Anasazi37

Mine went straight to the Junk Mail folder, so even my email provider is skeptical of their "highest and sincere regards"

My hopes of obtaining TWE items directly were dashed right after setting up a Tenso forwarding address. Bandai put several countermeasures in place to thwart forwarding services: You have to provide your name in both Kanji and Hiragana You have to provide a valid domestic phone number (they won't accept the one provided by Tenso and other forwarding services) You have to provide valid domestic financial information (e.g., bank account, credit card, pre-loaded debit/gift card) The first one isn't too difficult, and the second one could potentially be arranged with some planning (buy a cell?), but the third is the hardest because of banking laws and procedures that require identity and residency verification. I'm sure that those laws and procedures exist for very good reasons and, based on a quick interwebz search, trying to set something up remotely looks to be challenging. So far they haven't blocked proxy buying services, but they do put a limit on purchase quantity. I found that out the hard way when I recently tried to get two Missile sets using FromJapan and my order was cancelled because FJ hit their ceiling. I think we're finding that the proxies move faster than AE and NY, and are a heck of a lot more transparent and professional, but there is still a delay (several hours to several days, depending on your time zone) because you have to tell them what you want, they have to send you a quote, then you have to pay, and only then do they attempt to make the purchase for you. Given how quickly the first release SSP sets sold out, I wonder how many people managed to snag them via proxies.

Status update for anyone who ordered SSP sets from AE: I'm still waiting for an "item available for shipping" notification from them. They've confirmed twice that mine will ship this month, but I don't believe them. I'm beginning to think that they completely screwed up orders for the first release since it sold out so fast.

There are three versions of it: Regular, SP, and Wings of Goodbye. The last one is a little darker green than the first two and both the SP and WoG versions have "nose art" but they are different. All three regularly show up on Mandarake, if you're patient. Looks like @sh9000 has the same one I do (WoG). Here is @jenius's full review: http://anymoon.com/blog/?p=4194

Yikes. Well, worst case, I'll customize it. Maybe a Blue Roses 002 or a Minmay Guard Moon Act.

Finally snagged a Hikaru 1S Strike today! It's usually up there on the more expensive side (¥17,000-19,000) with Roy's Strike, but Jungle had one for ¥13,200 in B condition, so I pounced on it. I've had good luck with their B-level stuff, so I'm willing to take the chance. The last B item I ordered was the Missile Effect Set and the description said it had been opened and displayed. Opened, yes. Displayed? Not likely, unless it was in the tray with the cover on it. Pieces looked brand new and all of the plastic bits were still on the sprues.

Agreed. That's why I've switched to using proxies like FromJapan unless I have no other choice. They've always been honest with me about when they can and can't order an item for me. I don't like how AE is handling this situation.

My AE order for the SSP set also shows that it's shipping in April, but I confirmed with them back in July that it would ship this month. Based on what I've been reading here, I sent them an email last night, asking to reconfirm, and they wrote back within a few hours and did so. I placed my order as soon as AE opened up their listing, which was technically the day before the official PO, and definitely before the second batch was announced, so that is probably why they're telling me that my set is coming soon. I'm still skeptical.

One step closer to an actual kit. At least he's thinking about it now and playing around with some ideas.

A very cruel error....

Same here. Shows as available, lets you add to cart, but after logging in, it errors out saying stock not available.

Friend of mine sent me this article today: https://www.smh.com.au/education/vce-authorities-apologise-for-phantom-robot-20121119-29lbl.html HMR Glaugs are showing up in the oddest places....

I confirmed this with Tenso yesterday. I tried to register on P-Bandai so I could cut out the middlemen and they wouldn't accept the phone number provided with my Tenso address, so I contacted Tenso and asked for an alternate number. This was their response:

Looks like 15 Nov at 4pm JST, so two weeks. They might have hit their limit sooner than that, but I'm not sure. Something to keep in mind for the future when ordering through proxies: even if the P-Bandai site says that orders are still being accepted for an item, weeks or months after the initial offering date, you might be out of luck if you don't pull the trigger within a few days.

