Well there has been a lot of shouting in here while I’ve been away! (And not much tidying up – Nob? You’re fired.)
Having had an opportunity to plough through the last umpteen weeks’ of comments, it looks to me as if not much else need be said on the pricing issue, but my own thoughts are:
1) It was foolish, if not naive, of Mithril to foist it upon their customers out of the blue, with no prior warning, whatever their financial situation; that’s just very poor business practice.
2) If they are looking to improve the profitability of the Mithril range, then surely the prices of all the other figures should have gone up too? The fact that they haven’t is even more strange to my thinking than the decision to massively increase the prices of the new range of figures. OK, perhaps I should just be grateful that the other figures didn’t go up too, but would it not have made more sense to increase all Mithril prices by, say, 10 or 20 per cent, rather than impose the whole increase on the Helms Deep figures alone?
3) If the same 80 per cent or whatever increase is applied to the GF figures, then I shall have to let my membership lapse. I can’t currently afford to buy even at the present prices because of the foul exchange rate at the moment – not least because, on top of everything else, I now have a new electronic computing device that has to be financed.
4) On the subject of the GF, I tend to agree with the more cautious approach advocated by Axel and Twrich, since it concerns me that the GF is perhaps being made a ‘whipping boy’ for a problem not of its making. Certainly the issue of disaffection with the M-range price-hike has been brought to Lars’ attention, as it needed to be, but it seems more likely that this was achieved by Gildor’s ‘open letter’ (and all strength to him for raising the matter) than by the partial boycott of this month’s figure suggestions.
Anyway, it will be very interesting indeed to see what sort of compromise Lars comes up with on Tuesday…
On two other issues raised over the past few weeks: firstly, I have little doubt that some of you will already have received hints from The Man as to what the proposed fourth Helm’s Deep set will contain. If you can’t guess, think green. That’s all I’m going to say.
And, on the subject of Half-orcs / Uruk-hai, I’ve been re-reading ‘Peoples of Middle-earth’ over the past few weeks, and it’s worth pointing out that Christopher Tolkien observes that when the Uruk-hai first appeared out of Mordor in 2475, Sauron himself was actually still in Dol Guldur, so he can’t have been responsible for their creation; consequently, he surmises, it was the Witchking who bred them rather than Sauron. It’s an interesting little anomaly that I’d not picked up on before.
Now, let’s get this place back in order and get back to business. Nob? Get that broom and start sweeping – ohhh, alright, you’re hired again…
Theobald wrote:gruoomm … Mistress Wendy, please … stop painting … rhuoomm …
