Bandai DX Chogokin 1/48 VF-1

[Chronocidal]

Interesting that they're just completely erasing the tail numbers now in publicity shots.. wonder if they got backlash from the fans in Japan as well.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Chronocidal

[canklebreaker]

7 minutes ago, Slave IV said:

Yes, they only have Japnese customers and they get charged shipping. 

Thanks, just trying to figure out if it’ll be cheaper having a friend order and ship to me or using one of the other sites.

[Lolicon]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

Interesting that they're just completely erasing the tail numbers now in publicity shots.. wonder if they got backlash from the fans in Japan as well.

Definitely some grumbling about the 100 screwup from Japanese buyers in the review section.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07SH712YR/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=vf-1s+dx&qid=1585454782&sr=8-1

[Foblander]

Not going to lie. The green on the DYRL VF-1A Kakizaki looks amazing in DX form. Must resist. There is no more space for another DX. Lol

[Paco Grande]

10 hours ago, Foblander said:

Not going to lie. The green on the DYRL VF-1A Kakizaki looks amazing in DX form. Must resist. There is no more space for another DX. Lol

Yup I agree. That green looks amazing. I’m not planning to buy it because I’m trying to limit how many figures I buy this year but I’m tempted. 
 

On a side note I think Nippon Yassan’s price on this is ridiculous. I’ve never used a proxy service but I may have to look into that. 

[Anasazi37]

20 minutes ago, Paco Grande said:

On a side note I think Nippon Yassan’s price on this is ridiculous. I’ve never used a proxy service but I may have to look into that. 

Most, if not all, of the proxies are maxed out because of low order caps. Just another example of Bandai not caring about overseas fans to the point where they are actively putting in place unreasonable countermeasures to keep us from collecting. Let us know if you find a proxy that can still place an order for you, as that will be good info for the next TWE release. When FromJapan canceled my second TWE order in row (first a Missile Set, now the Kakizaki), I basically threw my hands in the air and decided that I'll just wait until release day and start looking for one then. Given Kakizaki's popularity level, it shouldn't be hard to find him at close to retail, which will end up being less expensive than a proxy. Unless this turns into the next VF-31A Kairos, as several others have mentioned, and the availability is so low due to production issues that the price skyrockets.

[seti88]

Posted on the other section, but in case folks don’t visit there...and it’s DX specific so here it is ....

 

[DYRL VF-1S]

5 minutes ago, seti88 said:

Posted on the other section, but in case folks don’t visit there...and it’s DX specific so here it is ....

 

Nice cameos!

[crackpot]

2 hours ago, Anasazi37 said:

Just another example of Bandai not caring about overseas fans to the point where they are actively putting in place unreasonable countermeasures to keep us from collecting

Uuuuuuh... it's a countermeasure to prevent a single entity from buying a lot of the alloted units and either keeping it or scalping them. It's not because they don't want people outside of Japan to get them through proxies. The proxies have a work around on this as long as they have enough unique registered addresses to have TWE items shipped to. TWE may be made to order but they still have a cap on the total number that will be produced. 

[crackpot]

2 hours ago, seti88 said:

Posted on the other section, but in case folks don’t visit there...and it’s DX specific so here it is ....

 

Based on my non-existent translation capabilities, the lady being interviewed is highly anticipating to receive her DX Kaki order. Although, I'm not sure why the news keep showing clips of a hospital's corona virus testing center. Must have been a technical issue. 

Edited March 29, 2020 by crackpot

[jenius]

An entire segment of the havoc Bandai preorder madness can have on society. 

[sqidd]

53 minutes ago, jenius said:

An entire segment of the havoc Bandai preorder madness can have on society. 

 

[Anasazi37]

2 hours ago, crackpot said:

Uuuuuuh... it's a countermeasure to prevent a single entity from buying a lot of the alloted units and either keeping it or scalping them. It's not because they don't want people outside of Japan to get them through proxies. The proxies have a work around on this as long as they have enough unique registered addresses to have TWE items shipped to. TWE may be made to order but they still have a cap on the total number that will be produced. 

I agree that the current countermeasures keep a small number of well-financed scalpers from stockpiling a large number of units, but the fact that proxies have to use multiple unique addresses reinforces my point. It's a work-around-Bandai, not a work-with-Bandai, and Bandai can take away the workaround at any time. For example, you can't use Buyee for TWE because Bandai blocks shipping to individual Tenso addresses and Tenso runs Buyee. I believe they block based on the buyer's phone number and Tenso uses the same one for everything. Bandai could (and maybe already does) extend that treatment to other proxies who are using multiple addresses, who then have to come up with multiple unique phone numbers. If Bandai starts cracking down on that by looking for common payment methods (i.e., same credit card used each time), then proxies might have to shift to using a different method for each of their P-Bandai accounts. It's a cat and mouse game.

