Lets talk all things Star Wars

[Master Boda]

I stopped collecting figures around 2007 when my nephew was 4yo and he got them all. I have been tempted buy a few of the 6" figures like Mara Jade, Revan, Malak, HK-47, and the Republic Commando figures. I just keep thinking it would be weird to just have like five, and that's it.

Not weird at all man to have a few figures,sometimes less is more.I sold 700 figures and kept 14,plan on selling 300 clones and imperials while maybe keeping 5.I too have thought about buying a few 6" figures like Bastila and Malak and calling it good.Go for it!

 

[Rawktrooper]

Yeah for $25 to $40 for one 6inch figure, I will never buy one in the store at normal price... if i can even find one that i want on the hanger.
Hasbro priced me out of the market a while ago and i wont buy one off the shelf.
If i want one bad enough, Ill wait until they inevitably hit clearance, or ill find a used one after-market.
As it is now, i have found i am wanting them a lot less. I just dont want a bunch of boxes on the shelf and i dont want boxes in my garage that i cant see. I love the larger vehicles and mounts, but im not paying 100+ for these either. I either want one for display or i dont want one at all.
I mean, come on... what is cooler than a Dewback with a trooper on it with a couple other troopers around?
Or what is better than a Snowspeeder with Luke and Dack and Wedge hanging out?
Or Han on a TaunTaun with a probe droid?
Or a couple speeder bikes with a couple scouts and an officer?
Maybe my old diorama model building days are still a part of me.

There is a ton of potential, but the toy/collector market has not kept value above interest.
And i cannot see a parent spending 100 for a kid to play with a piece of plastic. Its clearly for a collector now.
I remember seeing the first Black Series Tie Fighter at TRU for 150 and they had 2 on the shelf.
That was unaffordable for me then and it still is now.
OK You got me, i hate the First Order and i wouldnt have purchased anyways..

I was looking at some old toy ads the other day... i still cannot believe the old Cobra Hydrofoil was only 18 bucks... and the Joe hovercraft was 25?
The original snowspeeder was 13 and the Falcon was 27!
I also remember we could not afford to get everything i thought was cool, and my parents had to splurge for Christmas.
So even without inflation, 25 was a lot of money.
But i could still find a figure for about $2.99 and that was amazing as a kid. $5 allowance went a long ways. Now it just might buy a coffee.
What 8 year old has $25 in his pocket and wants a Lando?

Now i find myself wanting a prop or a costume and i want to build it as real as it gets.
My adult fights with my child a lot.

 

[Master Boda]

Yeah for $25 to $40 for one 6inch figure, I will never buy one in the store at normal price... if i can even find one that i want on the hanger.
Hasbro priced me out of the market a while ago and i wont buy one off the shelf.
If i want one bad enough, Ill wait until they inevitably hit clearance, or ill find a used one after-market.
As it is now, i have found i am wanting them a lot less. I just dont want a bunch of boxes on the shelf and i dont want boxes in my garage that i cant see. I love the larger vehicles and mounts, but im not paying 100+ for these either. I either want one for display or i dont want one at all.
I mean, come on... what is cooler than a Dewback with a trooper on it with a couple other troopers around?
Or what is better than a Snowspeeder with Luke and Dack and Wedge hanging out?
Or Han on a TaunTaun with a probe droid?
Or a couple speeder bikes with a couple scouts and an officer?
Maybe my old diorama model building days are still a part of me.

There is a ton of potential, but the toy/collector market has not kept value above interest.
And i cannot see a parent spending 100 for a kid to play with a piece of plastic. Its clearly for a collector now.
I remember seeing the first Black Series Tie Fighter at TRU for 150 and they had 2 on the shelf.
That was unaffordable for me then and it still is now.
OK You got me, i hate the First Order and i wouldnt have purchased anyways..

I was looking at some old toy ads the other day... i still cannot believe the old Cobra Hydrofoil was only 18 bucks... and the Joe hovercraft was 25?
The original snowspeeder was 13 and the Falcon was 27!
I also remember we could not afford to get everything i thought was cool, and my parents had to splurge for Christmas.
So even without inflation, 25 was a lot of money.
But i could still find a figure for about $2.99 and that was amazing as a kid. $5 allowance went a long ways. Now it just might buy a coffee.
What 8 year old has $25 in his pocket and wants a Lando?

