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Re: Hasbro Revenues and Why Exclusives Aren't Going Anywhere
I think 4-inch ended because
a) Hasbro makes a higher profit margin from the 6-inch figures, so obviously they'd want to shift all collectors over to the 6-inch scale, and
b) Hasbro's SW team at the time (long since fired now) seemed to struggle to make enough money to get a return on the investment in tooling. I recall from the Q&As that the team responded to collector complaints about constant reissues of older figures that everyone already had, by saying that they needed to do this to use the money to pay for tooling for newer figures. I was sympathetic to this reasoning, since Hasbro was selling us super-articulated figures at $10 (which was amazing) rather than 5POA... more parts, more labour, more tooling.
I think they can never really go back to 4-inch SA at $10 again in modern times because they're just paying too much in royalties to Disney now, so they need a wider profit margin that only 6-inch can justify. Of course now we're seeing Hasbro also re-releasing a ton of older figures too just like they did with the 4-inch scale before it died out.
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