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When I reviewed Heroes and Monsters for ENWorld, I evaluated the low ball price for the minis from a deep discount online reseller, and added 10% to that price.
Even now, per mini, the cheapest price in the market for
Heroes and Monsters 40 pc set is $190.00 a case. That gets you typically 84 minis IIRC (my math might be off on accounting for small figs, I think it was 4 smalls per brick for 21 minis overall per brick) at a price of $2.26 per mini if you bought a case. You had to buy a little more than 2:1 to get the complete overall set. The black dragon was an extra $30 or so.
While the cheapest online price for this set is not yet announced, going on past margins from deep discount resellers, the 58 figures in the main set should cost $280 a case for 128 figs or == $2.18 per mini for the 58 S/M/L figures in the set.
Add in the cost of the huges, at a discount reseller, these will be about $16 each and the Rune Giant will be about $30-40 if you pre-order a case of each.
The cost on the minis, other than the new Huge figures is about the same as heroes and monsters folks -- if anything, it has actually gone down a little bit. Add in the price of the huges to the mix, and the price goes up significantly from H&M per mini to $2.71 each.
The packaging on the figures for the main S/M/L set requires you to buy a little more than 2:1 to complete a set of 58 (132 figs) (The "double" percentage you are required to overbuy in a case is actually a little up and varied a little less than 2% from H&M).
For the huges, which you do not have to buy as part of your case buy, the cost goes up steeply, but they are optional and are expensive figures to produce. The overbuy rate on those is only 1.5x if you buy a case -- sharply down by the stnadards of random mins. That's why they are bundled separately and that's ALSO why the price is as high for the huge minis as they are.
At the top of the popularity of DDMs when they were bundled 8 minis per booster, 12 per case, with a set of 60, you were typically required to purchase 30 boosters to *almost* complete a set. Typically, you would be short two rares and could either trade for them or after market them at about $8 each on release. Back then, the discount price was about $10 per booster -- add in the two missing rares from that purchase and call it $315 per set at a cost of $1.31 for the minis when they were not offering Huges as part of the set. At $2.18 for Pathfinder minis, we are not at twice the price, so that's not as bad as I feared.
When WotC did offer Huges in the set (Giants of Legend or WotDQ, say), the math changed significantly. You still needed 30 boosters to complete the set for about $480, and the cost per figure went up to $2 per mini when bought at discount.
It's been seven years since DDMs were at their height. Comparing Apples to Apples, (huge cost added in, but not the Rune Giant) these minis will work out to 2.71 per mini. Now, in fairness, the DDM huge minis sets gave you at least 30 huges for that price, here we get only 6. That's the reason it's not quite twice the price of DDM's huge mini sets.
The Rune Giant is a special offer and is comparable in cost to the D&D Icon series.
Given the bundling decisions and case packing, it's not as bad as you might think. Yes, these are expensive. There is a REASON WotC stopped manufacturing random minis, after all.
But Paizo and Wizkids think they are offering a much higher quality product than the DDM's were at the end of their run and that there are a large enough number of fans to support the product line. I happen to think Paizo is right and I am happy as hell to hear about the pricing/bundling decisions on the S/M/L cases. The cost of the huge minis seems very high to me, but I'm guessing that these are being sold as an ultra-premium product to the most ardent of fans. As I happen to be one, I'll buy em and treasure them.