I watched a realtime replay.  It was pretty tough to judge the exact placement of the ball when I saw that.  And that's the human element of officiating.  The ump blew the call. 

Where are the Twins on this?  Gardenhire was talking tough about it in the postgame press conference.  What about during the game?  What about playing the game under protest?

We can all argue about this until we're blue in the face.  It's not going to change the outcome of game 2.

I think Mark Texeira's walkoff HR tonight may be yet another positive mark for him in the march toward the AL MVP.

Very well stated, Nick.

Can you offer up a similar analysis on why distribution and release dates for product is so horribly messed up right now? Why is Hasbro not able to definitively state when new toys will be available to retail outlets? There is 0 transparency right now.
 

That's a much tougher nut to crack and involves a good deal more speculation.  My own theory?  Look at two of Hasbro's other major boys brands.  They had  MAJOR releases in both the GI Joe & Transformers licenses for this year.  Movie year level releases.

Now would the Hasbro Star Wars team publicly state that the production runs for those two licenses impeded the production schedule of the Star Wars line?  I would absolutely not expect them to do that.  It's bad to throw your own company under the bus like that.  And comments like that have a way of getting back to their source in a negative way.

When BAD ends and invariably it will, the cost of figs must come down by at least $1. That was one reason for the price increase per figure. I think people are forgetting that.

Then again I can still see the gripe if people aren't collecting every figure. They end up with parts they don't want or need, either have to try and trade or sell them off or throw them away.

I appreciate that the price per figure is a major consideration for some people.  But I sincerely think that sentiments/hypotheses like this one are misplaced.  There are a number of factors that have gotten the current MSRP of basic figures to $7.99 each.  And it's not all because of the Droid Factory concecpt.  What is it?


VOLUME - When we were in the midst of the ROTS line, prices were very collector friendly.  And that's because the market was flooded with product, and there were plenty of people buying that product.  Both Hasbro & the retailers profits margins were based more on volume of sales and high turnover than maximizing profit per unit.

Sales have gone down dramatically since the days of 2005.  And that's forced both Hasbro and the retailers to shift their business model to maximize the profit per unit.


MARKET FORCES - There are a couple of significant market forces that raised Hasbro's costs.  First?  The increased cost of oil.  That has affected both energy costs as well as plastics costs.  And that increased cost gets passed on to the consumer.

And then there's the consumer product safety issues that got raised with items produced in Chinese factories.  This was a major business scandal that saw a number of consumer products pulled from store shelves because of potentially hazardous materials being used by Chinese factories.  A number of those being toys that were found to have lead paint content, which was in violation of safety standards.  Hasbro and other toy manufacturers had to invest in ensuring that proper safety standards were being followed.  And doing so increased costs.


QUALITY - It's been stated in this same thread.  We're at a level of quality in the basic figure line like we've never seen before.  The articulation, sculpting and accessories are undoubtedly some of the best we've ever seen.  It seems almost certain that such an increase in quality has a price tag attached to it.


I know that these factors had a lot more to do with price increases than the Droid Factory value-added pack-in program.  And let's be honest...there's always been a value added pack-in.  Some of them have been cheaper, but they've been around for some time.  Freeze Frames, Flashback cards, CommTech chips, Jedi Force Files, Figure stands, hologram mini-figures, coins, etc.  All of those had added to the cost of figures.  Some were cheaper than others, obviously.  But some of the most elaborate pack-ins were offered during those ROTS days of low prices.  So to associate an elaborate pack-in with higher basic figure prices?  History suggests something to the contrary.  Volume wins that argument.

Wow, what a nailbiter!  I thought the Tigers had it when they had the bases loaded and only 1 out.  Congrats Twins!

That is, until tomorrow night.

If they go with a character from one of the other Visionaries stories, I'd love to see a really good Darth Sidious from the "Sithisis" story.

Bought my first NHL Sports Pick in some time.  McFarlane finally cranks out a Devil.  But sure enough, it's Marty, and McFarlane only made him because he's undeniably one of the best goalies of all time.  He won't make any other Devils since Todd is such an undeniable tool.