[theNAMmagazine]

Quote:

Originally Posted by WilliePete

Curious how he plans to keep this reasonably priced when he charged $150 for sarge with fabric jacket...

Makes me wonder if we should pull an Articulated Ninja and put Bobby on blast for the greedy, "corporate" mark-up, comparing the $149 soft-goods Sarge to the $30 soft goods jacket on EbaY and a clearance priced Outback.

[SmokePants]

I had no plans to follow his content, but this showed up on my feed and my mind conjured all the spurious shit he could possibly say about it and I was intrigued enough to watch. I wasn't disappointed.

Some thoughts:

- Oh the irony of using a mass retail Spin Master vehicle to shame an online-only McFarlane vehicle after he just used a mass retail McFarlane vehicle to shame an online-only Hasbro vehicle.
- Dude does not understand cost amortization or economies of scale. When you have the ability to sell a lot of something, it's cheaper. When you can't sell as much, costs go up.
- Dude does not understand that the market for children's toys is about 10x the size of the market for adults (age 17+, not "kidults", which are age 12+).
- Dude does not understand that for a $40 item to succeed, children need to buy it in vast numbers. Adult collector adoption is irrelevant.
- Dude does not understand that if a vehicle is priced over $100, the child market is basically priced out, unless it is a very large and spectacular item.
- Dude does not understand that the Batman vehicles and Buzz Lightyear's $40 vehicle from last year were 1) tied to blockbuster movie releases and 2) were the HERO vehicles from kid-friendly content. If those 2 conditions are met, cheap vehicles can happen at retail! Go figure! Will they SUCCEED at retail? That's another question.
- Dude does not understand than just because a company rolls the dice on a vehicle at retail, it still has to PERFORM at retail in order to be declared a victory for his "side". His preliminary endorsement means absolutely nothing. Spin Master and McFarlane can still get burned on these items.
- Dude does not understand that if he refuses to pay more than the bare minimum for vehicles, he'll be buying lousy Batmobiles until he runs out of space. Congratulations.
- Dude does not understand that there are a million ways to make a vehicle. When your goal is to hit a sub-$50 retail price point, you will get one result. When your goal is to tempt adult collectors, you will get another result. Vehicles can look identical in pictures, but in-hand, they are not.
- Dude does not understand that an online "sell out" does not mean anything without knowing how many units were available to be sold.
- Dude does not understand that retailer exclusives are not scarce like convention exclusives. There will be more of those SM Batwings available and they may even be clearanced out for far less than $40. Remember the Rise of Evil Retroblasting video? He had so much egg on his face from that premature ejaculation of a video that he caused the egg shortage.

Look, I'm all or frugality and DIY fix-ups and customization projects. That's a perfectly valid mode of this hobby. But he's saying that expensive vehicles are not justified. That you can debunk prices by cherry-picking examples of cheap toys -- paying no attention to the finer details, materials, or production sizes. He's telling us we're wrong for paying "ridiculous" prices for vehicles. He's telling us that we would be living in a world of cheap abundance IF ONLY we would stop paying the exorbitant prices. Dude does not understand reality. He's just plain wrong.