Why do people do this? I don't understand it.

I honestly think you're shouting at the wrong cloud. Ignoring the fact I get at least 90% of my toy information from Twitter or Instragram, you have to look at the purpose of a SDCC exclusive. Making money is secondary to brand imprint from those products. If Mattel was worried about making as much money as possible on the set, they would have done an open pre order. They send them to influencers because that's the cost of advertising your product in 2022, which is incredible cheap, all things considered.

Look at Alex West. He is one of us. A member of this forum for years. He started just sharing cool pictures of his collection on instagram and reposting ringside on sales. Now he helps thousands of collectors, and gets the SDCC exclusive sent to him in advance so he can take amazing pictures of it before the on sale. It gets people excited, but also keeps us, the collectors, informed. Mattel has virtually no official social media presence for the WWE brand. They rely on influencers to pass on the info so they can capture their sales audience.

You're mad at the nature of social media as it pertains to your buying habits, I suppose, and that's fine. But not sharing the product excludes someone from finding out about it that would have a desire to own it. I'm sorry you didn't get the NHB set. That's really a bummer, and the secondary prices are gross. However, hiding the product from everyone, except apparently this message board(?), isn't a level playing field for the community. There are thousands of collectors. When Mattel creates a product in a limited quantity, the demand is going to far outweigh the supply. That was by design.

Well if it makes you feel any better, half the time this "news" isn't accurate....

How many folks on this board have found that Target "Street Date 7/21" Ultimate Macho Man yet? Mine's preordered with no determined ship date....

Big oof big dog.

Your initials wouldn't be B.B. by any chance would they?

stop 🛑 stealing my thread. Or there will be consequences.

😂😂😂 i like it.

I'm personally happy that someone stole the news about this supposed Ultimate Edition Razor Ramon, and shared it here.

Now i'm aware that there's a potential UE Razor coming, and i'm excited for it.

I think I took my rant out of context. It's very helpful that these posters help us to find out when specific items will be released, when most of us (including myself) otherwise wouldn't know. And yes they help us to keep up on what's is getting released, otherwise it would be confusing. It's a definite positive to it.
I just think in the case of the No Holds Barred exclusive set, all of the extra hype proved to be costly for most of us dedicated collectors. Don't you agree?

Jesse what are you talking about