Ken,
There is definitely a 'more than meets the eye' thing going on here - i don't think you've ever heard or been told the half of it, but thats whats at the root of all this and probably asking around would get you the candy coated version. At one time this site was hosted for free at Geocities and there was much more of a community style atmosphere (even the puppeteers joined in), lots more interaction with the people running the site and less of an emphasis on needing to make money. Then things went .com and there obviously was a certain emphasis placed on raising money because of the costs, but at the same time people liked a non-commercial atmosphere where they didn't see plugs for products continuously. After a lot of discussion on this it seems changes have been made to limit this and to the websites credit, it's got a lot better.
As to why the site shouldn't make money for itself - possibly two reasons. One, it has always been said that the site is non-commercial (unbiased and impartial) and that any money raised from the store goes back into the site running costs. Therefore being reliant on the products for income kinda takes a lot of that away. Also at one time people were asked to support the site store because it was working on a non-profit basis rather than carrying adverts or asking for donations, and quite a few people do so.
Secondly, being a totally unofficial site it uses copyrighted photos and reproduces other matierial without many restrictions because it isn't supposed to trade on the Muppet brand and has a good relationship (i think) with Henson getting the unofficial nod. Toughpigs hardly uses ANY Henson pictures or copyrighted matierial so it doesn't break any copyrights and also exists with no kickback links for Henson licensed products or adverts at all - the webmaster pays himself because of his own fan love (not saying that everyone can afford to do that, or people who don't have any lesser of a fan love though) - i plan to do the same with my ALF site. 'Kermitage.com' IS going to be an officially connected site with Henson, JHC own the domain name - the webmasters (Mar and Michael) have had meetings with Henson on what they can and can't do, what they have access to reproduce, and have even had to sign legal agreements. So basically being licensed characters that Muppet Central doesn't own or have the legal right to use it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go even more commercial - i think Henson have acted pretty well to accomodate all the Muppet websites - most of the Disney and WB fansites are much more restrictive and send out Cease and Desist letters for almost anything.
I'm not sure how i'd feel personally about 'Muppet Central' directly selling the figures at a discount price. On the one hand yes it would benefit fans a lot, but on the other hand, it might be seen as using the other content to drive people towards the figure sales pages, and i'd rather the sites focus was more on news and information rather than having to worry about selling things. I'm sure the Phillip would make the right decision about that, but i think if he could get the official nod from Henson that it's ok to do so, it would help and reassure people tons !
So to sum it all up - it's more about whether it's a bad thing for the site to have a financial relationship with the Muppets, rather than Palisades !