Now i find myself wanting a prop or a costume and i want to build it as real as it gets.
My adult fights with my child a lot.

Yeah with current prices you know most kids are not buying the toys.Let your child win a least one of the fights.Again I have seen a few collections that were small but the way it was displayed looked amazing.

 

[Wakeem]

It does suck that today the toys I see are priced for adults. You use an inflation calculator on those items Rawktrooper mentioned and you'll be surprised. It's actually kind of bad that professional companies are betting on adult collectors and not growing a kids market. I watched a recent figure review, I think G.I. Joe, where the reviewer pointed out that the figure package says age 4+.

I do think it's ok to only have a few favorite figures. I don't get complete collectors. I never was that when I was a kid. I never army built as I see people calling it either. Having one or a few favorite figures is perfectly fine to me. I'm not an in box collector either. Some of the recent Star Wars and G.I. Joe figures don't have plastic windows. So what's the point in that?

What I do when I get a figure is put on either the movie or soundtrack to whatever the figure is from. Then come up with a pose to temporarily display the figure on my desk for a while. I'm not going to have a full crew of figures on my desk.

I only have a few of the G.I. Joe Classified 6 inch figures. I would be surprised if I get more than 10 of those. With the Star Wars Black Series 6 inch line, I can't see myself getting more than maybe 5 or 6.

I might try something from that Figurarts line. Browsing over their site, I didn't see a Star Wars figure that I really wanted that wasn't also released by other companies. Figurarts doesn't have any of the Attack of the Clones female Jedi either. There seem to be more Star Wars small scale figure options than I realized. I might do a price comparison to see what the different markets are.

I've always believed that Hot Toys is the top of the line with poseable figures though. I did see an unofficial 1/6 scale female X-Wing Jedi pilot a while back. It should be out this year and I'm curious about that one.

​

 

[Ron]

You should watch Retroblasting on youtube. He talks about the follies of the toy industry.

 

[janglesworthy]

Wasn't it the .com office boom culture that made decorating your cube with toys responsible for this adult toy boom?

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I was looking at some old toy ads the other day... i still cannot believe the old Cobra Hydrofoil was only 18 bucks... and the Joe hovercraft was 25?
The original snowspeeder was 13 and the Falcon was 27!
I also remember we could not afford to get everything i thought was cool, and my parents had to splurge for Christmas.
So even without inflation, 25 was a lot of money.
But i could still find a figure for about $2.99 and that was amazing as a kid. $5 allowance went a long ways. Now it just might buy a coffee.
What 8 year old has $25 in his pocket and wants a Lando?

I was talking to my mom about that a week or two ago. I saw something showing GI JOE figures for around $2 and some of the vehicles were sub $20. She just said they were paid less so that was a lot of money back then. I was lucky though, I had a lot of toys.

 

[Rawktrooper]

yeah when you figure McDonalds Big Mac meals were 2.59 and Pizza Hut Large pizza was like 11.99 or something close.. a restaurant drink was .75...
i remember we sold our house for about 85000. a huge 4 bedroom place with a shed and garage. my parents thought that was a great deal. I think my mom and dad together made about 25k. And cars! a nice car was under 9k. I have seen ad after ad of cars around the 6k mark NEW.
So yeah i guess if you 4 times that to what todays inflation is.. Pizza is still a good deal... ish.. depending where you go. i havent gone to pizza hut for a long time. I am not buying a $30 pizza. But then again the last time we ate at TacoBell it was about $50. If you figure a "value meal" is over 10 now. more like 12... you can easily run a 50 bill with 4 people. A sit down place? You are looking at easily a $75 meal.
And we dont get drinks at any restaurant anymore.. i cannot even dream of spending $15 on a pepsi for the family... then again a 20oz bottle is now over 2.29. When i worked for pepsi in the mid 90s i could buy a CASE of cans for $.30,... thats 30 CENTS. granted, i got a discount.. but it does not cost much to make a sugar water.

