Well I am when they're scalpers and artificially inflating demand by hording the supply. But that's not what I'm talking about. Tri Klops wasn't sold at $30.00 from third party sellers, it was Amazon Prime's retail pricing that was twice actual in store retail. And, Walmart was arguably worse because they sold him in store for $15 but $30 on their website (again, not third parties, this is through Walmart directly). I absolutely am not going to reward retail outlets for starting their prices at the same level as scalpers.Dominic wrote: ↑Thu Aug 19, 2021 9:18 am The pricing is supply and demand. I am not going to fault dealers for making money. I fault Mattel for engineering a system where the only way to buy product is through dealers.
Mattel makes no money from the after market. If anything, they could probably make more by selling to collectors, rather than dealers. (The dealer buys what they can sell. But, more people might buy product at retail than from a dealer.)
Mattel seems to be stringing collectors along, to ensure we can never make a complete set. (I am just glad that I only wanted He-Man, which was common.)
You're right, or they saw what Hasbro was doing as far back as Thundergate and again with Ratchet, Prowl, Ironhide, Dirge and Ramjet all being Amazon exclusives and thought, "Hey, we could do that too!" Which, now that I think about it, I'm done with this bullshittery in TF as well. From here on out, I'm just collecting Legends/Core scale Transformers (or smaller) and I'm not hunting for them. If I happen to be at Target and they happen to have them, fine, but otherwise, I'm not expending any more effort than that. I'm not buying online, I'm not buying exclusives, I'm absolutely done with ever setting foot in a Walmart ever again.