That makes a lot of sense. I think you are right.
A lower price point also sells the illusion that these Barbie dolls are accessible and not some collectible hobby only for the wealthy. They don’t want the perspective to be that Barbie is out of touch with Real America.
Bots these days are very sophisticated and, well before sales opened, someone already had them programmed to access the final checkout page with the appropriate cookies preloaded in. You weren’t just racing a bot from the store page, you were starting at the store page while the bots were starting inches from the finishline.
You can actually rent a bot for this, often called Sneaker Bots as they got famous for snagging limited edition sneaker sales immediately upon release. But you can use them for anything from dolls to graphics cards to event tickets. Not saying that YOU should, of course (and the cost of renting/buying a bot would likely exceed the cost of buying on the second hand market since people use them to buy at scale) but this is what happens to anything limited unless the sellers (a) plan to take concrete measures to prevent it and (b) are technically capable of implementing those in the face of some tech-savvy people who want to bot-ransack the digital shelves.