I get the impression that the units-per-address limit has been lowered, more people are using proxies, or both. I don't know what AE and NY do to maintain higher limits, apart from having a boatload of unique addresses (and maybe phone numbers, too). One would hope that Bandai has a way for proxies to register with them as trusted businesses, thereby allowing them to purchase more than an individual, but that makes too much logical sense. At one point, links for multiple proxies showed up on the P-Bandai site when you'd try to purchase something, but I don't think that's the case any longer....

Edited March 29, 2020 by Anasazi37

[crackpot]

6 minutes ago, Anasazi37 said:

I agree that the current countermeasures keep a small number of well-financed scalpers from stockpiling a large number of units, but the fact that proxies have to use multiple unique addresses reinforces my point. It's a work-around-Bandai, not a work-with-Bandai, and Bandai can take away the workaround at any time. For example, you can't use Buyee for TWE because Bandai blocks shipping to individual Tenso addresses and Tenso runs Buyee. I believe they block based on the buyer's phone number and Tenso uses the same one for everything. Bandai could (and maybe already does) extend that treatment to other proxies who are using multiple addresses, who then have to come up with multiple unique phone numbers. It's a cat and mouse game.

I get the impression that the units-per-address limit has been lowered, more people are using proxies, or both. I don't know what AE and NY do to maintain higher limits, apart from having a boatload of unique addresses (and maybe phone numbers, too). One would hope that Bandai has a way for proxies to register with them as trusted businesses, thereby allowing them to purchase more than an individual, but that makes too much logical sense. At one point, links for multiple proxies showed up on the P-Bandai site when you'd try to purchase something, but I don't think that's the case any longer....

Because it wasn't meant for retail sale. It's an exclusive available only through P-Bandai. They're not going to give wholesale pricing to retailers.

It could be by phone number or they're just aware of Tenso's operation. I don't know. I also read that having a payment method that is funded locally is required. So even if you are able to circumvent the shipping address/ phone number issue, you still won't be able to get one. 

As for retailers having multiple accounts, I'd assume they're having their employees sign up for an individual account thus getting more access to units. P-Bandai is limiting 6 per account. That's a lot per account especially if you consider retailers limit one purchase per shipping address during high demand retail PO nights. I think sometimes P-Bandai limits the purchase to 3 per account though on certain items. Anyway, retailers (at this point resellers really) limit each person to 2 units for TWE. With proxies though, you can ask for the max number if they're able to do it. So, a few people using proxy service plus who knows how many they're ordering plus the limited accounts they have results to proxies meeting their cap very quick. 

 

[jeniusornome]

other things for other properties Bandai makes are generally readily available outside of Japan. 
 

other properties also do not have the complicated legal status that Macross does.

its fun to say Bandai doesn’t care and nerd rage about it, but Bandai JAPAN doesn’t actually have to care, and Bandai international or distributors aren’t going to touch it with a 30 foot legal pole. 
 

 

[Anasazi37]

1 hour ago, jeniusornome said:

other things for other properties Bandai makes are generally readily available outside of Japan. 

other properties also do not have the complicated legal status that Macross does.

its fun to say Bandai doesn’t care and nerd rage about it, but Bandai JAPAN doesn’t actually have to care, and Bandai international or distributors aren’t going to touch it with a 30 foot legal pole.

With another 30-foot legal pole attached to the first one, just to be safe. Good point on other properties, and I definitely don't want to rehash the legal battle here. There was that faint glimmer of hope last year, which quickly dissipated when the new agreement was reached, so I think this is the reality we'll have to deal with for a long, long time.

Bandai's TWE selling strategy caters to individual domestic collectors, which makes sense because these are exclusive items, and their countermeasures appear to reinforce that (requires domestic address, with a domestic phone number, and a domestic payment method). It is therapeutic to nerd rage occasionally, because we have zero control over the process (like the reversed numbers on the vertical stabilizers), but I think we all recognize (even when we're raging) that if we don't live in Japan, getting these items generally comes at an increased price--if we can get them at all. I consider myself fortunate if I can find one close to retail, but I don't bet on that anymore. And I don't get up in the middle of the night for PO Madness anymore. I struck out multiple times in a row and finally accepted the fact that sleep is more important than saving $50-100. I think we got spoiled by Yamato and HLJ back in the day, when prices were reasonable and availability was generally not a problem. It's a hard mindset for me to shake sometimes, 15 years later. And yes, Yamato ran themselves into the ground with their business model, but Bandai is way at the other end of the spectrum. Somewhere in the middle would be nice, but international collectors are not their core customers, so no, they don't actually have to care.