Action figures then... at $25 are just a crock. that is easily a 1000% inflation on a plastic figure. Ok so the average figure went from 3 3/4 inches to 6.. so thats about a size increase of 162.5%. which means the pricing, following the inflation, should be in the range of $13. NOT $25 to $40 on a 400% inflation number. So is $13 reasonable for a 6 inch fig?... i would say sure.. But 40 for a "deluxe" figure.. no.
Would i sell it for that? oh yes. i will sell a figure for 40 all day if someone buys it and i can get it for half that. If someone wants it bad enough then i will gladly give it to them.. but this is where the problem is.. the toy maker has figured this out that they can keep raising the price on these because some collectors out there are still paying them to gouge the rest of the market. Cara Dune, as soon as Gina "left" Mandalorian.. her figure went out to space for over $100 or $150 because it instantly became a collectible.

So collectors have effectively priced kids out of the new-on-the-shelf toy market. Parents are looking at this peg warmer as a toy and not a collectible.. and they are saying no to a crying kid. "find something else".

Lego does this too. They mark up the per-piece price according to the license agreement.. Star Wars legos get about a 10 to 15 percent boost in pricing over a normally licensed lego set of Harry Potter or Marvel or Friends or whatever.. and those get a 10 to 15 boost over a generic lego product. People are buying the licenses. Aftermarket is ridiculous.
I think i heard once that Lego has a return on unopened box kits, more than the stock market? That's amazing. So as long as you dont have a disaster that destroys your storage unit, you can probably retire better on collectors items like Lego than by playing the stocks. Unless you follow a senator closely... you can probably get some good returns if you mirror what a senator buys and sells in a stock purchase. HA! nothing going on there.

ok sorry,.. i hijacked the Star Wars thread... back to General Grievous and your friendly neighborhood General Kenobi...

 

[batguy]

The toys we have today are not like they used to be. Even the stuff that's still (genuinely) made for kids is higher quality. The sculpts, the paint details, individual parts, etc. The improvements don't come free.

Kenner's original SW toys look embarrassingly cheap to modern eyes, and they were some of the better stuff from that era.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

The worst were the 80s GI JOEs because I probably had a around five that had at least one broken thumb.

 

[Rawktrooper]

The 80s Joes were 10 times better than the crap 3 3/4 Joes they have right now. Even with a broken thumb. They are not even close in detail and function. Go look at one. Garbage. They dont even have bendable knees or elbows today. The ReAction ones?? They are terrible.
How does a line go backward in quality after 20 or 40 years?
Now the Super 7 line.. pretty good.. IF you can even find one on the shelf. I have never seen one anywhere except a comic con or art convention.

Star Wars is another story.. 80s Star Wars were a bit ok but the quality did not match the Joes of the 80s either.. and they produced a billion of them! I regularly found anything i wanted in the clearance aisles back in the day.. and not just one or two stragglers.. i found end caps FULL. for $.99.

yes the Vintage Collection sculpts are great today, and much more articulated.. but that does not at all overcome the price point.
Really, the 3 3/4 TVC line is one that is fairly close to the inflation standard.. but they are still high. $15? (By inflation should be $10) When you could buy a 6 inch for $19? And this was before they raised the pricing. Now $17 and $25-$40.
And neither does tooling for the industry. They still had good stuff back then, and those are hot sellers today to the collectors if you have one that is decent. But the buyers are getting less... Tooling is better but they cant use the excuse that tooling is what is driving the cost either.

They really failed by having a 3 3/4 line at all today.. they should have just kept making the 6 inch line and kept the price down under 20. They would be much more successful if they focused on that.. why would you buy a half size figure for $3 less? its not even smart to say it. How did they decide to do it at all? Still overpriced, but you have divided your company to 4011 molds for the same figure. This could be why the price has been driven up too. They are producing the "same" figure in 2 sizes ... more or less.. and then they have to sell both lines to keep it all going. and do double the sculpts and molds when you want a new figure. This means double the workers to make them too.

Even Ninja Turtles cannot decide how well they want to make them! They change quality every time they make a new line. its just ridiculous.

Like i said.. My child is not happy with toys today even though some are amazing looking, others are garbage and i am glad i grew up when i did.

