>>10741630>The absurd price increases is a move to shift the market to a "premium" type thing, basically pricing people out so that the itmn is exclusivePrice increases actually means fewer products will sell and generally only happen because sales are down or production costs went up.
And prices only go up to where the producer (who generally create studies to find out) to where they think consumers will pay up to, and that price also includes the fact that they'll be selling fewer units. Companies would rather sell more at lower prices, but the market isn't there
Shit like the Star Wars BLACK series was heavily marketed as a premium line because they were facing increasing costs (disney + chinese riots) and they couldn't get by only on 3¾ sales. So they pushed 1/12 scale as a premium toyline, hyping up the bestest artist studio sculpting their toys (same people they'd be using since the 90s), and released $19.99 figures despite being no better than the $15 ML line (which eventually raised in price to $20).
So all that hype is just to justify their price.
And these are kids toys, but kids like to be treated like adults, so all that marketing is really aimed at them. "Collector" toys has always been a buzzword. Ever since collector toys started being produced in the 90s, the figures have always been little to no better than the shit you find in the kids aisles. Even today, there's a lot of adult only (never tested to be safe for children) collector lines that charge a lot of money and aren't even 15% better than kids toys, despite being 200-600% pricier.
Also, I'd like to point out that higher prices are higher than they need to be, because they need to take into account the fact that prices will go up over the years. It's higher to be a buffer for the next contract with the factory/licensor. Smaller companies don't have that sort of pull, so their prices mostly go up in real time
Some collector lines do charge a premium just for their name, but that's rare
