Raving Toy Maniac

I hear you.

The cost of everything has become ridiculous...mfg costs, fuel and other factors are causing the increase. As a MFG of special metals products, we see it every day.

Yeah, when Marvel Legends went up to 20 bucks a piece, I was out (barring some odd favorite being made). In fact, the first time I skipped a wave (when I saw it in retail) was that Fin Fang Foom Hulk wave that was like 15 bucks a figure with a huge BAF piece, which at the time I thought was ridiculous. 20 bucks a piece and hard to find? Forget it.

I was ok with paying a premium for online-only figures, but man some of the recent DC and He-man figures have been (to me) fringe-level and not really that desirable, and I had to commit to getting all of them just to guarantee that I could get them. Ugh.

Even Transformers have slowly but surely gone up in price, and the figures have basically shrunk.

Meanwhile, the yen price has been insane, but I still find myself drawn to stuff like Figuarts... sure it's at a premium price, but I can actually get most of the ones that I want (even exclusives) and most are pretty well made.

I do get the sense that toys are going the way of comics and catering to a smaller and smaller collector's market because the relative cost is so high. But who knows?

My son is into video game figures and has asked me for the Left for Dead Smoker Figure, a figure normally priced around $14.99. Well this figure is at only 1 TRU out of 4 in my area at a whopping $28.49. Are you serious? I waited a month or so to see if the TRUs would get them is but no dice. Same thing with the Half Life Gordan figure, double SRP. I realize TRU is basically the biggest retailer of collector based figures, but double retail is un-acceptable.

Diminishing interest in toys by kids combined with an ever-increasing price point will all but kill the figure market in a few years. Parents don't have the disposable income to drop on toys now and it seems that kids are less and less interested in things that aren't video game-related anymore.

How else can anyone explain the popularity of all of this over-abundance of Angry Birds merchandise?

Within 10 years, the action figure market will be no more or on it's last heartbeat.

Eh, people have been saying that for the past 15-20 or so years and we haven't really seen any solid proof of that. I think the production costs plus lack of disposable income are the real culprits. Whenever things balance out again we'll see the toy industry rebound as well. Problem is most of the companies are greedy and not likely to bring the prices back down when the demand goes up.

Emerje

No kidding. I so tire of the "chicken little" routine.

"Oh, the toy market will be dead in ten years!". Really? Because people were saying that back in 2000. Superhero toys were dead back then, and video game figures were the new fad. Meanwhile, we're on to 20+ waves of DC Universe Classics, and Marvel Legends at mass retail as of now. So on, and so forth. One of many examples of "dying" trends, and uneducated, baseless speculation. And for what? What reason? So, IF it were to happen, and you HAPPEN to be right, you get the pleasure of saying "told you so"? You're the same type of person that will be making that same claim in ten years time when we're still getting figures at retail. I mean, where does it end?

Just...stop. You've got no proof. You've got no basis for the claim.

.

The price of oil went way up, and plastic is made from oil in addition to oil's major role in transportation costs (not just bringing toys to market, but also bringing manufacturing materials to the factory).

Remember a few years ago there was a big to-do about lead content levels in toys manufactured in China? Well that led to some new toy-specific product safety rules and regs that companies are required to follow, and that's adding to the manufacturing cost.

Wages in China have gone up, pretty substantially in some provinces.

Action figures won't be dead or dying in ten years. The market will be different, as it is now different from ten years ago.

Wow... so much for stating an opinion as part of an open discussion. I'll not make that mistake again.

"I fully agree with whatever the prevailing opinion is around here."
-- Leonardo T Dragon

You didn't state an opinion. You made a declaration, and stated it as fact. And you got called out on it. Stop with the mock indignation; pretending to be butt-hurt to garner sympathy. Merry Christmas.

I don't mean to dogpile here, but let's stop using "butt hurt" around here.

My apologies. Is anally assaulted out of the question, too?

