Over the weekend, the Baskin Robbins Exclusives Steve began showing up in stores and collectors across the country went out searching for it. What people found were stores being allowed to set the price and in some cases out right admit they were buying them to sell on the secondary market.
Now on the surface, having this exclusive at Baskin Robbins was a pretty neat choice with Steve working at an ice cream parlor in the new seasons of Stranger Things. The problems started when Baskin Robbins corporate failed to set a uniform price. One store had them at a normal $12.99. Another at $16.99 which is the price for some exclusives. Then you got the places selling for $19.99, $29.99, $49.99 or the manager at one location who said he bought them all himself so he could sell on eBay.
Leaving humanity to its own discretion usually leads to crap like this which is why Baskin Robbins’ corporate office should have let stores know what the price is and the demand for exclusives. I can’t blame Funko for this and someone at B-R obviously has a clue about this hobby so I chalk this up as laziness which unfortunately led to greed. And when you get an exclusive and your store management is gouging this hurts how the consumer sees your stores.
Let us know in the comments your experience trying to find Steve at Baskin-Robbins.
If this was a common, I don’t think it would be that popular. But slap a sticker on it and all of a sudden everyone needs to have it. Stores selling for whatever they want is just them getting market value.
It’s no different than when a collector buys 2 or 3 of something to trade/sell later on for PPG pricing (which I’m sure many people planned on doing with this Pop). I’m not into the whole “exclusives are better” fad so things like this don’t really bother me, this is just the way things are with Pops now. Good luck to anyone legitimately wanting one though!
The purpose of exclusives, from a company, are to drive sales, yes. But when you participate in price gouging, it causes a negative consumer impact. Ppl might be like “Eff Baskin Robbins, I’m going to Coldstone.” When an individual store does something that impacts an entire chain, the chain needs to fix the issue.
Capitalism, man. Is this *really* any different than flippers buying them to do the exact same thing?
I paid $19.99 for mine, but it rubbed me the wrong way so much I will definitely only be going to Cold Stone from now on. I even sent an email to Baskin Robbins corporate letting them know how they lost a customer because their franchisee decided to take advantage of collectors by charging an extra $7. Of course I didn’t get a response.
I went to the BR closest to me and found that the location ONLY HAD 1 that was damaged for $12.99 AND one in the display. The manage claimed to not know how to take the display one out, so I left the damaged one and went to another location. At this one, they posted a sign that read “Funko Pop sales require a $5.00 purchase. Pop is $24.99”. The girls behind the counter had no idea what a pop was, but they grabbed the display pop (which actually just slides out of the display) and started to ring it with the 5 dollar magnets. I canceled that and went back to the first location to teach the manager how to take the display pop out. She ended up pulling out 3 others (that miraculously appeared so she didnt have to mess with the display). I picked the one with the least visible damage. Still got it for $12.99, so I left content.
I get that you took Econ in high school but the difference is when the price fluctuates per store when a corp doesn’t provide any guidance. That’s dumb. It would be like your two having two McDonalds and both price differently
“It would be like your two having two McDonalds and both price differently”
Depending on the location of the McDonald’s, their prices can absolutely be different…
https://www.mcdonalds.com/ae/en-ae/your-right-to-know.3461.why-not-all-stores-of-mcdonalds-have-same-prices-for-the-product-some-stores-are-high-prices-but-the-others-are-low-prices.html
in states yes due to cost of living. But not across the street.
Agreed. Would the difference between a corporate and franchised Baskin Robbins possibly be the difference? Corporate stores would keep them at $12.99, whereas the individual franchise owners might feel inclined to jack up the price to whatever.
I ran around to different McDonalds to collect all the happy meal avengers here in town, some were 99 cents and some were up to 2.50, I didn’t like it but it looks like different franchises are able to set their own prices on stuff like that not just BR
I am not surprised this happened. The Funko CEO even agreed that it was okay for people to buy 2 pops, and sell one on the secondary market at a higher price. Stores selling them at a high price is just to cut out the middle man. There are so many exclusives I never bought because they were 4 times the price as I should have to pay. I’m happy Baskin Robbins failed to sell these properly, it can maybe make funko think about how exclusives should be handled.
I think a corporate entity doing this as part of a promotion was in very poor taste – are Baskin Robbins franchises? There should have been a set price, and no more than half of their stock should have been sold to employees. This free-for-all garbage just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
I recently went into my local BR not knowing that they even had Stranger Things exclusives. I was honestly excited to try the ice cream when I noticed they were selling the Steve POP! I HAD to get it because I just had a hunch that he was going to be a rare one. He was only 12.99 at my local BR…*Cough ROCKFORD cough*
You guys should start hitting up little unknown cities that have BR and purchase them!