My beloved, like most women of our generation, likes She-Ra, Princess Of Power. Mattel is releasing a She-Ra Barbie. It is aimed at adult collectors. I don’t know if it will be available in stores or only on Mattel’s site. $55 is not cheap for a Barbie. But, for a smaller edition that may not be available new in physical stores, it is a reasonable price.
It is not available for pucrchase until June 18, 9 am. Being both a Barbie and a She-Ra product, I think it will sell out very quickly.
My beloved has confirmed that she wants one. I am wondering what I can do to ensure I can buy one before it sells out.
Recently, a new Rom, Space Knight figure was released. I was not sure if I should buy if for myself. By the time I had made up my mind, Rom was sold out. Barbie is a much bigger property than Rom. She-Ra is also a bigger property than Rom. I don’t want to miss my chance.
It’s been four hours. You’re probably too late. Otherwise hie yourself to the nearest dispensary and obtain the require mannequin. Then stop by a fishmonger and get a shrimp.
I think you will be fine if you show up and buy it at 9 AM on June 18. Looks like it’s only available on the Mattel site, which is a bummer. Toy retailers usually let you sign up for presale.
Did you get an account on the Mattel site? If you’re all ready to go, logged in with your address credit card stored, it should be a pretty quick transaction to complete.
If this goes the usual way, scalpers with automation will buy out the entire stock before the first human being’s web response gets through to the server.
Not doing a presale worries me, because obviously they’re trying to build demand and exclusivity. And I share @gnoitall’s concerns, I’m going to do a plus one to the ‘have everything ready to go and start trying as soon as it tickes over’.
IIRC, you’re working from home, and I don’t know if/how things work with your employer having a spare window open for “personal use”. You may want to consider setting up your phone, or other internet connectable device ready and able to click on the “buy now” button, entirely separate or in parallel (heh) to your normal setup if that’s an issue to consider.
I do expect that there will be hiccups on their network at this time, so I think this is going to be extra stressful, so be careful not to make yourself crazy over it either. Make you best honest effort, but if it all fails despite that, don’t blame yourself, which is far to easy to do.
I do work from home. But, I always have my personal laptop set up on the desk next to my work laptop. Generally, during any downtime I read and post on the SDMB and Facebook. I chat with my beloved on Facebook Messenger throughout the work day.
I keep my phone silenced during work hours. But I keep that face up on the desk as well. I occasionally get an important text from a doctor, my pharmacy, building management, or friends and relatives who keep forgetting that I have told them I prefer Facebook Messenger as it is so much easier to type on a full size keyboard.
I am still a bit bummed that I did not know about the three Barbies based on Greek myths. She really would have liked those. They now resell for a lot more than I wish to spend.
I was logged in and watched the counter as the time remaining went to zero. Without delay of any kind, or even for the slightest instant displaying a button I could click to order, the status changed to “Sold Out”.
I am hoping I can purchase one secondhand for not too much markup.
I really don’t understand this. The fact that it sold out instantly says that there are folks who were ready to buy all of them instantly. That, in turn, says that they were confident that they could resell them quickly for a significant profit. And that, in turn, says that there was a significant market of people willing to buy them for that higher price. And Mattel had to know all of that. Why didn’t they just sell it for that higher price themself? They’re just leaving money on the table.
My sympathies, crap like special limited editions or releases are why some people I know (no, it’s not me) have made better-than-average arguments that it’s fair to buy illegal copies of various products, or hack their consoles to play non-regional DVDs/games because the costs for an “international” version are so insane.
Being Lawful Neutral I can’t follow, or encourage others to do so, but when there’s so much damn artificial scarcity/price gouging… ugh.
I am not sure what you mean by this. It could be a few things. So-
Legally speaking, the owners of an intelectually property have no obligation to release it. If I want a DVD set of a series that was never even released on VHS, or if I want a version of a very old video game updated to run on a modern computer, getting a bootleg copy is still a violation of the law.
Morally speaking, many of the bootleg copies I have of old games and instructions on how to make them work on modern computers were found on the websites of the people who creaated and programmed those games in the first place. If The Wizard has never been available on DVD and the owners have no plans to release it on DVD, their claims that somebody is stealing from them by posting all the episodes on YouTube seem hollow.
Or
If you mean ‘Why are people willing to pay so much for a Barbie doll or work so hard to get one?’ Outside of a few basic things, anything is worth as much as people are willing to pay and only as much as people are willing to pay. As I have shared before- I once bought a KISS trashcan for a dollar. I sold it for over a hundred dollars shortly after. I bought a pack of ten Magic The Gathering cards for $2.50 bacj when I first got into the game in 1993. One of those cards, an Unlimited edition Volcanic Island, I resold for about five hundred dollars.
We have had many threads proving at length that consumers were paying about ten times more than diamonds were actually worth without DeBeers’ near monopoly. Now, we have lab-created diamonds which can only be distinguished from mined diamonds with a powerful microscope. Mined diamonds include bits of other minerals in the. Lab created diamonds are pure diamond.
Besides which, most consumers cannot tell the difference between a diamond and a well cut piece of quality glass.
And said friends are saying “it’s just a game/album/movie”. I’m not excusing it, just saying that while I don’t agree it’s a harmless crime, that there are circumstances where I have a lot more sympathy than others.
But the ethics of purchasing knock-offs, breaking DRM, etc. is a huge sidetrack we’ve done to death in many another thread.
ETA - Simulpost with DC, who did a good review of the details I was trying to avoid sidetracking with.
We can’t read the minds of the Mattel execs, but we can speculate. One thought is that they didn’t know for certain that the dolls would sell out quickly at $55. And if they priced them too high and they didn’t sell out and had to lower the price, the bad publicity would have cost them quite a bit.
As it was, they made a hefty profit selling a few cents worth of plastic and cardboard packaging for 55 bucks.