Anasazi37

That is a *very* effective use of the HLJ Black Friday code. You might single-handedly ensure that HLJ never offers an unlimited use code again!

And EMS is more expensive in general these days, often higher than alternatives like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. It used to be very much the opposite. I think it's mostly because Japan Post has to contract with other organizations to get their EMS stuff shipped, which I think historically were commercial airlines, and there simply aren't as many passenger flights out of Japan right now. They're likely contracting with whomever they can find, and it's not cheap. Greater expense for them means higher prices for consumers....

I passed on this for the exact same reason. With the Strike parts included, I was willing to try to get the high price tag past my wife. Without them, no way. Trying to assemble the valk now, and then PO all of the Strike parts, would be far too expensive.

I'm truly loving the fact that BBTS is asking for a 10% non-refundable deposit up front. Take that, scalpers! Not so desirable when you have to put some skin in the game, is it? If more sites did that or required full payment, especially in Japan (I'm looking at you, HLJ/AE/AmiAmi/AJ), maybe PO Madness would start to fade. I'm guessing that BBTS is also trying to reduce their risk, given that this is the first worldwide item they'll be selling. I'm happy to hand over a deposit or pay in full if it means that I can order Macross stuff relatively stress-free. Granted, we won't see SDFM items distributed worldwide, so competing with scalpers won't go away entirely, but this is a really good start.

For what it's worth, Amazon Japan lists 31 Dec as the release date. That could be a "we don't actually know" estimate or the real deal. Hard to tell.

Yep!

Exactly. When I saw the news about this valk, and what it represented, I thought, "cool, we'll see something about this being available worldwide in a month or two once all of the responsible parties figure out distribution," and then WHAM! Nut punch from out of nowhere. I hope these are just growing pains, where Bandai is going with what they know at the moment, and we'll eventually be able to order through domestic outlets like BBTS during reasonable hours of the day. Still, giving no advance notice, when they've always done that before, was pretty cruel of Bandai.

I woke up to find that this valk had already gone on sale and sold out through the popular online stores (HLJ, AE, AmiAmi, AJ), following the usual PO Madness pattern, with the added nut punch from Bandai that the PO event wasn't announced in advance. Yes, if I had actually wanted to buy this valk, I could have been constantly monitoring the PO thread, looking for any shred of news about when it would go on sale and back-estimating from the April 2022 release date to expect that it might happen soon, but my point is that non-MW news outlets had no info on this PO event (including Dengeki Hobby Web, which extensively covered Tamashii Nation Online 2021). Reading through the latest posts in the PO thread, it looks like pretty much everyone was caught by surprise. This "worldwide" approach isn't off to a good start, in my opinion. I don't expect the situation to be any better if/when the valk is available outside of Japan, and if Bandai's plan is to do these no-notice PO events more often, I'll stop collecting their stuff. I can't drop everything I'm doing, at the last minute, to get up in the middle of the night and slug it out with scalpers. It's just not worth it.

I'm guessing there was a meeting at Bandai that went something like this: "Let's show collectors around the world that we care by trying to sell them a non-canon VF-25 and then base our global sales strategy for Macross on how well this one toy does." Leading off with a non-canon entry is an odd choice. Historically, I don't think they do particularly well (for Bandai or Arcadia), so if there isn't a strong demand signal, I hope that Bandai doesn't misinterpret it. On the one hand, I get that they want to do something unique to commemorate their ability to do global stuff with Macross now, and maybe don't want to take away from the rareness of existing canon releases (although their recent reissue of the YF-29 Alto as a Full Set Pack undermines my argument). On the other, I don't collect non-canon valks because...they are non-canon. I'll be interested to see what happens with this one. If nothing else, if they've made engineering improvements that might lead to reissues of canon VF-25's, that would be nice.

I'm guessing that it shows up in the new Delta movie. Hard pass for me on this one and the "worldwide" VF-25. I already have examples of both valks in my collection (Alto YF-29 and Ozma VF-25). Will save my money for some other inevitable PO Madness events. I only break my "no repaints of the same valk" rule for SDFM, where I must have them all.

And I'm wondering if there will be split distribution for the DX line between SDFM and everything else, where the former is only domestic because of the agreement with HG. Maybe Bandai doesn't want to deal with the split for one HMR item (right now). If I can get something stateside, fantastic, but I'm pragmatic and plan to keep slugging it out for releases in Japan and have them shipped.

I'm very happy to see that the line isn't dead, and I hope they make all of these, but reading the translations of the descriptions on the event site, I can't help but think that they are proposed concepts, not actual commitments from Bandai. They all seem to have a variant of "let us know what you think" or "please support us" included, and there's a poll on a second tab where you can say if you'd buy it, need more time to think about it, etc. At least domestic fans have a voice this time. Let's hope they like the HMR line as much as those of us who live elsewhere.

Theoretically not dead. Would be really nice to see some movement on this line. HMR is mentioned in passing in the event details, but the focus still seems to be on the DX line. And replicas of microphones.

That's very true. I'm a boss and I participate in PO Madness. I'd much rather not do that during the middle of the night. Happy to knock off a bit early and fire up my browser at 4pm local time instead of 4pm Japan time.

I'm relieved that your GBP set showed up! Looking forward to seeing the armored DX side by side with your customized Yamato masterpiece.

I had an entire catalog of pinup girls and assorted artwork that was sized to fit on the inner right leg section of the Yamato 1/48 GBP, sourced from Artmic, the Macross Hobby Handbook, and some model kit decal sheets: https://sites.google.com/site/tridentdesignworksdecals/yamato/1-48/gbp-1s-leg-art I had the original "Next Objective" pinup on my repro 1/55 set, but I think some folks asked for it in 1/48 back in the day: https://sites.google.com/site/tridentdesignworksdecals/bandai/1-55/gbp-1s-reproduction

Same here. One of the corners was crushed on mine, but not horribly. Everything inside the DX box was fine. Good thing I'm not a stickler for boxes.

My combo set from AJ arrived today. That was fast! AJ didn't do the best packing job, though, so it bounced around inside the shipping box and one of the corners got crushed. Nothing like the "tossed in a plastic shipping bag" damage that others here have had with AJ in the past, so I'm not complaining. Could have been much worse.

Just received my shipping notice for the combo set from Amazon Japan. Estimated delivery date of next Friday, but it's coming DHL, so hopefully sooner than that.

Let's try that again:

Since you ordered just the armor set, I'm guessing that they moved you to the second round, which has a release date in Oct. First round of armor and the combo pack are scheduled for release at the end of this month. Not the first time that NY has done this to a MW member when they preordered a TWE item that had a second run (e.g., Super/Strike Parts). At least they didn't just cancel your order outright, so that's something positive. The downside is now you'll have to wait and see if they come through. If not, there will be options on the secondary market, but given how fast the two rounds and the combo pack sold out, they won't be at MSRP unless you happen to find someone looking to offload one right before the release date because they preordered without having to pay in advance and now the bill is coming due.

Lately the scanner is making me feel like a monkey, too. I've been locked in mortal combat with bundle adjustment piece for weeks. Mainly because work has kept me so busy that I haven't had a lot of time to work on it. Will hopefully make some real progress tomorrow. Those are very nice scanners. I considered getting one, after less expensive desktop models didn't work as well as I wanted them to, but then decided I wanted to be able to scan both small and large items with maximum flexibility. To get something like that from Einscan would cost $$$$, so I went the DIY route. It's been an enjoyable project, minus the occasional technical issue that I have to resolve.