown and Lugnut as being aberrant, with no acknowledgement that Lockdown is super thin and Lugnut is squat, thick, and weighs twice as much.
I've heard a lot of chatter to that effect, for sure.
I also think the Titans might have hurt Unicron in a couple different ways, too. Even though he's got a lot more mass it doesn't seem like he's
that much bigger in robot mode, and the "wow factor" isn't there anymore. The sheer size is impressive, but it's not
that impressive anymore. Plus, someone who owns a lot of the existing Titans may have some trouble just finding space for Unicron, let alone actually doing anything with him when he arrives.