[Slave IV]

Somewhere in the middle exists. It’s Arcadia. 

[Anasazi37]

4 hours ago, Slave IV said:

Somewhere in the middle exists. It’s Arcadia. 

For direct availability, yes. For price, no, unfortunately. At $250-500 per toy plus shipping, you're in the same financial territory as Bandai DX toys with scalper markups and EMS shipping included, at which point they have similar availability if you're willing to go through AJ, YAJ, Mandarake, Jungle, etc. I definitely give Arcadia tons of credit for supporting fans and producing based on demand, and I know part of the reason for their high prices is that they don't have Bandai's infrastructure. I like that you can still get the SV-51 Ivanov on HLJ for the retail price. If it disappears, just wait a few days and it's back. None of this "discontinued as soon as we get our stock from Bandai" nonsense. It's like there are three variables and you can only choose for two of them to be positive: price, availability, and quality (basic economics theory). One could view Bandai as price(+), availability(-), quality(+) and Arcadia as price(-), availability(+), quality(+). There are quality differences between the two, but they're both solid toys. I guess it's the engineer part of my brain trying to make sense of all of this....

[Lolicon]

[borgified]

On Jungle.

DX SSP set (from the first release batch) for 13.2k yen sealed

 https://jungle-scs.co.jp/sale_en/products/detail/394090 

[Foblander]

What is the difference between sealed vs new?

[LRS]

Hello everyone! *Looks around forum*

Wow, last time I was here Yamato had just released the 1/48 Low Vis. Sad to hear that Yamato went under. I always wanted a 1/48 but I was a poor college student back then. I still have my Yamato light blue VF-19. 

I forgot all about this hobby until a random video from scorched earth reviews popped into my YouTube list. After watching all of the channels vids for the last 5 years to catch up I placed my preorder for kakikazi and bought a few HMRs. Lucky for me it was kakikazi that was on preorder and that I happened to rediscover this hobby now. I have a penchant for obscure or non hero mecha. 

[borgified]

1 hour ago, Foblander said:

What is the difference between sealed vs new?

This might be of help.

Sealed: Unopened (like new) 

New: Newly released items from the factory are re-directed to sellers like NY, AE, Kurama, Okini, HJL as they're the main distributers. 

Jungle, Mandarake, Amiami, Amazon affiliate stores (Japan, Canada, US, UK, Italy etc), Fleabay, Tenso and proxies are secondary sellers as they offer stuff for sale after acquiring it.

18 minutes ago, LRS said:

Hello everyone! *Looks around forum*

Wow, last time I was here Yamato had just released the 1/48 Low Vis. Sad to hear that Yamato went under. I always wanted a 1/48 but I was a poor college student back then. I still have my Yamato light blue VF-19. 

I forgot all about this hobby until a random video from scorched earth reviews popped into my YouTube list. After watching all of the channels vids for the last 5 years to catch up I placed my preorder for kakikazi and bought a few HMRs. Lucky for me it was kakikazi that was on preorder and that I happened to rediscover this hobby now. I have a penchant for obscure or non hero mecha. 

Good time to join in and down the rabbit hole you go!

Had to repurpose this from other member that posted it.

[crackpot]

30 minutes ago, LRS said:

Hello everyone! *Looks around forum*

Wow, last time I was here Yamato had just released the 1/48 Low Vis. Sad to hear that Yamato went under. I always wanted a 1/48 but I was a poor college student back then. I still have my Yamato light blue VF-19. 

I forgot all about this hobby until a random video from scorched earth reviews popped into my YouTube list. After watching all of the channels vids for the last 5 years to catch up I placed my preorder for kakikazi and bought a few HMRs. Lucky for me it was kakikazi that was on preorder and that I happened to rediscover this hobby now. I have a penchant for obscure or non hero mecha. 

 

[jenius]

43 minutes ago, LRS said:

Hello everyone! *Looks around forum*

Wow, last time I was here Yamato had just released the 1/48 Low Vis. Sad to hear that Yamato went under. I always wanted a 1/48 but I was a poor college student back then. I still have my Yamato light blue VF-19. 

I forgot all about this hobby until a random video from scorched earth reviews popped into my YouTube list. After watching all of the channels vids for the last 5 years to catch up I placed my preorder for kakikazi and bought a few HMRs. Lucky for me it was kakikazi that was on preorder and that I happened to rediscover this hobby now. I have a penchant for obscure or non hero mecha. 

Sounds like I probably owe your wallet an apology!

