As I was saying... ToysRUs here is not to blame for the high prices here... Hasbro America is. The YOTG pair have been found in America - Optimus is US$200, and Soundwave is US$210.Originally Posted by griffin
TRU pricing is based on Hasbro pricing... and the prices have been rising in all the other Hasbro countries since MP Soundwave. ToysRUs are just one of two chains (with Myer) that are willing to stock expensive collector toys, so they get tagged as the price-gouger. When in reality, if BigW were wanting to start stocking the collector-focused items like Masterpiece and Platinums, they would end up having the same price, because the wholesale price from Hasbro (in all countries) is already high.
Soundwave was probably the last Masterpiece that was cheaper than the Japanese version, and since people keep buying these things (not necessarily long-time fans - more the impulsive adults remembering the toys from their childhood), Hasbro just keeps bumping up prices.
As capitalism goes, it is basic supply and demand - but if they don't sell, they don't reduce prices of future releases, they just don't release anymore.
It's something I will comment on at BotCon to the Hasbro people, but I don't expect anything to change, because Hasbro HK have been leading the way for a few years now with their exclusives, and Hasbro America are now cashing in with theirs.
That's AU$270 for Optimus and AU$285 for Soundwave, just on the current exchange rate for any Australian thinking of importing from America (before shipping). Considering our YOTG Optimus is AU$299, I think it is amazing that Hasbro Australia were even allowed to sell it that close to the US dollar value. And on sale, our YOTG Optimus would be cheaper than America.
But these prices are just getting insane for US Hasbro... especially if Asia is almost half that price (YOTG Optimus was about US$110 in HK).
All these Platinum and Masterpiece sets selling at whatever price they keep setting, just encourages Hasbro America to keep pushing the envelope... seeing just how far will the collectors really go on these toys.
And that's if we didn't have the usual double-markup that we get on the smaller size classes. If these were converted like our Deluxe or Legends toys, they'd be AU$400 and AU$420.
We actually get it better here for larger toys than smaller ones, but the larger ones look worse because of how high the price still gets (compared to foreign sources).
Even the Insecticons are less than double the US pricing, as they are US$80 in America, compared to AU$150 here. It's not much below half, but if we had a consistent conversion of all Transformers toys in Australia, we'd have even higher prices on the collector-aimed toys.
Plus, Hasbro's Masterpiece Prowl was US$70 in America (about AU$85 at the time), making our AU$100 price "cheap" when comparing to what a US$10 Legends toy costs here (currently AU$18-20).
If you think about it, the regular retail toys for the parents and kiddies in Australia are being charged at a higher rate than the Collector ones (the mainlines are charged about double the US pricing so that Hasbro America gets a certain commission from other countries), so even if you can still import the Collector toy for less, Hasbro Australia is not price-gouging the collectors... They are actually squeezing money from the non-collectors to offset the prices of the expensive collector toys.
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