Bandai HG 1/100 YF-21 & VF-22

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

I hadn't even considered how weird that is.  If their stock is that restricted by Bandai, why are they even allowing more than one per customer in the first place?

Or is Bandai being more generous with this one because they don't expect it'll sell well overseas?

 

1 hour ago, KOG Water Dragon said:

The limit of 3 on the new VF-22s could be a mistake or it could be a sign they expect a large allotment. I'm genuinely curious to see what happens. I'm seeing that all the Gundam and Armored Core stuff I have on pre-order is also limited to max 3 per person.

Definitely some weird stuff going on and yeah, not sure if it’s a mistake, but I’m so backlogged that I won’t feel too bad if I have to wait a little. 
I kinda have  a couple odd things going on here. The 3 per customer is definitely different from how they usually do things at Hlj for Bandai stuff. And then there’s the fact that these are standard releases. Neither of those two things were what I expected to see last night

[Chronocidal]

44 minutes ago, Big s said:

 

Definitely some weird stuff going on and yeah, not sure if it’s a mistake, but I’m so backlogged that I won’t feel too bad if I have to wait a little. 
I kinda have  a couple odd things going on here. The 3 per customer is definitely different from how they usually do things at Hlj for Bandai stuff. And then there’s the fact that these are standard releases. Neither of those two things were what I expected to see last night

Just to be clear, waiting "a while" could be up to a year.  HLJ has made absolutely no attempt to explain to me why my YF-21 is still backordered, beyond a copy-pasted "filling orders in the order received" excuse.

[Big s]

8 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Just to be clear, waiting "a while" could be up to a year.  HLJ has made absolutely no attempt to explain to me why my YF-21 is still backordered, beyond a copy-pasted "filling orders in the order received" excuse.

Sorry, I should have probably should have gone into detail. If they don’t have some or all the order, I’ll just cancel out and get the rest here. They’re usually easily available in the states about three months after release anyway.

[PointBlankSniper]

6 hours ago, KOG Water Dragon said:

That's why Hobbysearch flat out doesn't carry Bandai on their website anymore.

That's not exactly true. Ignoring the hyperbole that clearly ignores non plamo items which are clearly still there, there are in fact still plamo items still there.

Hobbysearch has been able to circumvent bandai's restrictions with part of the 30 minutes missions line. I don't know how or why, but I'm sure there are other a small amout of other bandai restricted items on there. That is just the english side. The japanese pages still have full listings of the latest plamo and gunpla releases, so if you wan't to go the roundabout route of using a proxy like buyee to buy from the jp side of hobbysearch, you should still be able to get your bandai plamo from them. For  w/e reason, the jp pages can have different prices from the items available on the english side, even before jp tax though

[Big s]

35 minutes ago, PointBlankSniper said:

That's not exactly true. Ignoring the hyperbole that clearly ignores non plamo items which are clearly still there, there are in fact still plamo items still there.

Hobbysearch has been able to circumvent bandai's restrictions with part of the 30 minutes missions line. I don't know how or why, but I'm sure there are other a small amout of other bandai restricted items on there. That is just the english side. The japanese pages still have full listings of the latest plamo and gunpla releases, so if you wan't to go the roundabout route of using a proxy like buyee to buy from the jp side of hobbysearch, you should still be able to get your bandai plamo from them. For  w/e reason, the jp pages can have different prices from the items available on the english side, even before jp tax though

Even the 30 mm are still locked away. Although I wouldn’t worry about using them since if you delete the English part of the URL, it shows all the available Bandai kits and all the good stuff is already order stopped.

the only kit type items they’ve had available for outside Japan are the trading kits. Probably because they kind of fit more into the toy section 

[Mommar]

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Just to be clear, waiting "a while" could be up to a year.  HLJ has made absolutely no attempt to explain to me why my YF-21 is still backordered, beyond a copy-pasted "filling orders in the order received" excuse.

It's probably a little more expensive but they'll get it to you.  HLJ tried that with my Sinanju Stein 1.5 and USAGS got it to me within a week.

https://www.usagundamstore.com/products/macross-plus-hg-1-100-yf-21-1-100-scale-model-kit
 

[Chronocidal]

Honestly, the YF-21 is past the point I care now, that's the same price I got one from Amazon, and it was here in a day.