Costs have gone up in the past and havent ballooned
retail prices like it has in recent years.
My educated "opinion" is the following -
The giant retailers, well aware of the toy scalpers of the day,
have done their homework. Theyve been watching...
Its what they do and they know how to do it.
Mr Flea Market Guy and Mr eBay Seller are no longer charging $20 for a new figure....
The giant retailer IS...! Bye bye middle man.

Why is it so hard to just tone the language down a bit without arguing about it?

It, uh....was just a joke?

Here's the contributing factors:

Specialty shops like Sam Goody, Suncoast, Tower Records, and FYE are gone. These once held the Mezco, Sota, Resuarus, Palisades, and McFarlane action figures that Toys r Us and Walmart wouldn't carry. Without these specialty shops the companies mentioned died out/changed business models to suit mass-market chains. A good example of this would be McFarlane no longer making Spawn/Dragon/Monster figures but instead video game/television/sports figure that Walmart will carry.

Video games have captured the imagination and replaced kids having adventures with their action figures outside/in their room with having adventures on screen. Instead of bringing their favorite action figures over to their friends when they spend the night they bring their Nintendo DS or iPad, sit in a circle and play Pokemon all night. Walmarts have realized this and many taken 2 toy aisles out to expand the video game/tablet area of the electronics to snag the attention of kids.

Big Retail which is Walmart, Target, and Toys R Us, have taken over the toy market and are forcing toy companies to comply with heavy-handed tactics when it comes to selling in their store. Many case assortments/revisions are tailored to the request of the store. X number of this figure but only 1 of this other because 'we say so' or we aren't carrying your line. They also chargeback the company for unsold product and charge them for shelf space taken up with unsold product. Then comes the unlimited and unconditional returns, forcing line changes/seasonal lines, and of course forcing toy companies to create 'exclusives' in order to have their lines sold at certain places. Long story short, toy companies have to bend over and let Big Retail have their way in order to sell anything.

China's manufacturing costs are going up as areas develop and become more financially stable. What cost 20 cents an hour to assemble now costs 40 cents. And that doubles the price of the figure when you factor in hundreds of thousands of individual figures. Each action figure/toy is hand assembled and hand painted, mainly by women, all who work for pennies on the dollar an hour. There are no toy manufacturing plants in the USA because of minimum wage. You would need to pay someone $8.00 an hour to assemble and paint a figure it costs 40cents and hour in China to.

Oil really isn't a factor in raw materials. The main chemical in most action figure plastics is chlorine gas, like what's in PVC the soft plastic almost all figures are comprised of. Barely any petroleum is used in the others. However the 3-month trip on a giant barge that runs on diesel fuel, then the semi that drives from the distribution center, and to the store use the oil that costs so much now. Transportation of goods is getting more and more expensive.

Comic book stores are dwindling. There's so few left that toy companies cannot count on their numbers to help sustain their business model when Diamond comic distributors is the only (or one of) one left.

And those are the main reasons the toy industry is in the state of peril it's in today. There's no real way to fix it either. You would have to get rid of or drastically lower USA's minimum wage and then the cost of living, start using our own gas supplies, get kids to go outside to play or use their imagination instead of a game telling them what to do, and bring back brick-and-mortar stores to give Big Retail competition.

*applause* well done sir.

Blank...I love you bro..but I don't think LTD was stating it as a fact more than emphasizing his opinion.

What amazes me is that I read on various forums how such and such was found in _____ yet in my area..nothing. I hardly ever see new ML and have yet to see any new DC product. I buy 99% of what I get from online venues. Amazon has become Aisle 7C for me.

And please...I don't mean to come off like a righteous jerk...I've known you since you were a kid Rick and Fred has been a friend of mine for a long time. We are the last of the original crew here, so let's be respectful and remember that sometimes written posts can come off the wrong way in an unintended manner.

That was my inner Jeff Cope coming out to calm the waters and spread Holiday cheer:)

they should just go back to making figures out of wood.

why is there so much "hands-on" work required with figures? why can't they be assembled/painted via machine like so much other stuff? or are they and i just don't know wtf i'm talking about?

I wonder how much licensing costs have gone up?

