Gotham’s Most Wanted: Dark Knight Joker Action Figure

Vinnie Bartilucci says:

Two facts – 1) People love the dead. The Crow became a hit (and a franchise) for no other reason than Brandon Lee died. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Ted Kord, they all became much bigger stars after they died. They'll never admit it, but when Heath died, at least one person at Warner Brothers and one at Mattel punched the air and said "YESSSS!!!" The fact that it turned out not to be a truly scandalous death was just icing on the cake.2) I will guarantee you that not ONE of the people who "lined up" for those figures doesn't have at least one of the ones they bought up on eBay. I'll bet you could find almost every one of the people who lined up at the next comic convention, selling the figures at 20 bucks a throw, minimum.Nowadays, the sellouts of things (be they action figures, video games consoles or Miley Cyrus tickets) are completely artifical. People are buying them solely to re-sell them, leaving the people who actually want them out in the cold. If the only people who bought PS3s or Wiim (Wii? Wiis?) were the people who actually wanted them, they'd be stacked up like cordwood. And the marketers know this – create a shortage for something and people who'd ordinarily not care about it will want one.In an odd way, this is paralleling much of what I said in JO's post about oil.