We're not made of Gil you know...

So, couple of things. First, twelve thousand dollars for this thing is preposterous. Secondly, capitalism is gross. And yes, I will get to why I say this, but first behold this thing:

Bet you don't have one of these...uh...things?

It works out to 1,485,000 yen which
just seems unwieldy, but who am I to
tell Japan how to currency?

What even is that? Is a completely reasonable question. That is a SquareEnix Final Fantasy VI Masterline one sixth scale figure of Terra riding her Magitek Armor--and I'll have to explain like every word in that sentence, won't I? SquareEnix is a video game developer and Final Fantasy VI is a video game. Masterline is a word they made up to justify an outrageous asking price. One sixth is the scale, but one sixth of what? I mean, it's a video game. Terra is the protagonist of Final Fantasy VI, and Magitek Armor is...well it's, um, like a steampunk mech suit? The point is it costs twelve thousand dollars.

Pictured: What Terra (on right with
the green hair) looks like in the game.

Yes, of money. Can you believe it? No, you can't. No one can, although the figure is, admittedly, very detailed if you're into whatever someone has to be into to want one of these things badly enough to take out a loan or a mortgage or whatever. The design is based on the work of Amano Yoshitaka who did the art for the first six Final Fantasy games, although some of his style was lost in the translation to sprites. Like, it's not even close (see left) so instead this thing is based more closely on the game's cover art. 

It's the opposite of Funko Pops
which literally nobody wants.

Anyway, if you want one, you'd better hurry because SquareEnix is only going to manufacture six hundred of them. Why? One might reasonably ask. Because scarcity, that's why. Again, the thing certainly looks detailed, so I'm sure a lot of time and resources are going into them, but at twelve thousand dollars a piece, you'd think they'd want to make as many as they could. In fact, screw making games. If fans will pay that much for tchotchkes based on games why even bother with games? Look, no one actually needs a one sixth scale Terra riding Magitek figure. Every single one of these that sells will do so because someone thinks they're scarce. SquareEnix is baking on the collector mentality. Which is gross.

Both the mentality and the exploitation of it. I mean, look at the crazy amount of money people have paid for rare game cartridges over the last couple of years. Super Mario 64 is by no means scarce, but a sealed, in-box first copy is (kinda). It's in no useful way different from the your copy sitting in a box in your parent's attic, other than the fact that someone paid $1.56 million for it. Since SquareEnix can't manufacture more rare, sealed games from the 1990's, they're just going to do the next best thing.

Sorry, second best thing. The best thing they could do is put the Pixel Remasters
on Switch because playing retro games on smart phones is nonsense. And if you
don't know what I'm talking about, good for you. You have your priorities straight.