I know that there's always been a limit, but FJ either hit it a lot faster than usual or the limit has been lowered.

Wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you were planning to order Missile Sets through the proxy service FromJapan, you won't be able to. I placed an order for two yesterday and they cancelled the order today, immediately refunding my payment, with this is as the reason: I'd never run into that problem before with them. Makes me wonder if proxies are caught up in Bandai's response to what happened with the first round of SSP sets, which sold out almost instantly. Maybe Bandai is taking the scalping situation more seriously than we thought? (HA!) Setting the limit low for individual customers would definitely slow down the people causing problems for the rest of us, but it won't stop them. I'm more surprised that FJ is viewed by Bandai as a single customer. You'd think they'd have a bunch of accounts set up on the P-Bandai site, one per employee, to deal with this situation.

I'm wondering if no one caught it on the production quality control side because the first two releases were 101 and 111, so mirroring the numbers was perfectly fine.

As a professionally-trained anthropologist, I agree with this assessment. What makes things even more complicated for us as collectors is when, in addition to this big difference between East and West, you have support staff from other parts of the world who bring their own perspectives and may or may not receive training on how to keep Western customers happy. With that said, how much responsibility do online stores have to keep us happy? I'd argue that if they are directly catering to Westerners, and make a big deal of it, the level of responsibility goes up. For example, HLJ and proxy services like FromJapan know exactly who their core customers are and make sure that they staff and train their support teams accordingly. For smaller operations and/or ones that only dabble in overseas sales, I think we have to set the bar much lower. With all of this said, stores in Japan that cancel existing pre-orders, providing some kind of lame excuse about lack of stock, and then turn around and sell units at marked up prices, are going against the established collectivist norms of behavior in multiple ways. Sadly, greed often overrides virtuousness. Short of finding a way to publicly name-and-shame them in their front yards, where it will actually have an impact because their reputations would be damaged, there's probably not much we can do. Knowing that stores are offering to buy back orders for more than retail, but allowing you to keep your order if you want to, is an encouraging sign.

Mandarake had another one, unopened with damaged packaging (meaning little to no actual visible damage because of how they rigorously rate stuff), for ¥25,000. With average bidding prices at the same level, there's a good chance that this is as low as we're going to see it.

I reached out to him today and he was kind enough to respond. He couldn't recall what he specifically used, but he said it was something standard and, worst case, I could just completely replace the details with styrene rails I modify myself.

Good idea. That will be my plan if SSM can't or won't do an exchange for the part.

Me, too. It might be a few years before I can get to this kit and by then I'm sure SSM will have sold all of their remaining stock, so I'm glad that I checked. I've seen expert MW modelers like @tekeringdo some amazing work in far more challenging situations (@Return To Kit Formcompetition entries, for example), but I'd like to avoid that if I can. The kit itself is really well done and fits together seamlessly with the launch rail, booster, and 1/72 Hasegawa VF-1...all of which I have to build.... @captain americais a true master designer.

Dammit. I opened up my box to inspect the kit and the distinctive vertical details on one of the two main pieces--the top one--are damaged. Those two pieces were not individually bubble-wrapped, so they likely bounced around and hit the sides of the box and other pieces during transit to Starship Modeler or to me. On one side two of them broke off. I found them in the box and can glue them back on. With some strategic sanding, you'll never know. The other side, the one you want to display because of the lineart and how the vehicle is configured, is a different matter. Looks like there were some casting issues and those parts came out mostly hollow due to air bubbles. They crumbled. Making those whole again is going to take a lot of effort. I reached out to SSM to ask if I can exchange this part for one of the others they still have in stock.

Probably not necessary in space, moon as well, but if a VF-1 were on a planet with significant atmosphere and gravitational pull, you'd need a booster. It wasn't until later that valk engines had enough power on their own.

I broke down and bought one