 

[batguy]

They really failed by having a 3 3/4 line at all today.. they should have just kept making the 6 inch line and kept the price down under 20. They would be much more successful if they focused on that.. why would you buy a half size figure for $3 less? its not even smart to say it. How did they decide to do it at all? Still overpriced, but you have divided your company to 4011 molds for the same figure. This could be why the price has been driven up too. They are producing the "same" figure in 2 sizes ... more or less.. and then they have to sell both lines to keep it all going. and do double the sculpts and molds when you want a new figure. This means double the workers to make them too.

It's probably the legacy connection that kept them doing 3.75" stuff today.

Originally that size made sense for kids. Parents could afford to buy them a lot of characters. And the vehicles & playsets were still reasonably cheap & small.

 

[Solo4114]

Whoa...those ReAction ones look like the crap they sold at the corner drug store next to those cap guns that used paper rolls of caps.

 

[Joek3rr]

yeah when you figure McDonalds Big Mac meals were 2.59 and Pizza Hut Large pizza was like 11.99 or something close.. a restaurant drink was .75...
i remember we sold our house for about 85000. a huge 4 bedroom place with a shed and garage. my parents thought that was a great deal. I think my mom and dad together made about 25k. And cars! a nice car was under 9k. I have seen ad after ad of cars around the 6k mark NEW.
So yeah i guess if you 4 times that to what todays inflation is.. Pizza is still a good deal... ish.. depending where you go. i havent gone to pizza hut for a long time. I am not buying a $30 pizza. But then again the last time we ate at TacoBell it was about $50. If you figure a "value meal" is over 10 now. more like 12... you can easily run a 50 bill with 4 people. A sit down place? You are looking at easily a $75 meal.
And we dont get drinks at any restaurant anymore.. i cannot even dream of spending $15 on a pepsi for the family... then again a 20oz bottle is now over 2.29. When i worked for pepsi in the mid 90s i could buy a CASE of cans for $.30,... thats 30 CENTS. granted, i got a discount.. but it does not cost much to make a sugar water.

Action figures then... at $25 are just a crock. that is easily a 1000% inflation on a plastic figure. Ok so the average figure went from 3 3/4 inches to 6.. so thats about a size increase of 162.5%. which means the pricing, following the inflation, should be in the range of $13. NOT $25 to $40 on a 400% inflation number. So is $13 reasonable for a 6 inch fig?... i would say sure.. But 40 for a "deluxe" figure.. no.
Would i sell it for that? oh yes. i will sell a figure for 40 all day if someone buys it and i can get it for half that. If someone wants it bad enough then i will gladly give it to them.. but this is where the problem is.. the toy maker has figured this out that they can keep raising the price on these because some collectors out there are still paying them to gouge the rest of the market. Cara Dune, as soon as Gina "left" Mandalorian.. her figure went out to space for over $100 or $150 because it instantly became a collectible.

So collectors have effectively priced kids out of the new-on-the-shelf toy market. Parents are looking at this peg warmer as a toy and not a collectible.. and they are saying no to a crying kid. "find something else".

Lego does this too. They mark up the per-piece price according to the license agreement.. Star Wars legos get about a 10 to 15 percent boost in pricing over a normally licensed lego set of Harry Potter or Marvel or Friends or whatever.. and those get a 10 to 15 boost over a generic lego product. People are buying the licenses. Aftermarket is ridiculous.
I think i heard once that Lego has a return on unopened box kits, more than the stock market? That's amazing. So as long as you dont have a disaster that destroys your storage unit, you can probably retire better on collectors items like Lego than by playing the stocks. Unless you follow a senator closely... you can probably get some good returns if you mirror what a senator buys and sells in a stock purchase. HA! nothing going on there.

ok sorry,.. i hijacked the Star Wars thread... back to General Grievous and your friendly neighborhood General Kenobi...

And get this.... 3.75 figures go for around 16 dollars these days. Not even 6 inch figures. And look at the crap they're trying to pass of as a deluxe figure. Star Wars The Vintage Collection Jango Fett Figure - Presale

 

[HeartBlade]

I think i heard once that Lego has a return on unopened box kits, more than the stock market? That's amazing. So as long as you dont have a disaster that destroys your storage unit, you can probably retire better on collectors items like Lego than by playing the stocks. Unless you follow a senator closely... you can probably get some good returns if you mirror what a senator buys and sells in a stock purchase. HA! nothing going on there.

