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Posted

Don't worry, Chaotic Yeti, these are old photos of wrongly assembled parts.

Alrighty. I thought it looked weird. So. Nothing new here? Just new pictures of the case display?

Posted

Love the tampo/ I wish Arcadia would follow suit.

YES!!!! (x1000000)

Posted

They could make it really simple and just make everything web exclusive. Bandai just exists in some oddball parallel universe where exclusives are 10000x easier to acquire than general releases.

Posted

They could make it really simple and just make everything web exclusive. Bandai just exists in some oddball parallel universe where exclusives are 10000x easier to acquire than general releases.

This. Follow the Arcadia model, make 'em web exclusive, and produce toys based on preorders, with a few extras. With a popular valk like this, the'y're going to exceed predictions, esp when there are folks who buy multiples. Of all the valks, the VF-1 and the Y/VF-19 are pretty sure bets for high demand. With their current market strategy, Bandai's hurting their own bottom line by under producing; they're not the ones that will be making the crazy money off these in aftermarket, so why not produce more in the current market when their item is a hot commodity and reap the financial benefits rather than let online retailers make stupid profits from their product?

Posted (edited)

If they were actually interested in profit, they would have re-released Ozma's armor a long time ago. :p

In reality, I have no doubt that they've got some sort of market analysis department picking and choosing what's a good product release schedule. Bandai just seems to be very averse to any kind of risk, and actively ignores the international markets their Macross products appeal to. Whether that's due to pressure from Big West, or other internal sources, is hard to tell.

Edited by Chronocidal
Posted

I think their bottom line is doing OK as I doubt they are losing money. Losing potential sales is another story but their bean counters are seeing everything in the black so to them this model is successful. Jus' playing devil's advocate here :p

Posted

Can't blame Bandai for how they do their business as after all their primary market is Japan and if you live in Japan, probably much easier to pick one up as compared to us who live overseas. We also do not know how much they produce. They could very well be producing much more than Arcadia, just that their items are in higher demand. Also Bandai may not want to over produce as they probably do not want to be sitting with stock and not being able to move it (Yamato had this issue with a lot of their releases that ended up being heavily discounted at from places like HLJ). Some of Bandai items still could be bought at below retail, like VF-27 with super parts. And as Bandai has done, if they see there is demand, they will reissue them (VF-25S, VF-25F, 30th Anniversary YF-29).

Posted

I can say from experience that after living in Japan and trying to buy these directly from a store was actually harder than just ording it online and having them ship to my house. I would go to Akihabara (anime/tech/otaku central) and would hit up almost every hobby store. BIC and Yodobashi Camera were actaually the best places to pre-order as Yodobashi actually housed the Tamashi show room. The problem was that you would walk in, hope to pull a ticket from the up coming item board and that would be your pre-order; this was the same routine for many stores. And I remember going out on release dates to these stores and there was no over stock to be found. The only time I ever found valks of Yamato, Arcadia, or Ban Dai were like CF valks that were never really popular amoungst the Japanese. But kid you not, wait about week or two and Mandarake in Nakano or Akihabara would have a few. Mandarake would maybe get two new and the rest just seemed to be buy backs from customers. While in Japan I ordered from HLJ and Nippon and found it to be much simplier. I did not have to pay that much for shipping, but in the end, going through what I called "Valk Black Friday" was not worth the hassle.

Honestly I was always surprised at the buy back prices stores were offereing. It is like Japan has not heard of Ebay (although there is a cultural reason for this...a story for another time). For example I wish I was able to intercept the customer who was about to sell it back to a store for resale. I remember when the VF-4 and YF-30 came out. Retail was about $300 US. Stores were offering buy backs for about $150-$180. Then they would turn around and sell it second hand at ~$280 or more depending on market demand. The deals were about as bad as selling your college books back to the book store. I would have offered the guy $200+ or more just to buy it off his hands direct.

Another thing that always stumped me was re-issue pricing especially Ban dai valks. When the VF-25S was reissued for the third time, the prices for the first and second issues were still commanding a $400US+ price even though you could get the third reissue for retail. Unless you are a hardcore collector and want all the reissues I guess you can pay the price, but honestly the V2 reissue Ban Dai valks seem to be pretty similar to any previous reissue in the V2 relm give or take a few fixes with duribility issues with eash iteration. Okay enough of my rant.

Posted

Honestly I was always surprised at the buy back prices stores were offereing. It is like Japan has not heard of Ebay (although there is a cultural reason for this...a story for another time).

I'm curious to hear this story.

Posted

I can say from experience that after living in Japan and trying to buy these directly from a store was actually harder than just ording it online and having them ship to my house. I would go to Akihabara (anime/tech/otaku central) and would hit up almost every hobby store. BIC and Yodobashi Camera were actaually the best places to pre-order as Yodobashi actually housed the Tamashi show room. The problem was that you would walk in, hope to pull a ticket from the up coming item board and that would be your pre-order; this was the same routine for many stores. And I remember going out on release dates to these stores and there was no over stock to be found. The only time I ever found valks of Yamato, Arcadia, or Ban Dai were like CF valks that were never really popular amoungst the Japanese. But kid you not, wait about week or two and Mandarake in Nakano or Akihabara would have a few. Mandarake would maybe get two new and the rest just seemed to be buy backs from customers. While in Japan I ordered from HLJ and Nippon and found it to be much simplier. I did not have to pay that much for shipping, but in the end, going through what I called "Valk Black Friday" was not worth the hassle.

Honestly I was always surprised at the buy back prices stores were offereing. It is like Japan has not heard of Ebay (although there is a cultural reason for this...a story for another time). For example I wish I was able to intercept the customer who was about to sell it back to a store for resale. I remember when the VF-4 and YF-30 came out. Retail was about $300 US. Stores were offering buy backs for about $150-$180. Then they would turn around and sell it second hand at ~$280 or more depending on market demand. The deals were about as bad as selling your college books back to the book store. I would have offered the guy $200+ or more just to buy it off his hands direct.

Another thing that always stumped me was re-issue pricing especially Ban dai valks. When the VF-25S was reissued for the third time, the prices for the first and second issues were still commanding a $400US+ price even though you could get the third reissue for retail. Unless you are a hardcore collector and want all the reissues I guess you can pay the price, but honestly the V2 reissue Ban Dai valks seem to be pretty similar to any previous reissue in the V2 relm give or take a few fixes with duribility issues with eash iteration. Okay enough of my rant.

Yep...I've always said you can't include Mandarake when trying to determine market price of anything....they are basically a collectibles pawn shop....sure, you get great deals..but that's because they are buying their items off of collectors for less than 50% of market value.....

Here is a list of what they pay for Macross items....

http://www.mandarake.co.jp/information/buy/toy/macross.html

Posted

As we are getting close to the release date, I'm hoping Bandai will release some new publicity photos soon of the final production item.

Graham

Posted

As we are getting close to the release date, I'm hoping Bandai will release some new publicity photos soon of the final production item.

Graham

Eh, the Ozma -29, and ALL the -27's, never had official photos of the final production item IIRC. (I know because none of mine match the official/box pics, paint-wise).

Posted

Late May. According to NY, May 31. So that's first week of June to US based. ;)

That works for me, I'll definitely have enough $$$ to cover this one easy! B))

Posted

maybe this delay is a good sign..maybe they noticed the huge demand for the vf-19 and decided to make more of them on their first run. :)

Guest davidwhangchoi
Posted

i got a notice from cd japan that's it's delayed to june

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