Should Bandai relinquish their Macross F transforming toy license?

[jvmacross]

Of course they won't, but what the heck.....let your dissatisfaction with their (mis)handling of this franchise be heard!

Edited March 1, 2013 by jvmacross

[plutoniumhunter]

Supply too low, demand too high, market forces pushing 3rd party deals to sky-high prices - Unequivocal yes. Obviously they won't though. It would be nice to have someone else with the Frontier license and pushing them harder.

Edited March 1, 2013 by plutoniumhunter

[Duymon]

It's their show and they can do what they want. Japanese macross demand is nowhere near where we think it is, despite what hardcore macross fans may feel. Goto akiba and see for yourself. Japanese stores stock what sells and you're hard pressed to find dedicated macross sections let alone loads of Bandai and Yamato valks. Only a handful of shops even had shelf space of just macross when I was there. Heck, somebody who went to Akiba recently was finding VF-171 exes for half retail!

Sure, you could say Bandai should think of the export market, but how can they when HG has "Macross" trademarked anywhere outside of Japan?

Edited March 2, 2013 by Duymon

[xrentonx]

Hahah this looks like it's gunna be fun. I don't know how I should vote right now

[mechaninac]

From the point of view of us gaijin consumers, it's tempting to say yes, but that is an extremely unrealistic and childish position. If one can take a step back, suspend the frustrated fanboy range, and look at it logically from Bandai's point of view, the answer is clearly "why should they?" Don't get me wrong, I'm as dissapointed by the way they've (mis)handled every renewal release, in terms of units produced, since the 25F as just about everyone here, and missed on the RVF-25's miniscule pre-order window... but I realize that we're not the target market (blame HG for that), and having to sleep in order to go to work the next day when these things go up (blame the 12 hour difference -- I'm in the NE-USA) doesn't help either.

[xrentonx]

Voted to BUUUURN IN HELL even though I'll probably buy a Bandai product tomorrow. I'm a conflicted and complicated man full of piss and vinegar...not really

Good points in this thread so far. Wish I could add more but it's a pain typing on a mobile

[master of macross]

I HATE BANDAI...no other words...

[Benbot]

My only complaint with Bandai is that their valks aren't in scale with the Yamato valkyries.

[IXTL]

I've only got a bone to pick with them about production numbers and distribution. I'm happy with the MSRP pricing and product.

If they can resolve the availability issue, I all for them keeping the licence. If not, let someone else have it.

Edited March 1, 2013 by IXTL

[Lolicon]

I hate trying to get one, but I wouldn't vote yes solely because of that. I'd vote yes because I know Yamato would've done a better job. Though I've no idea what to make of Arcadia.

Is it really that hard to make non-crooked wings?

[Mommar]

What's the difference between Burn In Hell and F U?

[mechaninac]

What's the difference between Burn In Hell and F U?

One preposition?...

[Vifam7]

You might as well ask whether Bandai should've bothered to sponsor the Macross Frontier anime.

[Lupin The Third]

Should they give it up? No. But what they should do is stand aside and not prevent anyone else who wants to play from using the license. They've shown a complete inability to meet demand and I can't imagine another company couldn't do better. Plus Bandai has never made anything as amazing as the Max Factory Big O...imagine that kind of engineering in a Valk. Sure it'd be $500 but it'd be worth every penny AND you'd be able to buy it at retail instead of 3-4x the cost.

I do find it funny though how when I joined I was an evil bastard for daring to speak ill of Bandai's inability to meet consumer demand and now we have polls like this. Funny how times change. Guess I'm a trend setter.

[xrentonx]

Ain't never been anything wrong with dissent as long as it doesn't get out of hand

[aceoftherebellion]

From the point of view of us gaijin consumers, it's tempting to say yes, but that is an extremely unrealistic and childish position. If one can take a step back, suspend the frustrated fanboy range, and look at it logically from Bandai's point of view, the answer is clearly "why should they?" Don't get me wrong, I'm as dissapointed by the way they've (mis)handled every renewal release, in terms of units produced, since the 25F as just about everyone here, and missed on the RVF-25's miniscule pre-order window... but I realize that we're not the target market (blame HG for that), and having to sleep in order to go to work the next day when these things go up (blame the 12 hour difference -- I'm in the NE-USA) doesn't help either.

All of this. And there's other aspect to this that I think all of us fanboys like to conveniently ignore, as well. The biggest is simply that those of us who dedicate so much of our lives to following every aspect of this series that we even practically live on a message board for it... will still never make up more than a fairly small percentage of overall fans and customers. That's got some implications.

