I have to say, GG pis$es me off more than any other company in this biz. Their seemingly bloated egos are almost laughable, and their cavalier attitude towards their customer base seems to go against business 101. That said, for the most part I cannot argue with the quality of most of their bust line -- be it Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, Terminator or Matrix. With the exception of some of the earlier SW pieces, Qui Gon and a couple of others, they have done a really good job of capturing iconic characters in resin and delivering them for the low price of around $50. And when it comes to aliens, monsters or armored characters, the quality is outstanding. So while they don't have my respect as a customer service-oriented company, I'd prefer they keep the license for consistency sake (remember what happened when BD lost the Marvel line? DST steps in and does their inconsistent 1/6 scale stuff and a few other dreck pieces that wouldn't display well with the BD line. Fortunately Marvel finally got its senses back.
Sure, the major problem with GG is with these blasted exclusives (from the web based debacle of BHS to the collector's nightmare/flipper's dream that is this "World Tour"). You could argue both sides on this -- GG's line is it's rewarding fans in other markets with exclusives, and adding more spice to the "chase" if you will. But they also know d@mned well that most of the folks scooping these up are planning to flip 'em on ebay, and the lower the run, the higher the ROI. It is also pricing out a good number of their loyal collectors. Putting together a collection of just the five trooper mini busts (all I care about), which would retail for under $250 will probably run anywhere from $800-$1200 for those who can't attend the shows or lose out on all of the lotteries (which again are clogged with flippers). So it's no wonder folks are getting royally POed. Does GG give a flip? Doesn't look like it.
From their standpoint, my guess is GG is looking at the $ incentive much more than caring about the fallout. The trade show organizers know exclusives help draw the attendees, so GG gets a break on their booth cost (which could be a several thousand dollars). There may well be some other incentives as well depending. Then you have the higher margin factor. Since these are not sold at retail, GG's margin is 100% higher or more. So instead of making say $10/bust, they are making maybe $25 per. Double their profits. Then there is the whole shipping thing. Drop shipping or trucking 500 or 1000 pieces to a show is a whole lot cheaper and logistically simpler than packaging up cases and sending them out to hundreds of retailers and distributors. They pretty much know these things are going to sell out (worst case other exhibitors will buy up extras to flip themselves for a quick profit), so no shipping back costs (they are not taking 200 or so back to sell on the web, they either never take those 200 or shipments from the manufacturer are split 200 to GG, the balance directly to the show). This is also the reason the runs are relatively small. From the purchaser perspective, 2,500+ is the ideal exclusive run because it keeps prices right around $100 in the secondary market. For the US-based shows, that's fine. But for some of the internationals its impractical. So unless they do the same characters at U.S. shows, those are going to be the harder ones to chase. And obviously they are not tightly enforcing the 2 per rules in Japan when you can see one guy actioning 10 busts. Also, these troopers are tailor made for this -- unlike an original sculpt, these are essentially built on the same platform requiring only nominal reworking and/or repainting.
So all those ingredients are coming together in a "perfect storm" of collector frustration. GG is going to milk the trooper teat for all it's worth. Some folks will get lucky with lotteries. Some folks will get super lucky with the end-of-the-year lottery. Then it's time to clean up whatever mess remains. Who knows what '08 has in store? Can only hope GG comes up with something a little better and fairer. I'm sure they will still go to the trooper well for at least one of the shows, but maybe they will actually use some of the other shows, to at least have some original sculpts and much needed characters done -- Tie pilots, Bespian Lando, Farmboy Luke, Queen Amidala, more aliens, etc. Oh well all you can do is ...