Whether we completely understand the purported sales figures for set 1 (12,000 units), Sony must know they have a gold mine on their hands. They best know what the sales figures are for some of the past sets. They must be better than 12,000 units - way better - or Sony wouldn't have pursued assembling these beautiful sets. They're in the business to make moolah - not to please fan-addicts like us.
Plus - just on the surface of it - as JH24 just mentioned, the 12,000 units number sounds suspect. While watching "No Census, No Feeling" this eve, I took a gander over at the US Census Bureau web site (
http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/) to pick up their city population figures. If you grab the list of a borough/town/city for Pennsylvanian alone, you see PA has ~1000 registered municipalities that have on average ~5500 people each. I know I'm a fan-addict, but I'm convinced venerable international icons of comedy like the Stooges must be more popular than to sell only 12 copies/5500 people in the one of the Stooges home states. These new DVDs are just too beautiful to have sold so few - even with essentially no advertising. Word of mouth alone - and happenstance sales at WalMart must have led to more sales than that.
And if we assume those figures are approximately correct, then we - and Sony - know that when they decide to finally advertise them, there's a HUGE untapped market still out there.
They may also be waiting to launch a campaign until they have a couple of sets available for sale. This way the same add $$$ can be expected to pull in much more revenue, since there'll be more products to buy.
Remember, too, that if they keep up the 3 yrs/set pace, once set 2 comes out, they'll be almost halfway through the Curly years (34-36, 37-39, 40-42, 43-45, 45-48 - where the last one is 1/3 Shemp).
All just guesses, but it does look pretty clear there will be a 2nd set, so Sony must be planning to make some real $$$ on these sets.