Derek Furman of The Hobby Shop in
I wanted to reply to Kendall Swafford's recent damnation of both WizKids and Upper Deck. I may be wrong, but with increases in oil costs over the last few years, combined with pressure from its corporate ownership, WizKids has had very little choice but to raise its prices. And if you compare the price of HeroClix to other minis such as D&D, Monsterpocalypse, or the new WoW minis, HeroClix is still a great value. I don't disagree that this stuff is an easier sell to a new player at a $7 or $8 price, but I don't expect the global economy will ever let us see pre-painted plastic minis at that price again. (By the way, the Secret Invasion series of events was not an 11-week period of sealed events, only the first three events were sealed, including the Launch Event itself. And the first two weeks of Arkham Asylum were the only sealed events for the new set.)
As for Upper Deck, I will never understand how they can quickly and intentionally sell through each new YGO! set, and then complain that sales are not strong enough. But as far as the release of WoW Minis has gone, we received our entire order from UDE, and our regular distributor currently has both the starters and boosters in stock. We even received a new solicitation from UDE this morning saying that we could still reorder the WoW starters, boosters, and launch tournament kits. It could just be a matter of the suppliers we use compared to those that Up, Up, & Away! uses, but we've not seen a shortage of supply.
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