Kind of but not really. It seems the limited production and special edition lego sets are the ones that generate good returns but you basically have to "know" which ones will generate demand.

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/21/1066493441/it-may-be-more-lucrative-to-invest-in-collectible-lego-sets-than-in-gold-study-f#:~:text=Researchers%20from%20the%20Higher%20School,Dobrynskaya%20worked%20on%20the%20study.

Given the fact that companies themselves know this, they are probably exploiting the market and taking the gains for themselves. Selling several versions of a "special edition" millennium falcon for a premium using FOMO to add a couple more dollars to the sticker price which naturally decreases the ROI and makes the set itself not that rare because the company has produced 5 different variants of the same set. I do tend to find that things that werent initially collectables becoming collectables raises in value over time but things marketed as collectables generally dont rise in value as much.

Still, its a testament to Star Wars as an IP that its brand name alone can increase the value of another thing.

 

[Master Boda]

The toys we have today are not like they used to be. Even the stuff that's still (genuinely) made for kids is higher quality. The sculpts, the paint details, individual parts, etc. The improvements don't come free.

Kenner's original SW toys look embarrassingly cheap to modern eyes, and they were some of the better stuff from that era.

Yeah the original SW toys look cheap nowadays,but back then you could overlook it with the imagination to a degree.Today figures look great but the youth lacks the imagination.

 

[Master Boda]

The 80s Joes were 10 times better than the crap 3 3/4 Joes they have right now. Even with a broken thumb. They are not even close in detail and function. Go look at one. Garbage. They dont even have bendable knees or elbows today. The ReAction ones?? They are terrible.
How does a line go backward in quality after 20 or 40 years?
Now the Super 7 line.. pretty good.. IF you can even find one on the shelf. I have never seen one anywhere except a comic con or art convention.

Star Wars is another story.. 80s Star Wars were a bit ok but the quality did not match the Joes of the 80s either.. and they produced a billion of them! I regularly found anything i wanted in the clearance aisles back in the day.. and not just one or two stragglers.. i found end caps FULL. for $.99.

yes the Vintage Collection sculpts are great today, and much more articulated.. but that does not at all overcome the price point.
Really, the 3 3/4 TVC line is one that is fairly close to the inflation standard.. but they are still high. $15? (By inflation should be $10) When you could buy a 6 inch for $19? And this was before they raised the pricing. Now $17 and $25-$40.
And neither does tooling for the industry. They still had good stuff back then, and those are hot sellers today to the collectors if you have one that is decent. But the buyers are getting less... Tooling is better but they cant use the excuse that tooling is what is driving the cost either.

They really failed by having a 3 3/4 line at all today.. they should have just kept making the 6 inch line and kept the price down under 20. They would be much more successful if they focused on that.. why would you buy a half size figure for $3 less? its not even smart to say it. How did they decide to do it at all? Still overpriced, but you have divided your company to 4011 molds for the same figure. This could be why the price has been driven up too. They are producing the "same" figure in 2 sizes ... more or less.. and then they have to sell both lines to keep it all going. and do double the sculpts and molds when you want a new figure. This means double the workers to make them too.

Even Ninja Turtles cannot decide how well they want to make them! They change quality every time they make a new line. its just ridiculous.

Like i said.. My child is not happy with toys today even though some are amazing looking, others are garbage and i am glad i grew up when i did.

The 80's Joes could not be beat with their awesome articulate arms/legs.SW figures were cool but stiff arms/legs really hendered how you could play and pose them.Super 7 does indeed look great but the prices they ask are steep. Inflation is a thing with greed peaking behind it.Agreed we grew up at a time when toys were at their peak.

 

[Master Boda]

And get this.... 3.75 figures go for around 16 dollars these days. Not even 6 inch figures. And look at the crap they're trying to pass of as a deluxe figure. Star Wars The Vintage Collection Jango Fett Figure - Presale

Correct me if I'm wrong but I have seen deluxe figures at $25 a piece,about the 6" price.

 

[VanPersie]

.Today figures look great but the youth lacks the imagination.

Course they do...

 

[Joek3rr]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I have seen deluxe figures at $25 a piece,about the 6" price.

Yep. That's about right. And the Jango they're calling "deluxe." Because he comes with some flame effects ands cloth poncho. I remember when those were standard accessories.