Toa Tahu, Onua, and Kopaka: $20 (per set)
Toa Lewa, Gali, and Pohatu: $15 (per set)
All of the protectors: $9 (per set)
Lord of Skull Spiders: $15
(Correct me if I’m wrong on any of the pricings.)
Does anyone else think that these are completely outrageous? For 20 dollars, you were able to get something like Brutaka – not a normal Hero Factory build with little leg extenders. For 9 dollars, you were able to get one of the Toa Metru or Nuva. Now, you can get a tiny little figure with a cheap ‘studling gun’. Even 15 dollars is cutting it close, considering a set with the normal Hero Factory build should cost around 9 dollars – if not less.
Key word of the day: Inflation. According to Google, Inflation is “A general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.” Basically, inflation means that the value of one dollar would be worth much less in 2014 than in 2006.
For example, let’s say you buy all your groceries in 2006 for $100 dollars. In 2014, that same amount of groceries would be somewhere around $117. There’s also the increase in production costs in the past 8 years. I’m not sure of the specifics, but I know that it costs more to produce plastic-based products. With inflation, increased production costs, and probably many other things I can’t think of, Lego is forced to raise their prices up to make a profit.
tl;dr version: Lego isn’t being unreasonable by asking for higher prices.
Say, LEGO has stuff. You want that stuff, so you have to give LEGO some stuff in return for the stuff LEGO is giving you. Now, what are you going to use? America loves to use paper stuff as a medium of exchange, so let’s do paper stuff. When you first make the paper stuff, LEGO’s like “oh that’s so cool and new and rare! I’ll give you one stuff for two paper stuffs!” You say “deal” and go on you merry way. Meanwhile, you figure “Hey, if I make a lot if this paper stuff, I can get a lot of stuff back!” So you start printing buttloads of paper stuff, and you basically create a medium of exchange.
LEGO comes out with some new stuff you want to buy about a year later. Your paper stuff has been in circulation for a long time now, and you’ve printed hundreds of thousands of paper stuffs, so when you approach LEGO again, you say “I’ll give you two paper stuffs for one stuff.” LEGO doesn’t like this, because paper stuffs aren’t very rare any more. They lost their buying power. People still use it because it’s convenient, but it’s worth a lot lot less.
LEGO says “no, it’s not rare and special anymore, I want 20 paper stuffs for this stuff.”
That’s basically currency inflation.
A lot of other factors besides just the build go into the pricing. But inflation and cost of plastic are two of them.
Inflation or not, they’re selling normal hero factory sets (yes, I do realize that they have a gear function, but so did the rest of the pre-Inika Toa.) for the price of a titan.
It’s not unreasonable any way you look at it. I mean, LEGO has to make a profit off of these things, a decent amount of profit. Honestly, there’s advertising costs and employee salaries and web hosting costs and plastic production and a whole lot of other factors that really do justify the prices LEGO has put on the sets. Be glad that we aren’t getting 30 or 40 dollar sets, because that could happen realistically.
As a consumer, I know that it’s a lot of money out of pocket, but it’s going to LEGO, what could go wrong?
True, but the issue arises when the cost of the sets equates to more than the average person of that age would be able to afford. I’m not sure about anyone else but as a kid of age 6-14, I was never at the stage where I could easily spend about £179.87 on Lego in order to get the entire Winter wave… knowing that they’ll be even more expensive sets in the Summer.
Granted I’ve seen young kids with phones that cost a ton more, but that’s only due to really dumb parents willing to spend insane amounts on kids. Assuming Lego is not entirely reliant on parents buying their kids everything, they should be reasonably priced so a kid could afford at the very least the six main Toa which currently stands at £104.94
We get them in summer apparently, 5 sets I believe, several of them likely much larger than this wave.
How much kids are willing to spend is decided or influenced by their parents. Kids can save up allowance money or their parents can just buy them if they ask for it. My parents would by a set as long as it was under $20. Any more then it would come out of my pocket. Of course this is based on the income of the family which will widely vary regardless.
Also, not everyone is a collector let alone a completionist. As a kid I only bought what sets I thought were cool and what was in stock at the local Walmart.
I dont like the high price, which is why I dont have almost any of the sets…but the plastic is way better quality than the previous generation, so in a sense its worth it (on sales of course, my countries middle class is not that well off to waste money)
