Dear Playmates Toys: We, the undersigned, are writing to you to express our dissatisfaction with the business practices of ToyFare magazine and Wizard Entertainment Group. It is our opinion that they have taken unfair advantage of their exclusive distribution rights on Simpsons World of Springfield figures such as Pin Pal Mr. Burns. The way in which ToyFare magazine and WizardWorld.com have tried to sell these figures to the consumer is almost unethical enough. ToyFare has continually hyped and promoted the aftermarket value of their earlier Simpsons exclusives, perhaps as a way to justify higher prices of new figures. The magazine and web site have raised the initial price of each figure from roughly $12 to $15 to $17, despite the fact that the retail price remains $5. Worse yet, WizardWorld.com is attempting to offer advance orders of upcoming figures "bundled" with ToyFare subscriptions and other unrelated items as a way to "guarantee" you will receive them. We have recently learned new information that suggests Wizard's ethical lapses may run deeper than this. A store called ToyWiz.com has been selling ToyFare exclusives for massively inflated prices. According to a look-up of www.whois.net on July 20th, ToyWiz.com is registered to Kenneth Shamus in NY. The chairman of the NY-based Wizard Entertainment Group is Gareb Shamus. Sources have told us that these two men are brothers. ToyWiz.com has been pre-selling Pin Pal Burns since before its release, currently for $80. They received their stock of the figures on or before July 18th, before any other dealers or consumers received theirs, at which time they started numerous eBay.com auctions for the "in-hand" figure. ToyWiz.com is also pre-selling the upcoming ToyFare Boxing Homer for $50, but the figure is supposed to be limited to only 3-per-customer from either ToyFare or WizardWorld.com. It looks to us like ToyWiz.com is receiving preferential treatment from ToyFare. There is almost certainly a clear conflict of interest when one man owns the company that decides the quantity of figures to produce while his close relative runs a company that collects large profits when that quantity is restricted. Making this relationship even more questionable, ToyFare's price guide listed Pin Pal Burns at $100 even before it was shipped, which helps make the ToyWiz.com price of $80 look like a bargain. It is because of all of this that we urge Playmates to reconsider letting ToyFare sell any exclusive Simpsons figures in the future. The fast sell-outs, rejected payments, and inflated aftermarket prices have frustrated many collectors to the point where they no longer want to collect Simpsons toys at all. The primary goal of Wizard Entertainment Group seems to be to line their own pockets through price-gouging, not to supply these figures to every collector who wants one at a fair price. We feel they no longer deserve to be associated with this toy line. We hope you look to other retail outlets to distribute your exclusive figures, or sell them yourself directly through mail-away offers or internet sales (Hasbro successfully sold 120,000 units of an exclusive Star Wars B'omarr Monk figure through their web site in 1997.) Thank you for listening to our concerns and considering our request. Please note, your IP address is recorded. Obviously fake or duplicate signatures from the same IP address will be deleted.
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