I think the ones who voted other like myself, are implying greed.

I pre-ordered it because I collect all MPs and Optimus transforming figures, but that price is just greed. 

Though I will immediately cancel my Preorder if there is any type of issue with it. 

Takara identified their market, made a quality product at a high-but-reasonable cost. We collectors got hooked with the goal of completing our G1 collections. To increase profits, they increased part counts to justify in our minds a huge price increase. Takara realized that the loss of any customers they alienated would be more than compensated by the increased price and new customers. This is very smart business planning.

Agreed with Thomas Woods. They charge what people are willing to pay. You just have to look at Macross (aka Robotech). RRP for VF-31A is a around $200+ and pushed way over $500+. The VF-1 which had an RRP of $180 that pushed over $300+ 

Sometimes, I can't blame the manufacturer or retailers, after all there are so many willing to pay the ridiculous price.

It is not rise in production cost. Check out global inflation facts, most countries have problems pushing inflation up. Think about the easing of monetary policies world wide in the past decade. Its not because of 3rd parties, if anything these will push prices down due to competition.

Its simply because the producers know there are increasingly people who will pay that price. GREED.

I am very sure I paid less than USD 200 (more like 150) for MP1 in mid 2000s, in retail shop. Same plastics, same products. Basically same designs and technology. And today USD 500 for an optimus prime figure? WTF.

The Transformers industry has grown tremendously since the first MP optimus prime, first with Takara MPs and then 3rd party etc.  Producers simply exploit people's desires.  This MP 44 maybe sort of turning point. One chinese producer coming up with a god ginrai that will cost near USD 1000 all up. If you want to make them rich at your own expense by all means.

I hope fans say no thanks. Love the robots, the memories, but not the exploitation, thanks very much.

I remember hearing maybe last year that TAKARA TOMY lost the rights to something or other else meaning they have to make more money from Transformers Masterpiece now 

*the Pokémon toy licence (#1 selling toy in the world) 

I think the presence of older MPs is a lot of it, yeah. To re-release MP Soundwave at the same basic price he always was just as this hideously expensive Prime hits does make you wonder.

As for whether the price tracks, I'm having a hard time tracking down what MP-1 actually cost at the time in Japan, and since the US release left out the trailer and all I don't think it's an especially good point of comparison, so I dunno. But also there's just the fact that pricing is varied right now in ways that make it hard for me to draw comparisons. Deluxes are 2x what they cost then, Voyagers are up 50% from when that price point was created... and then you have things like the RID Prime where the price has effectively tripled from its initial release. (Which makes Soundwave even more of an anomaly, even though his mold isn't as old as that...)

The underlying math probably works out, where inflation-adjusted engineering costs Plus licensing Plus the added complexity equal this being a reasonable price. Maybe. I suspect production run size factors in too - you're going to sell fewer $300 God Fire Convoy sets than you are $20 Deluxes and smaller batches cost more per unit.

Even if so, I think a lot of it comes back to the old problem that costs may have doubled or tripled since 2003 but collecting budgets sure haven't. ?

So I study production and industry and I don't think rising productions cost can explain all of it but it is on of the options that makes sense. Presence of competing options should not drive the price up but down.

The only other one I think is possible is the presence of other high-price licensed figures that you mention. Those non-transforming ones that are pricey and the statues maybe. Honestly, I am not sure. Inflation? Or a combination of these.

Also, 55 votes of other and only 2 comments...lol!

They're slowly squeezing as much as they can out of their target market of collectors willing to spend the most money. They're trying to find the upper limit of what people are willing to pay. It has nothing to do with offering a better engineered product or delivering more value. It's expensive for expensive's sake. They're the gas station raising its prices because the station across the street rose its prices and everyone's still selling the same gas.

Tariffs