Hello everybody, this is AnchorCrab making his grand debut at RRR’s Otoku. I assure you that, as RRR’s chief gaming editor, I will continue writing about retro games on both RRR and Otoku. However, I also plan to write about a subject that has recently touched my heart, and that is the financial woe of toy collectors. Today’s topic is the mecha from the newest Super Sentai series, Tokumei Sentai Gobusters. Many people, including myself, have wondered why the three components of Gobuster-Oh are sold separately, and I believe I know why. However, before I explain this, there are a few ideas and principles I must introduce first.

A key factor in this is that the more complex a toy becomes, the more expensive it is to produce. Why are vinyl figures so much cheaper than an S.H. Figuarts? It’s because any given Figuart is complex enough that it would take a team of paid designers to simply draw up plans for it, and that’s before Bandai buys raw materials and machinery to physically make the toy. Not only that, but the more complicated a toy is, the more complicated and expensive the manufacturing process is. The more expensive a toy’s design and manufacturing process is, the higher the toy’s retail price will be. This is because companies such as Bandai must make enough money from selling these toys that they can pay the designers and factories while having enough money left over for profit. That’s why vinyl figures are cheap- they can be molded by the dozen with little, if any, design process.

This principle extends to mecha as well. Large and intricate toys such as Gokai-Oh and other DX mecha sets are so expensive because they take a team of designers to create as well as an involved production process and enormous amount of raw material. However, there is a certain point where, if a toy becomes too large or complicated, it becomes so expensive that only the most hardcore of collectors are willing to purchase it. In recent years, Bandai has tried to circumvent this hypothetical price point by making mecha more simplistic in design, sometimes to the point that they lack any sort of transformation besides disassembling and reassembling into something else. Even still, the mecha of previous years have stood at the very edge of this point. Notice how several people have bought Gokai-Oh and GoJyuJin, yet few people have bought the more expensive Machalcon. So, the dilemma here is: how does Bandai make a sellable toy without sacrificing complexity and play value?

The answer is simple. They can make an intricate, multi-moded mecha if they sell the components individually. GobusterAce can change into a cheetah, a car, and a robot and yet it still retails for 4,800 yen. That’s expensive, but it isn’t nearly as expensive as the mecha sets of previous years. That means that it will sell in greater numbers to collectors and children alike. Collectors and children with wealthy parents can go a step further and buy the blue and yellow mecha, which also have multiple modes as well as the ability to combine into Gobuster-Oh. Although these three mecha have price points that make them accessible to a variety of consumers, they are complicated enough that if they were sold together, they would have a price point that would only be accessible to the most dedicated of collectors. Remember that the greater a toy’s complexity the more expensive it is and that there is a certain price point where nobody will buy a toy. Because of these economic principles, the expensive bundle of Gobuster mecha would yield little, if any profit, whereas a line of cheaper, separately-sold mecha is bound to yield big bucks for Bandai.