Prices For Star Wars Toys To Substantially Increase In The US Soon?

Chris Cocks is currently at New York Toy fair and there he was interviewed by Yahoo Finance about the new tariffs imposed by the US administration, targeting, among other countries, also China, which is still the #1 manufacturer of toys worldwide. And while efforts are on the way to move away from China, it will take a long time to fully replace China and especially all the Star Wars action figures are basically still made there, so there is no escaping tariffs for now. And this means: price increases are looming on the horizon. Read more after the jump!

Chris Cocks talks about the impact of tariffs on toy prices

Asked about the new tariffs Chris Cocks said that if nothing changes price increases are just a few months away, Hasbro will have to pass on the tariffs to customers, there is no alternative really, margins for toys are so low (we talk 4-6% here) that a massive 25% tariff has to be passed on. Of course this will affect all toys made in China really, not just Star Wars.

It was also very interesting to hear from Cocks how Hasbro has been “cost optimizing designs” for the past three years and how they would certainly try to optimize more even to counteract some of the added costs because of increased tariffs, as well as getting better deals from suppliers and consolidating vendors. I guess this is a very euphemistic description for how modern Star Wars action figures lack accessories or paint apps.

Cocks also said that US based production would make things 50% more expensive, but that the real challenge is not even price, but finding the skilled workers required to manufacture the toys and also the lack of logistics and supply chains regarding toy manufacturing, something that was built in Southeast Asia over the past three decades but is now essentially no longer existing in the US. Ever since manufacturing went to China the US and many other western countries have essentially lost the skill to mass manufacture a lot of consumer products, including toys. So building factories in the US would not only make things considerably more expensive for consumers, the real challenge is to get the whole machine working again in the first place when many of the required puzzle pieces no longer exist really because it was all outsourced to China and Asia in general decades ago.

How do you feel about potential price hikes because of tariffs? Especially Star Wars is already not in a good place, and many feel prices are already too high, should the figures become even more expensive I fear sales may collapse completely. Would you buy $30 Black Series or $22 TVC figures? The US would virtually have price parity with Europe then. Let’s hope a full on trade war can still be avoided, because only consumers pay the price here – and it helps literally no one. Tariffs only make sense at all if you have an industry to protect, but if the country your imposing tariffs on is basically the major supplier of something you can’t make yourself anymore and you have to buy from them then the only one you are punishing is your own people.

You can watch the interview and read a few additional statements by Chris Cocks on Yahoo Finance

And thanks to Jon Morgan for the heads-up!

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