>>8632983Hasbro, Bandai, Mattel, and other public companies need to grow their profits every year, so they need to cut shit from the bottom line, because revenue is also not unlimited nor always an upward trend.
So they cut paint apps, QC, engineering and talent; or reuse mold, move factories, increace prices (japanese collector companies basically have no ceiling for their prices) etc etc etc.
We've seen how the ML changed from Toy Biz to Hasbro. Toy Biz used to produce far more bodies, many more paint apps, have much more articulation, and better QC than Hasbro. Despite Toy Biz and Hasbro both being public companies, Toy Biz just didn't cut costs as much as Hasbro because Toy Biz didn't just produce toys. Toy Biz also owned Marvel and licensed the shit out of their properties. Tshirts, movies, etc tc etc. A multi-front business like that is able to support itself elsewhere, versus a purely toy company like Hasbro (at the time. cartoons mostly make their money as being toy commercials, btw).
Obviously, Hasbro has since grown their company by buying studios to make their own content and make money off of that too.
Companies like NECA try to do the same thing that Hasbro does with their re-re-re-reuse of molds, but they still produce far more unique sculpts.
DCC is another company who produced mostly unique molds.
All these companies have/had similar amount of engineering as a base ML does, if not more, with higher QC and more paint apps, but their figures only cost about $5 more than an ML. McFarlanes Toys is the same way, but they make mostly mass market toys with higher sales, so they're able to lower the prices to $20, same as Hasbro.
Anyway, as already mentioned in this thread, McFarlane Toys does cheap out. They don't include as many accessories as they do with other licenses (though it's still sometimes more accessories than other companys put out) and do increase the prices for figures with BAF pieces.
