Wal-Mart to No Longer Carry Legos
I bet that post title got your attention didn’t it? Well, if you live in the U.S. don’t worry you’re safe to shop in your local Wal-Mart and purchase everyone’s favorite building toy, but kids and collectors in Canada will not be able to get any Lego toys at their nearest Wal-Mart.
According to Reuters, the Canadian government called on retailers to lower prices because of the rising strength of the Canadian Beaver Pelt (their choice of currency). In turn, Wal-Mart couldn’t come to an agreement with Lego for a lower price with a Canadian Wal-Mart executive being quoted as saying they, “would not tolerate unfair pricing.” At this point the world blew up from the bitter irony. Wal-Mart is the “low price leader”, because of their tactics of selling items for almost no profit or low profit and their strong arm tactics with manufacturers. The way this story goes Wal-Mart looks like the people’s hero, but they wouldn’t sell for less in this case because they couldn’t squeeze the dimes out of Lego.
And not to get all financially conservative here, but is it really the job of the government to suggest what price a store should sell its items? I’m all for not having an artificially high price on items like infant formula, but when it comes to items like Legos I think the market should be as free as supply and demand dictate. Sorry to go all Adam Smith on everyone, but this kind of thing irks me.
Special thanks to Umbrax of The Brax Cave for pointing me toward this story.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Yeah: “lowering prices on LEGOs.” A more ridiculous sentiment was never uttered.