Quoted from 27dnast:Interesting that some are looking at the Yellow WOZ as a move to keep the lights on. I’m not sure what to think... but it’s disconcerting if that’s true.
I think it's pretty clear this is just a filler to keep the line moving until Willy Wonka. Unfortunate situation where on the one hand POTC hasn't sold well and they've run out of parts. Demand might be picking up a bit, but its not worth investing in a new run of parts when you've got 2 or 3 big new titles on the way.
On the other hand Willy Wonka isn't quite ready for reveal.
So what do they do to fill in this short window of production? A Vault edition like Stern does.
Problem is that they really only need to fill a small amount of production so they need to cap it or restrict demand. If they had come out with a "Pro Edition" that was cheaper they might end up with too many orders that they can't fill because the new title needs production capacity. And maybe they had also run out of Monkey Mechs so it wasn't doing a complete new run of them before they move over to WW.
I can see why they did it, but they probably could have done it better.