[Alphahorizon]

50 minutes ago, LRS said:

Hello everyone! *Looks around forum*

Wow, last time I was here Yamato had just released the 1/48 Low Vis. Sad to hear that Yamato went under. I always wanted a 1/48 but I was a poor college student back then. I still have my Yamato light blue VF-19. 

I forgot all about this hobby until a random video from scorched earth reviews popped into my YouTube list. After watching all of the channels vids for the last 5 years to catch up I placed my preorder for kakikazi and bought a few HMRs. Lucky for me it was kakikazi that was on preorder and that I happened to rediscover this hobby now. I have a penchant for obscure or non hero mecha. 

I was in the same boat as you LRS this time around NOV 18. At that time it was the DX VF-1J with stand. I bought that, and well...probably about 6 k more since then. Only thing I am not happy about is the email from my original account (Rune - named after my son who is an adult now- I am old) was from Road Runner and the only way to get it reactivated was through an email sent to it. Yep, well, that's entirely on me. But I had stopped when the Yamato VF-1A Cannon Fodder was released.

 

I ended up selling my entire collection then to pay my way through a divorce. HUGE MISTAKE. But, I get to enjoy re-acquiring those toys.  And now, if I had to do it all over again, The toys would stay no matter what! And to let you know, the HMR line is a fun line for sure.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Alphahorizon

[LRS]

51 minutes ago, jenius said:

Sounds like I probably owe your wallet an apology!

Lol yes.  I realized after watching your vids that I'm not in college and I make money now. 

I only plan to purchase one bandai dx and that's it I'm done. So I decided to go all out and preordered the fast packs and missiles pack (F*$ck you bandai)...unless they release the GBP armor. I'll need that as well. For HMR I got the super ostrich, vf-1D, vf-4G and elint...but then I watched your destroid vid so I felt compelled to get a defender. So at least a grand thanks to you lol. Bandai should owe you something. 

I dont do repeats or reskin  so I'm good unless there is an HMR Dragon 2, Cats Eye, or Comanchero. Like I said I love obscure aircraft and mecha. Even the mighty Mom's  Kitchen deserves a release. I'd be all over that 

Edited March 30, 2020 by LRS

[LRS]

46 minutes ago, Alphahorizon said:

I was in the same boat as you LRS this time around NOV 18. At that time it was the DX VF-1J with stand. I bought that, and well...probably about 6 k more since then. Only thing I am not happy about is the email from my original account (Rune - named after my son who is an adult now- I am old) was from Road Runner and the only way to get it reactivated was through an email sent to it. Yep, well, that's entirely on me. But I had stopped when the Yamato VF-1A Cannon Fodder was released.

 

I ended up selling my entire collection then to pay my way through a divorce. HUGE MISTAKE. But, I get to enjoy re-acquiring those toys.  And now, if I had to do it all over again, The toys would stay no matter what! And to let you know, the HMR line is a fun line for sure.

I'd just as soon not let my wife know how much I spent on toys lol.

At least we reenter the hobby when Quality of the toys is higher.  

[sqidd]

23 minutes ago, LRS said:

 

I only plan to purchase one bandai dx and that's it I'm done.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! That's adorable!

[HardlyNever]

1 hour ago, LRS said:

 

I only plan to purchase one bandai dx and that's it I'm done.

Famous. Last. Words.

I was only going to get one single Arcadia 1/60.

A few years later, and thousands of dollars later...

Hope you can stick to your plan, if you want to. 

[Slave IV]

LOL, welcome back @LRS!

Always great to have get back into this hobby and see where it takes you from your initial thoughts to reality.

Share some pics when you get your new stuff!

[LRS]

17 minutes ago, HardlyNever said:

Famous. Last. Words.

I was only going to get one single Arcadia 1/60.

A few years later, and thousands of dollars later...

Hope you can stick to your plan, if you want to. 

I dont have the space for multiple 1/48. The HMR....might cause a problem. Although I already have most of the ones I would like. I really just need fast pack for that line and I can live with the Fext Armor.  

Does FEXT stands work with the adapters that come with HMR? Is there FEXT stand for 1/48?

[borgified]

14 minutes ago, LRS said:

 Does FEXT stands work with the adapters that come with HMR? Is there FEXT stand for 1/48?

Check the FEXT HOBBY thread for the first part of your question. 

No Fext Hobby stand for 1/48 valks, however Yeti Stand has you covered and @ChaoticYeti is creator of that. 

 

[Bolt]

FEXT teased 1/60. But could get the support , iirc.

[Lolicon]

For those too impatient to wait for a TV Kakizaki from Bandai... 

https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1133412344&ref=list&keyword=マクロス