I think if HLJ is going to be this bad about actually delivering on orders, they should stop offering the items for sale at all, unless they throw a massive disclaimer about how long it may be to receive it.  They just need to be honest, and tell people what the restocking rate is so they can have realistic expectations on how long it may take to get an order.

[sh9000]

Ordered 2 of each.

[KOG Water Dragon]

5 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

That's not exactly true. Ignoring the hyperbole that clearly ignores non plamo items which are clearly still there, there are in fact still plamo items still there.

Hobbysearch has been able to circumvent bandai's restrictions with part of the 30 minutes missions line. I don't know how or why, but I'm sure there are other a small amout of other bandai restricted items on there. That is just the english side. The japanese pages still have full listings of the latest plamo and gunpla releases, so if you wan't to go the roundabout route of using a proxy like buyee to buy from the jp side of hobbysearch, you should still be able to get your bandai plamo from them. For  w/e reason, the jp pages can have different prices from the items available on the english side, even before jp tax though

Ok, didn't realize they still had some dribs and drabs of Bandai product. But all the Gundam stuff is unavailable, all the Macross stuff is unavailable, the 30mm Armored Core line is unavailable, and I don't see residual listings for Bandai's Patlabor or Dunbine stuff (though those are old and could have been delisted previously perhaps). There's a few other Bandai lines I don't follow, but I suspect they're unavailable as well.

[sh9000]

https://www.entertainmentearth.com/product/macross-7-vf22s-sturmvogel-ii-maximilian-jenius-use-high-grade-1100-scale-model-kit/blf2777017

https://www.entertainmentearth.com/product/macross-7-vf22s-sturmvogel-ii-milia-farina-jenius-use-high-grade-1100-scale-model-kit/blf2777015

[no3Ljm]

HG 1/100 VF-22S Sturmvogel II Water Decal

[sh9000]

I checked my order history at HLJ and I cancelled preorders there for every HG 1/100 release.  I might end up doing the same with Max and Milia especially if Entertainment Earth has one of their sales.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, sh9000 said:

I checked my order history at HLJ and I cancelled preorders there for every HG 1/100 release.  I might end up doing the same with Max and Milia especially if Entertainment Earth has one of their sales.

Maybe by the time they do have a sale, you might also have some extra points to cut the cost even further 

[Bolt]

17 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

HG 1/100 VF-22S Sturmvogel II Water Decal

I'm really glad for Bandai's steady stream of all things Macross. But for the most part , none of it is a must have or, especially, my scale preference. There are a few exceptions, of course. But their QC's and Availability issues don't make them any more desirable, unfortunately. These kits do look easy and fun enough, so Bandai is winning some hearts there. 

[KOG Water Dragon]

54 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I'm really glad for Bandai's steady stream of all things Macross. But for the most part , none of it is a must have or, especially, my scale preference. There are a few exceptions, of course. But their QC's and Availability issues don't make them any more desirable, unfortunately. These kits do look easy and fun enough, so Bandai is winning some hearts there. 

Yeah... really would have preferred 1/72 to be in scale with all the Hasegawa, Plamax, Wave, and older Bandai stuff.

Hoping Hasegawa will do some new fighters in 1/72 eventually, but at least Plamax said something about a YF-29 right?

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

But their QC's and Availability issues don't make them any more desirable,

Availability is a little iffy from Japan, but pretty easy stateside. I haven’t heard of any QC issues with their kits at all. I think the only one that had an issue was the hg zeta plus, but that got fixed fast and only caused a slight delay a few years back.

[Casual.Plamo]

On 9/2/2024 at 11:34 AM, KOG Water Dragon said:

Yeah... really would have preferred 1/72 to be in scale with all the Hasegawa, Plamax, Wave, and older Bandai stuff.

Hoping Hasegawa will do some new fighters in 1/72 eventually, but at least Plamax said something about a YF-29 right?

I'm the other way around lol

Bandai's 1/100 releases is giving me the urge to buy Wave's part forming 1/100 kits 😆
Damnit.... can I even afford to collect/build another new line????