The renewals vs. the originals? So many of us on here love to complain about these things but at the end of the day, I think most of the more casual fans (heh, casual fan buying $150+ toy, I know, but work with me here) really and honestly don't care that much about the differences. Bandai pretty much produced these renewals to answer to a very vocal subset of fans who demanded it, and that was actually kind of awesome of them. I mean, I know a lot of us are mad that they didn't 'give it their all the first time' or whatever, but honestly it's not like they attempted to fail. Their first toy WAS almost certainly their best effort, and it was only after feedback from that that they could perfect their concept to the renewal level. (You know, after the Lucifer AND Durendal helped them work their bugs out.) It's actually kinda awesome that they went back and redid their first one for those of us who really cared, but at the end of the day, in their home market? They're already quadruple dipping for things like the VF-25. (The version 1 had no less than three retail releases that I'm aware of.) Yeah, plenty of us here would buy every single one of those, but there's pretty much NO WAY their entire market would do the same.

Producing limited quantities of the renewal pretty much makes PERFECT sense from a business perspective, taking that in mind. I don't think we take into account as much just how much of a poison pill unsold merchandise is to a big company like Bandai who has so many other licences and goods to store at any given time. Stored goods mean lost money. There's overhead on storage and things like that. Unsold merchandise costs actual money, compounded daily. From their perspective, why would they do this any differently? Yeah, they probably could sell more, but the thing is? They WOULD have already done their market research to come up with the optimal production range to sell all product and not have left-over and turn a profit. Whatever number they release of any given thing is exactly what they intend to release of a given thing, and they are always going to have damn good reasons for those decisions. We just kinda need to take off our fanboy hats and step back and look at the bigger picture sometime, I think.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying dissatisfaction isn't justified or anything. We are fanboys, that is what we do... But logically, I understand why it is how it is.

[Firefox]

They do put up some good Mac F toys, but for some freaking reason they determine their production based on the demand of their local market instead of the whole market. Their marketing guys should be fired (and probably shot). I have written to HLJ for this matter. They replied saying that they could not do much as the production are so limited and restricted. Yet, you keep hearing that the brick and mortar shops in Jap have a bundle to offer. Personally, I'm still wondering if Bandai did it on purpose to control the popularity of Macross overseas. After all, when they sell Gundam, they take the whole profit, while selling Macross, they may need to share some with Big West.

[aceoftherebellion]

Bandai has no real reason to cater to a foreign market they have no licence to where the show they're selling merchandise for has never even legally aired... The 'local market' is their whole market as far as they are legally concerned. At best, we're going to be icing on the cake. The problem here is less Bandai's marketing strategy and more 30 some odd years of what is probably the worst foreign license mismanagement in the entire anime/manga industry. Otherwise known as 'thanks again, Harmony Gold.'

[Duymon]

I don't know why they just don't also offer the valks at retail on the tamashii web site like they do for the super packs and whatnot. It would eliminate all the risk of overproduction and they'd make more money. But who knows......

[aceoftherebellion]

The way I understand it, Bandai's business model relies exclusively on batch production. They produce so many of product a in their factories, then immediately switch to product b, then product c, etc. They produce all of a given thing that they intend to produce at once, then sell that off, and occasionally produce additional batches as the need arises.That's definitely how they do model kits. I don't know if that's how they do toys, but if I suspect it's probably similar. A made to order approach wouldn't jive too well with that approach to production. I could be wrong about that one, but it makes sense from what I've seen of their production schedules.

[UN Spacy]

Just because a tiny portion of a small fanbase got their jimmies rustled b/c they couldn't preorder the latest DX Chogokin?

Nah. Why should they?

[aceoftherebellion]

Honestly, we've been enjoying nothing less than a total Macross renaissance the last few years. There has never been this many high quality goods available as quickly as these goods have been available. We can grumble about the quality of some of Bandai's toys and their relative scarcity, but just a few short years ago having this much stuff available? I don't think many of us could have even imagined it. Bandai is even making completely unimportant side-mechs like the VF-171? We might get a toy of a video game exclusive mech soon? It took yamato upwards of a decade to make toys available of some of these mechs. Bandai has made toys of relatively comparable quality available immediately. That's a hell of a turnaround from how things were for this fandom before they went all in on Frontier.

It might be annoying that it's hard to get these toys at the prices we want to pay but to say they're mismanaging the brand is pretty short-sighted. I know it's easy to get spoiled but let's look at things a little more objectively here, really.

[moose]

Well crap I total thought they would release this in the Q3 one every quarter but May then June so we can expect the next Valk to drop in July.

F you Bandai I so what to get this addiction over with the don't even compare in quality to Yamato but you have the license to why not milk you F#$# idiots

Hey your right I do feel better

Edited March 2, 2013 by moose

[xrentonx]

I believe Bandai has sat on Macross and done nothing great far longer than Yamato if you think about it. I'm a Yamato guy but hold no real grudges toward Bandai. In terms of quality the last few years have been top notch in my book.

