Remember that legit companies have lot of expenses which bootleggers don't have to pay for. These include:
+ Legal costs. e.g.: maintaining/securing trademarks.
+ Marketing - this includes getting customer feedback, and we know that Takara actively does this. Previously they had those awesome self-addressed survey cards, now it's all done online - but there's a whole division of people who collate this data. There's also product promotion, such as running competitions (with highly sought after lucky draw prizes!) etc.
+ Production - HasTak would have higher standards of production than most bootleggers. Also take into account production run numbers, distribution, shipping etc.
+ Customer care - TakaraTOMY maintains two call centres (one in Tokyo another in Osaka) which are open Mon-Fri during business hours (except public holidays).
+ Running costs - TakaraTOMY employ a host of people to run their business on a daily basis including receptionists/secretaries, call centre workers, marketing, R&D, engineering, accountants, section managers, branch managers (Japanese companies operate through a strict hierarchical structure where there are multiple divisions each with their own manager and vice manager), interpreters (they would need Chinese interpreters to communicate with their factories in China and English interpreters to communicate with Hasbro), photographers etc.
+ Wages: I suspect that most TakaraTOMY employees would be better paid that your average bootleg worker. The bootleg execs are well paid - I've seen how they live - but I'm talking about your average Joe. And we have no idea what their worker conditions are like - they could be using child labour for all we know. In the Choice Magazine article that Tiby posted last year, factories used by Hasbro (and we know that they use the same factories as Takara) have relatively good conditions for workers by ETI standards. Some KOs might be produced in the same factory - but those would be more recent and current moulds, like KO ROTF toys. With G1 KOs they're most probably being produced elsewhere, so who knows what their conditions are like. (-_-)
+ Other fees: like retailers - HasTak need to pay leases for shelf location, especially if it's an endcap.
.....etc etc.
These are all big things to take into consideration.

From Wikipedia:
"[Bootleggers] see the possibilities of removing the middle men (i.e. the parent corporation) and marketing directly to the consumer."

Quote Originally Posted by liegeprime
HasTak's just too slow.
They would be slower. They have a lot more hoops to jump through, such as product meetings, seeking approval, gaining approval, R&D (yes, even reissuing an existing toy would have some R&D, _especially_ if the mould is at all damaged or deteriorated). On top of all that, they have a lot more formal procedures (and Japan is a country where there is a long series of formal procedures for everything) to go through.

They need to tread carefully to ensure that the won't make a loss from a toy being reissued. No company likes to see their product shelf warm. And because production cost is higher, the cost of their product is higher. This decision is a lot easier for counterfeiters because they know that with lower production costs, they can sell for lower prices and thus move more units. HasTak work within an entirely different budget structure... it's a completely uneven playing field as counterfeiters have an unfair advantage over legit companies.

As consumers, all we can do is continue boycotting KOs and hope that this will drive them out of business, which in turn will hopefully encourage HasTak to give us more legit reissues.