We've known for a long time that mass market movie-based licenses usually suck, but are no cheaper than anything else. But look at something like GI Joe compared to Marvel Universe: similar sized figures, similar prices, but Joes seem to have more tooling and a lot more accessories. Now is that the companies just relying on the license to sell the product, or does the cost of the license prohibit them from spending more on the product without raising prices even more? Recent stuff like Young Justice, the Spiderman movie line, and the Batman movie line have been pretty pricey and not-so-great...

I think the reason so much of the deco work is hands-on is that it's surprisingly fine detail work that's just more skillfully handled by a human. Even if that work could be automated, it changes significantly from item-to-item, and you likely lose the felxibility and economies if scale if you have to stop and completely re-program the automation so often. That kind of technology works best when it's doing the exact same task over and over and over.

As to other aspects of the manufacturing process, I suspect some of that might be automated -- but whatever the pay rate is, 20 cents an hour, 40 cents an hour, it's likely still a better deal for a manufacturer than the investment of automating a factory.

That's probably one of the biggest factors that doesn't get brought up enough. Toy companies are at the mercy of the retail stores, not the other way around. "Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price" probably doesn't exist anymore in that context, probably why a lot of people just call it the SRP. We know TRU does unreasonable things with their prices openly, but the other retailers have manipulated the prices in less obvious ways. The Toy companies themselves probably seeing anything from the increased prices aside from lower sales. I know when the current run of Transformers first hit HasbroToyShop.com they were priced at only $11.99, it wasn't until they started showing up at all retailers that the price went up to $14.99 which is still lower than the Walmart/Target price.

I'm OK with that.

Emerje

With 3D printers now poised to drop in price dramatically, I'd say there's a good chance that we see continuing technological advancement that ends up making figures a lot cheaper to produce. It seems easy to imagine that computerized painting/coloring would be a doable step. I'm not sure about combining and gluing different parts together though. Although perhaps a 3D printer could build an entire articulated figure in one solid piece with different parts of the figure connected with thin plastic that would "snap" when the joints were moved the first time, sort of like those "webs" of accessories that used to come with Joe vehicles you had to twist apart.

http://images.gizmag.com/hero/formlabs-form1-3d-printer-.jpg

Heck, with 3D printer tech becoming more popular I could see a day four or five years down the line where you "buy" a figure and have it made at home.

Yeah, prices are breaking my heart. I just saw the rest of the metal men on big bad toy store... Tin is a pvc accessory for Platinum, and if you buy plat and lead, you are talking $85 without even adding shipping!

C'mon! I won't be able to sit for weeks if I take them up on this deal.

Well, they are technically only 53 bucks if you happened to snag them from Matty directly, BBTS is just upping the prices of exclusives, which is normal. That being said, 53 bucks for an oversized Lead and an undersized, non articulated tin is still a lot of money. At least Lead is somewhat justifiable, unlike that abomination that is Rocket Red. Trust me, I love DC (well, pre-new-52) and I have a hard time sitting after paying all that money plus Matty shipping for that DC Universe sub.

I dont see them listed at matty collector or mattel's webstore.. where are they? I think I have a free shipping coupon from them, and that would take some of the sting out.

They went on sale last month on the 17th but they're already sold out. Now you'd have to buy them from BBTS or another third party.

Well, so much for getting a metal men set.. unless they end up being so unpopular that they get dumped at conventions by vendors stuck with them.

I;m SO glad I bought Gold, Iron and Mercury now. >8(

While out this weekend at a mall which once was great for finding figures,As its been brought up in this thread that stores like Sam Goody,Suncoast,FYE are all gone.Even now Spencers & Hot Topic may have a couple of figures from a new film but the days of the wall of action figures at spencers is long gone.I used to be able to find all the great new figures back then but when those places closed or stopped carrying figures a few years ago,It dried up.
Even the game stops dont carry every action figure line like they did in the mid 2000.

The price too is a factor.Dropping $20.00 or plus on a figure just kills the checkbook.
Action figures will never die out..it just may quite a while before we see a major resugence of them as we knew before.