I still cannot believe that Target is charging $12 for these.
I never thought I'd see the day where retailers would be charge that much for a 3.75" figure.
I can remember going to Walgreens in the mid eighties with my dad and getting two figures for $5.
I've been saying that this was going to happen for years now. Years back when people starting paying double digits for convention exclusives, and Target exclusive garbage purple and black repaints of clone troopers etc., all while banging down the stockroom door to nab them with DCPI's, plus the success of the original VOTC line...add them all together and what do we have? A slowly normalized $10-15 Star Wars figure. It told Hasbro that we were willing to pay, or do, just about anything to pick up a figure with a Star Wars logo on the package.
Now after all these years, even I
finally have bought my first convention exclusives - McQuarrie droids and Lukes - Hasbro has got us. They can charge just about whatever they want for it. Tell me if the price for the McQuarrie droids at the convention was $25 that suddenly people would just draw the line and not buy it. I doubt it would have affected their sales.
Anyhow, still, the best way to reject Target's price point is to leave the figure on the pegs. And that's really all you can do. If $12 VTAC fly off the pegs at Target, other retailers probably won't be far behind.