I think we're paying more for the overhead costs involved with creating the new molds than we need to. How many new parts are in here? Vladek's visor, Wolf Knight's visor, dork sword, and new horse headgear. Of those four parts, only the horse headgear looks decent. I honestly think they could have made this set better by just using standard visors and swords. I know one of the preview pictures had the good guy knight wearing a standard white helm and standard castle blue visor - or something like that. It looked REALLY good. But no, we get these dumb new parts and have to pay for the costs involved in creating them.TwoTonic Knight wrote:Do you really think so or are you just expressing frustration? As much as I might want the set to be cheaper, or at least cheaper by dumping the catapult, it seems to be in line with the pricing of other Lego sets.rogue27 wrote:Personally, I think TLC priced this set so high because they know AFOLs will want a bunch of bardings and armors and they want to make up for 2003's losses.
I also think TLC is afraid. They made all those Orient Expedition sets last year with a decent number of new parts and priced most of them very well. Unfortunately, they sold poorly and I think TLC did not sell enough to recover the costs involved in making the new parts those sets contained, so it ended up contributing to their loss. I get the impression that TLC has lowered their sales projections on KK2 to a more pessimistic level than they had with Orient Expedition, so they've had to raise prices because they are expecting fewer sales to divide the development costs across.
This year, TLC also seems to be intentionally over-charging. The new line of Star Wars minis was $8 instead of $7, and they do not contain extra parts to build a bonus model if you buy all four. All of a sudden, we are paying more for less. I notice that S@H brought the prices down to $7 sometime this year, but they were $8 at first and they are still $8 at many stores in town. They probably realized that their line of cheap small models lost one of it's defining characteristics.
I think TLC is spending too much money in the wrong places. The KK2 sets come with cheesy laminated cards. The KK2 website is covered with flash comics, storyline stuff, etc. We didn't have or need that stuff in the old days. We are paying for it now. One or more people are putting that stuff on the website and it's paid for by sales of KK2 sets. Same with those silly game cards.
Now, if you take away the story writer, the flash comic guy, the cards, the ugly new molds, and the memory of 2003, I'm pretty sure you could shave a couple dollars off the price of Vladek Encounter. You shave a couple dollars off the price and Vladek Encounter will sell better. If Vladek Encounter sells better, they don't need to mark up the cost as much to cover development costs and you can probably shave another dollar off of the price, which will make it sell even better.
That's the way it should be. I just want to buy the parts and instructions, not the gimmicks and marketing junk that goes with it.
