What's Your Obsession

I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this earlier, but apparently as of this month, Kidrobot isn’t allowing retailers to open blind-boxes and sell the figures individually, nor are retailers allowed to sell the opened boxes on Ebay. Given that Kidrobot is probably the largest player in the designer toy industry, this seems a downright bizarre move. When you’ve got a niche industry that seems to be fairly active, is it really a good idea to flex your market muscle to screw them ever further, when they’re the reason you’re in this position to begin with?

Let’s face it, few people enjoy buying blind box toys. It pisses off completists to have these 1/96 toys, it pisses off people looking for a specific figure when they get multiple doubles, it’s not a good value compared to pretty much any other toy or statue, and it’s not terribly good for retailers. I can’t imagine they’re enjoying being pushed around either.

It smacks of a poor business practice and I can see why people are pissed off. I like their store, I like the look of some of their products, but I’ve never been much of a buyer because they’re so expensive. I think I’ll be sticking to browsing the store when I visit and that’s about it.

Tomopop article about the news

Tomopop later had an editorial in defence of Kidrobot, but it seems to be summed up as remember their accomplishments because they brought the industry to where it was today. That’s nice, and vinyl and toy enthusiasts in general should care about their contributions, but that’s always a lame argument to support people/companies/whatever doing something shitty. Yeah great, you increased the profile of certain types of toys, then you exploited your market advantage. Great usage of your fans!

Hopefully, they’re reconsider, and this won’t become a standard term for dealing with the vinyl industry.