they've cut back and aren't doing it much at all in 4" scale now... costs and all that jazz. They're seeing that $10 is a threshold for 4" figures where people really are hesitant to spend it. I think they're at this point afraid to raise a basic figure above that because they know price has hurt that line far more than any other factor.
I realize that a lot of things are going up in price, but there has to be a breaking point.
I agree with Jesse. I think we hit the breaking point at $10. Hasbro's afraid to cross it, so instead of $12 figures, we're getting watered down $10 figures now. It's also why the Saga Legends 5POA reset happened to drastically reboot "kid figures" back down to $5-6 range.
Jesse has said it a number of times before and I agree 100% - the future has to lie in the middle somewhere for collector figures to live on much longer. I think Jesse's example is like the 2007/2008 stuff - decent articulation (10-12 points) in the $8 range. Not everything needs to be ball-joints, but 5POA is way below what they are capable of making.
I was looking at figures on Beyond Mortality yesterday. Wave 5 and 6 figures are at 21.99, while earlier ones are 19.99 (including the Stormtrooper).
It will be interesting to see if that's a real retail-wide price hike or just the "Previews Effect" of shops buying the Previews solid-figure cases, which will indeed cost more because of the single figure pack-outs. It's something that hasn't really been talked about much but it's the price you'll pay to get better access to certain figures.
The little signs with the figures at SDCC and the recent Hasbro press releases have all said $19.99 for the standard MSRP on the 6" Black Series figures still though.