Wal-Mart Pricing

yea its beyond pathetic now... kick the tires on this chain for WWE. move on to a dependable retailer who can actually stock it and sell it.

What can they do? MSRP is suggested not required.

Yup

Some interested reading. I cant wait for the digital prices on electronic shelf labels. This way walmart can adjust in real time like amazon does when a used book is down to quantity=1 (cough hot item, cough: monday night wars s5). Oops

Fun times ahead.

"Price increases of 10% to 15% often count as excessive price hikes. Sellers who raise prices that high without a justifiable reason could face civil or criminal penalties"
Source:- www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws-by-state.html

Walmart Price Increases Slammed by Former Labor Secretary
Source:- www.newsweek.com/walmart-price-increases-slammed-1882788

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Walmart liable in price gouging lawsuit.
"The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 19, 2022, claimed that Walmart overcharged shoppers for in-store purchases of certain weighted grocery items, including poultry and pork, and for bagged citrus. The lawsuit accuses the company of “unfair and deceptive business practices” that resulted in higher costs than what were advertised, according to court documents.

The lawsuit alleges that Walmart falsely inflated product weight, mislabeled products and overcharged for clearance products sold by weight.

The retail giant has denied the allegations, but it agreed to the settlement. “We believe a settlement is in the best interest of both parties,” a Walmart spokeswoman said in a statement"
Spurce: - www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/business/walmart-settlement-overcharge-refund.html

Electronic shelf labels
"Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds"
Source: - www.npr.org/2024/06/17/nx-s1-5009271/electronic-shelf-labels-prices-walmart-grocery-store

After two stints working for Wal-Mart, I can promise you - deliberately making rank and file employees, who have no actionable control over the pricing structure, miserable will never in a million years convince Wal-Mart to "shape up".

Not that. Retailers are really only going to respond to ongoing, trackable changes in consumer habits. You could stop spending your money there, but even if every WWE collector did the same (and I've been saying this here for years), the share of Wal-Mart's annual revenue that's made up of what we're doing here is so insignificant that they'd just as soon assume the demand isn't there and replace that four feet of gondola space with something else. Things always look bigger from the bottom-up (where we view action figure collecting) than they do top-down (Wal-Mart's perspective).

But yeah - don't torment the store employees.

If this does start getting abused by stores, I could see states passing laws restricting what they can do.

I live in Wisconsin. We have a law on the books called the Unfair Sales Act of Wisconsin. This was designed to combat gas prices. Prices posted must remain in effect for 24 hours before being adjusted. This is designed to not allow customers to get gouged in certain situations. Yeah, prices can go up, but they cannot go up every hour. This has worked for both the advantage and disadvantage to companies. I could see if there were eventually enough outrage and states started passing laws like this that would help.

If this is truly dynamic, and worse is automated, and at the store level, then what would happen when a new line comes out and is very hot. Let's do a hypothetical and pretend that the next Walmart exclusive line after Monday Night Wars is called the Golden Age. This has figures from the 80s and earlier. Let's say this comes in a 5 figure case, and the first wave has Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Bruno Sammartino, Andre the Giant (with a chase '70's hair' variant) and Iron Sheik. With a BAF piece to build Lord Alfred Hayes. So very hot, the case of 5 has one figure of each of the 5 figures needed. So one person comes in, wants the set, and buys the whole set. They grab them, do some more shopping, and head to the register. They start scanning the figures:

Fig 1 - $19.84
Fig 2 - $19.84
Fig 3 - $20.24
Fig 4 - $20.84
Fig 5 - $21.92

Price goes up as they go along because as each figure is scanned, it is fed into the system and it recalculates how many are left in the store, so dynamic pricing kicks in, and there you go.

Am I overreacting - maybe (it is a slow day at work and I am bored). But it could happen.

I would hope that if Walmart started doing this, they would not change during open store hours. That is really the only issue I would have with it. I would think logically they would adjust overnight instead of during the day, but we will see.

Sure. Only there's another place that's been gouging prices on Mattel WWE stuff a lot longer than Walmart, and no contracts have ever been broken. I'm sure it'll be different this time though!

I doubt hasbro wants to buy them whole. I could see them doing a merger with selective licenses but even hasbro knows their days are numbered unless they get away from action figures. A lot will change when they stop making star wars figures, if ever, they may just milk it for all its worth till the very end but that is their last bread and butter besides gijoe. Mattel has motu, hot wheels and barbie to fall back on but on the girls side things are the same so eventually both companies will need to fully adapt to the times when our generation dies off as kids of today are not buying aew figures. hah.

A merger of both companies trimming the fat could def happen but that fat is us unfortunately. Even if mattel doesnt give up on wrestling figures (us), we may give up on it. After all these years most of us have what we want and more importantly to this conversation, we may get priced out. Everyone has their price. Mine is 30 at retail (or an ultimate) and for others it was 20 or is 40 in the future. But we all have it and for most it is inching very close. I never thought i would have paid 20$ for a figure 20 years ago as marvel legends with even more points of articulation were 9.99. I told myself 30 and we are there. I already made the decision to get away from mattel products butcthat price increase is moving as a wave across every line. Nowhere to run or hide

I know one thing, prices on the aftermarket are not increasing as the years go by so that tells me interest is waning. That once elusive figure that would increase in value is soon going to be a thing of the past. There are exceptions but the amount of product is killing the collectability of this line. Its all about a quick gain now. Is there demand for a certain figure? If yes, quick pull the mold out of the vault and recast it. There are no unique items anymore in the toy industry. Just remakes/repaints and reprints. Like with films. That isnt working out for hollywood and it wont workout for mattel or hasbro. The nostalgia bubble will end eventually and the new gen crowd doesnt give a flys ass for currect wrestlers as the aew sales prove.

All i know having collected for over 30 years now....is that prices have gone up 3000 percent in the last 15+ years since mattel took the reigns. The fact that both mattel and walmart have increased prices at a similar rate shows that the apple didnt fall far from the tree. They have a good working relationship it appears. One could say its a crush.

Will companies hold on till the last of us dinosaurs die off or will they make a pre-emptive decision to cut us out. Time will tell but it will happen in the next 20 years. Sometimes i just say to myself in my monty python voice, "get on with it".

I have my fill

The company that makes Barbie and Hot Wheels? 2 of the longest running lines ever in the toy industry? I'm having a hard time believing that. 

Just my opinion...