...Don't give me the investment excuse as the rationale behind keeping the vintage line at $7.99 because the CW line is nothing BUT new tooling.
But CW isn't all new tooling. Many of the clones and droids have been re-used/repainted. Many of the main characters have shipped for 2 years and some (Rex, Ahsoka, Anakin, etc) will continue to ship in year 3. That's a lot of reuse. And it's helped them drop the price, which is something that they've heard from a number of sources - moms, collectors, retailers - they all want cheaper figures.
Hasbro can swing lower prices on CW now, so they are dropping the price. Legends goes along for the ride because the cardback looks the same. That makes the majority of Hasbro Star Wars customers happy (retail/kids).
Like I said earlier in the thread. Vintage gets to stay at $7.99 because of "tooling", or like everyone knows - because we've proven over the past two years that we'll pay it.
The vintage look is about tempting those who've left to come back and tempting former carded collectors to go back to buying 2x each again. That's how they are going to generate more sales. Would lowering the price help? Absolutely.
But lets face it - if you were the big company, wouldn't you try to lure them back at $8 each and get that extra $1? If that doesn't work, THEN you lower the vintage price to $6.99 right before the hoilday season to match CW/Legends.
Yeah, I thought the different price points was a little bit odd too - and I'll be curious to see how retail handles it. Sure, it might be labeled seperately, but so are the three lines now - and we all see how that works. I can see a number of people (parents) getting to checkout and say "the peg said $6.99", and getting a surprise there.
I think ultimately the fact that the lines have very different looks (cardback style, cardback size, bubble design), plus the fact that retailers now have a vested interest in keeping them segregated (different price point) means hopefully the pegging situation will improve.
It also sounded like Hasbro wants "vintage" to be a bit more isolated - for example, pegs would be arranged like so --> CW - Legends - deluxe - vintage. That requires Target/TRU buy in though, but it would help break things up a bit, which would help keep them separate.
I know, I know, retail's dumb, they suck and won't keep them straight, blah blah blah. That may ultimately be true, but at least they are trying a few things to keep them isolated this year, which is more than can be said for the past two years.