Edited March 2, 2013 by xrentonx

[Lupin The Third]

Honestly, we've been enjoying nothing less than a total Macross renaissance the last few years. There has never been this many high quality goods available as quickly as these goods have been available. We can grumble about the quality of some of Bandai's toys and their relative scarcity, but just a few short years ago having this much stuff available? I don't think many of us could have even imagined it. Bandai is even making completely unimportant side-mechs like the VF-171? We might get a toy of a video game exclusive mech soon? It took yamato upwards of a decade to make toys available of some of these mechs. Bandai has made toys of relatively comparable quality available immediately. That's a hell of a turnaround from how things were for this fandom before they went all in on Frontier.

It might be annoying that it's hard to get these toys at the prices we want to pay but to say they're mismanaging the brand is pretty short-sighted. I know it's easy to get spoiled but let's look at things a little more objectively here, really.

I think a lot of folks are just getting even more angered by Bandai's antics than previously due to the fact that Yamato/Arcadia is currently MIA due to the restructuring. We know for a fact that Bandai at the very least has the VF-171CF, the RVF-25, the VF-27, a reissue of the YF-29 30th and the Vajra coming out this year. Contrast that with...well pretty much nothing from Yamato. So basically people are left worrying that while Macross interest is at an almost all-time high, the only Valks coming out in the forseeable future basically can't be bought for less than 2-3 times retail. If Yamato/Arcadia had already announced any combination of a new wave of reissued Option-Parts-enhanced Valks, a new Destroid, a V2 and/or new Valks from Macross Zero, the V3 YF-19, a VF-2SS, or the FB2012 Version of the VF-4G then it wouldn't be so infuriating that the only Valks announced for the first half of this year are from Bandai.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Lupin The Third

[anime52k8]

This has got to be the most pointless thread I've seen in at least 5 minutes.

[Scyla]

This has got to be the most pointless thread I've seen in at least 5 minutes.

You're right and that why I'm writing a response at this very moment.

*snip*

I have to to totally agree with Ace here. Plus we just don't know enough about the market to make qualified assumptions if Bandai doing things the wrong way.

Other than that I would love to see a DX Chogokin Valkyrie from Bandai to be a web shop exclusive just so they can see how large the demand really is.

If they sell 30% (fictional number) more units than before due to customers who ordered from overseas that maybe something would change.

However it could be that that the increase is only in the 1-5% margin so they want even bother to address non domestic demands.

The YF-30 could be that product.

I honestly hoped it would be the YF-29 Anniversary Edition but that thing is the weirdest release ever in my opinion. A Valkyrie that was produced for the 30th anniversary of Macross but

gets a re-issue one year later when no other toys of the Macross Frontier line being re-done. So they produce a second production run for a toy that should be per definition rare were the

bread and butter units are only available in the blink of an eye.

I don't think that Bandai should stop to make Macross Frontier products because the Valkyries the released after the V1s are awesome toys.

But I realized that I'm not the target audience so I've to buy them with a mark-up which is fine because I think the toys are worth the price I payed for them.

Of course I'm angry that I couldn't snap the meaty pre-order discount from amiami but hey, if I get the toy within my set price range I'm still a happy camper at the end of the day.

[Phalanix]

Is there an option for "BURN IN HELL HG"?

[OmegaD3k]

To answer the topic question: Yes. Immediately.

Give all the Macross licenses Bandai currently holds over to a more competent company. Arcadia could really use it.

OR:
Bandai can stop working for the eBay scalpers and make more than just a dozen
valks per release. They could be swimming in a vast ocean of cash if they just made more. A LOT MORE.

[ff95gj]

I can't really see why they can't make it into Tamashii web exclusive if they decide the market is niche.

I can understand why the VF-25S was in shortage, as VF-25F had been in excess. But even since, YF-29, VF-25G, VF-171, YF-29(30th), they prove the demand is more than the production run.

I do not agree that "Bandai cares not the overseas market", as they cannot really tell from where the buyers are from. The sales figure of the above models should be their perceived demand.

[valhary]

yes because although it has great design in the v2 I not forget the poor design of the v1 I got the feeling that bandai took advantage of the macross fans for sell us two times the same toy when from the beginning could do well and the limit productions is a kick in the balls the only thing that causes is the abuse in the already high prices of the Valks honestly prefer to give my money to the handmade fans

[jenius]

They should totally handle it like Yamato... But a Yamato that stays in business...

Edited March 3, 2013 by jenius

[Valkyrie Magnus]

They should totally handle it like Yamato... But a Yamato stays in business...

Any new info to share about Yamato/Arcadia!

[Valkyrie addict]

I doubt they will ever relinquish the Macross F line, its pretty much theirs. Given previously what they did with the Macross 7 license, and IF they ever subsided to some other company, it's gonna be expensive as hell. Besides, all this valks were made to sell toys that I find uninspiring, so BanDai can go Macross F themselves!

[jenius]

Bandai will definitely give up the Macross F license... some day. Probably after the next Macross show comes along and is a hit (like we saw with the Mac7 license).