Posted by Shawn M. on Aug 25th, 2007
Is a geek and his money soon to be parted?
Before I start on this, I’d like to announce that this will be my last post here at Way of the Geek for a few weeks. My lovely wife and I will be moving over the next month, and our time will spent taking care of the endless little things that pop up during such an endeavor. Now, on to the fun!
On Monday, August 20, the official North American version of the Square-Enix online merchandise store opened. Its traffic was so overwhelming, many people couldn’t access the site for awhile. I was lucky enough to get through and take a look at all of the swag. As I browsed through their trinkets and toys, something jumped out at me — everything was incredibly pricey. Case in point, the 7″ action figures from Final Fantasy XII. These bad boys were selling for $25. Twenty-five dollars, and that’s not counting the shipping! That’s far too much for an action figure that size — any other license would typically run half that much, at most.
That got me thinking. How many other times have I seen a geek-related piece of merchandise retailing for far too much? Far too many, I’m afraid. But don’t blame the retailers or the makers of the things we want — we’ve only got ourselves to blame. The people putting this merchandise out know that we geeks are passionate about our geekdom, and often won’t think twice about forking over a week’s pay for that ultra-limited Luke Skywalker chase figure. If we’re willing to blindly pay, then why would those producers charge a fair price? The fact is that geekdom is a business. Paramount doesn’t care about the intricate story ties in the Trek universe — they only care about how much scratch the franchise brings in.
Speaking of Star Trek and Paramount, I am reminded of another example of geek gouging I have witnessed. A couple of years ago, if you wanted to buy a single DVD season of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager, you would have had to lighten your wallet by $120. By contrast, other DVD sets, with a season’s worth of hour-long episodes, were retailing for $30 to $45. Today, a Trek season typically sells for about $60. An improvement, but still far more expensive than other DVD sets.
Think twice about how you spend your money, fellow geeks. Every time we overpay for something, we’re telling the people we’re giving our money too “hey, it’s okay that you’re charging five times what this is worth — I’m a sucker that’ll buy it anyways and ask for more”. Trust me, I know how hard it is to walk away from that one thing that reaches out to you, that one trinket or toy or bauble that defines the very reason you’re a geek. But once you do, you might just realize, “y’know, I didn’t need that thing in the first place… what was I thinking?”
If this happens enough times, the prices will change. Retailers and producers will finally figure out that the geek community will no longer stand for the ridiculous amounts we are charged. And then we can all enjoy our geekdom and never have to worry about missing the rent or living on nothing but Ramen Noodles and PB&J — no matter how tasty they are.
Shop smart, fellow geeks. Shop S-Mart.
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