High costs for small and large size accessories?

Collector Freaks Forum

Help Support Collector Freaks Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

robbiethepainter

Super Freak
Joined
Dec 7, 2008
Messages
11,701
Reaction score
344
Location
midwest
This board is filled with remarks to the high costs of this hobby. Greed. License and likeness rights. Complexity. It goes on and on. Truth be told none of us really know how much it costs to produce said toys. I for one find myself on the side of costs are higher then before, do to a number of factors and so it is reflected in the price.

I was just reading an article titled Life After Kickstarter: 5 Costly Lessons From A Kickstarter-Backed Designer. The whole article is informative about producing a product, but a couple things that sparked this thread are the cost of producing molds and the cost of shipping. I think both these relate directly to this hobby, in what one can speculate could be cause of higher prices.

The first one is the cost of producing injection molds. You can read the whole article here.
"He knew that it would cost $2,000 or so to make an injection mold for the first product...In the end, the team spent nearly $50,000 on eight different injection molds for all the parts they needed." I looked at there product, and its nowhere near the complexity of some of HT and Sideshow pieces. Then also look at the number of parts that are produced. Granted, one can make multiple pieces utilizing one mold, but still the cost of producing the mold is still really high. Then look at those big bases. Im sure that Evil Superman base takes a whole mold on its own.
This taken from here.
"Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) is the third most widely used thermoplastic behind Polyethylene and Polypropylene. A large majority of the PVC is used for construction goods because it is inexpensive, durable and easy to use. It also can be manufactured in both hard and softer durometers which enables it to be very versatile. Now that we see that PVC is used widely in the manufacturing world, there are some dangers that arise when injection molding PVC. An important feature of PVC is the inclusion of chlorine. Now the inclusion of chlorine poses a new type of threat that many plastics do not have…emitting a harmful corrosive toxic gas. For this reason, many injection molding companies will turn down opportunities because of the extra risk associated with PVC. The processing of PVC requires stainless steel injection molds if you want any type of longevity out of them molds. In addition, the molds will require a higher level of tooling maintenance than molds used to for processing standard plastics.This is the short answer to why some injection molding companies are reluctant to run a PVC application."

The next is the cost to ship.
"Fawcett did find a company that said they’d handle the job, coordinating with the Chinese factory and UPS to make sure the pallet got to Ohio safe and sound. He and his co-founders even elected to go with an expedited shipping option, paying $7,000 to get the first pallet back to the office in one week, as opposed to the typical three." Keep in mind, their product was small in comparison to a figure's box. And that was just one pallet. Can you imagine what the cost is to ship say 3000 HT figures to Sideshow? And all of the cost is divided by the number of units and distributed evenly.

And then there's the cost of painting....
 
And then there's the cost of painting....

The one hugely-telling quote I pulled out of that article is this

"We added up our entire supply chain, from the very first raw materials supplier all the way to the consumers hands, and there’s 15 steps," Fawcett explains, summing up the hard work. "Fifteen different people who have to get paid, from the time we say 'build this’ to the time the consumer buys it."

Hopefully people realize it's not greed or price-gouging, it's simply the cost of doing business.
 
Interesting read. The prices of things will always go up. The cost of a car generally goes up some $700 a year even with no changes.
 
I have no doubt that these costs are way higher than a lot of people realize, but at the same time you've gotta reckon Hot Toys has an advantage over a new startup who hasn't developed efficiencies, relationships, and economies of scale that will cut down on costs in the long-run. Their being a company that is based in Hong Kong, operated by people who understand the culture, language, etc. must also be a huge advantage.
 
Back
Top