Budget Stark - 10 Facts about Secret Base, Hot Toys and Pricing

[SwedishHeat]

Not sure if this question is in your wheelhouse, but what are the thoughts on your side of the world on the "custom" Hot Toys heads that are on eBay and the like. The ones that are recast of original HT heads. The sellers claim that they are from Hot Toys' factory, and essentially "fell of the back of the truck". With the proliferation of kitbashing and custom-made figures, it would seem that these bootleg heads would have an impact on the sales of original HT parts. Part-out dealers would make pretty decent money on parting out HT figures because they were the best, but now with so many people recasting and bootlegging Hot Toys parts, a lot of those "official" parts aren't as in demand if you can get something that is close to 100% at half the cost.

Is Hot Toys taking any action against these bootleg sellers? It doesn't appear that they are, so I wonder why not.

 

[Budget Stark]

This seems like speculation. But it's easy enough to prove - you're in HK - let's look at what the release dates are from Secret Base and then see what Sideshow's release dates are.

This is not speculation, as I have stated in all the first look vids I have put up in the last few months, the release dates in HK are AFTER what Sideshow are putting on their website.

 

[Budget Stark]

Not sure if this question is in your wheelhouse, but what are the thoughts on your side of the world on the "custom" Hot Toys heads that are on eBay and the like. The ones that are recast of original HT heads. The sellers claim that they are from Hot Toys' factory, and essentially "fell of the back of the truck". With the proliferation of kitbashing and custom-made figures, it would seem that these bootleg heads would have an impact on the sales of original HT parts. Part-out dealers would make pretty decent money on parting out HT figures because they were the best, but now with so many people recasting and bootlegging Hot Toys parts, a lot of those "official" parts aren't as in demand if you can get something that is close to 100% at half the cost.

Is Hot Toys taking any action against these bootleg sellers? It doesn't appear that they are, so I wonder why not.

Hot Toys don't take action, Marvel do. They take off your ebay listing. Bootleg parts don't have an impact really as Hot Toys don't sell parts of figures, only the whole set. So it doesn't directly impact their business.

But you can still walk into shops and buy them and this market has been going on for 5 years plus, not just recently. It is just more widely known as I have put vids up and more facebook pictures are seen.