I'd accept that if it were everywhere, especially in the toy aisle, but JUST Star Wars going up doesn't cut the mustard for oil/gas as an excuse with me... And like I said, with the stores willing to run sales that put figures below $5 (and run them for extended periods of time) and still have them be quite profitable, I really don't buy the price increases... It's retail capitalizing on something it deems popular yet, not inflation, at least to me anyway.
Now if you looked around the store and saw that Lego sets spiked, GI Joe, Marvel, Barbie, etc., all going up in price... And if you went to the store and tupper ware, or pens, or toothbrushes, or whatnot went up in price in great jumps, I'd buy into it... $6.99 has been here for SW though and it was really a price jack at that time too... For ROTS I saw $4.99 to $5.89... It varied. $6.99 at KM and KB though.
In my area at least one Target is $5.89 for some reason, others $6.99 and slightly less (WM). I know others have those anomylous Targets too, sometimes more frequent or that's their standard for the area... It's not my area's unfortunately.
Like I said, I'd agree if this wasn't focused in the toy aisle on one product line... If this was measurable around other products and things... My distributors in plastics manufacturing all tell me though that the cost increases are greatly exagerrated in how they will impact the consumer, at least from their perspectives. With this just seemingly being Star Wars, I'm going to say the simpler explanation is probably the right one in that this is just retail/Hasbro pushing the envelope on price to me.