[Big s]

13 minutes ago, Casual.Plamo said:

I'm the other way around lol

Bandai's 1/100 releases is giving me the urge to buy Wave's part forming 1/100 kits 😆
Damnit.... can I even afford to collect/build another new line????

The wave kits are a bit more fun than the hasegawa ones, but not quite as fun as the plamax kits. Definitely gonna need some paint on the wave kits though and some seam work, but their battroid is fun to pose, just doesn’t get quite the same degree of articulation as the plamax battroids do in the knees

[Bolt]

On 9/1/2024 at 10:53 PM, Big s said:

I haven’t heard of any QC issues with their kits at all. I think the only one that had an issue was the hg zeta plus, but that got fixed fast and only caused a slight delay a few years back.

Yes, I was mostly referring to Bandai's Macross offerings in general. Which includes their 1/60 scale.

 

10 hours ago, Casual.Plamo said:

Damnit.... can I even afford to collect/build another new line????

This is what it's come down to for me. I've hoarded so much Macross toys and kits over many year's . They're mostly in storage as i have only so much display space. So I've decided to stick primarily with 1/72 , as it's the most fun for me. And I've let go of quite a bit. Of course I have exceptions, but i have other expensive hobbies too, so it's time to slow my roll on buying so much Macross and enjoy what i have. 

[Casual.Plamo]

12 hours ago, Bolt said:

This is what it's come down to for me. I've hoarded so much Macross toys and kits over many year's . They're mostly in storage as i have only so much display space. So I've decided to stick primarily with 1/72 , as it's the most fun for me. And I've let go of quite a bit. Of course I have exceptions, but i have other expensive hobbies too, so it's time to slow my roll on buying so much Macross and enjoy what i have. 

I am a bit luckier in that I only buy model kits and not figures/toys 😅
But yes, having more than one hobby does hurt the wallet(golf for me)...

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Casual.Plamo said:

I am a bit luckier in that I only buy model kits and not figures/toys 😅
But yes, having more than one hobby does hurt the wallet(golf for me)...

I like the toys, but I prefer the kits. They just look better and strangely enough hold up well over time.

[KOG Water Dragon]

Soooo.... not Macross related, but ,my HLJ pre-orders for the Bandai 30mm Armored Core 6 kits have gone straight to backorder. I pre-ordered right when they were posted for pre-order.

I should not be surprised. It's been like this with HLJ for the Bandai Macross kits, recent Gundam releases... I should have expected the same with Bandai Armored Core. It's interesting because they say they try to only accept pre-orders for stock they expect to have at release. So clearly they are getting less stock than expected. For every. Single. Release.

I dunno why I bothered to pre-order the Max and Miria VF-22s with HLJ. I'll surely have to get them elsewhere. Just like I'll have to get the Armored Core 6 stuff elsewhere.

Right now I still have a Bandai Fire Valyrie pre-order sitting in my order history that's never been fulfilled. Going to cancel that as soon as I pick up a 3rd copy locally.

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, KOG Water Dragon said:

Soooo.... not Macross related, but ,my HLJ pre-orders for the Bandai 30mm Armored Core 6 kits have gone straight to backorder. I pre-ordered right when they were posted for pre-order.

I should not be surprised. It's been like this with HLJ for the Bandai Macross kits, recent Gundam releases... I should have expected the same with Bandai Armored Core. It's interesting because they say they try to only accept pre-orders for stock they expect to have at release. So clearly they are getting less stock than expected. For every. Single. Release.

I dunno why I bothered to pre-order the Max and Miria VF-22s with HLJ. I'll surely have to get them elsewhere. Just like I'll have to get the Armored Core 6 stuff elsewhere.

Right now I still have a Bandai Fire Valyrie pre-order sitting in my order history that's never been fulfilled. Going to cancel that as soon as I pick up a 3rd copy locally.

Unfortunately you gotta do what you gotta do. Bandai knows this, and they're working to make sure it's the only thing you CAN do.

For what it's worth, I finally got charged for a Alto YF-29 kit that had been sitting on backorder for ages. I think that's because the -29 isn't selling as well as the others in the line, though, but I have no evidence to back up the assertion, just a gut feeling.

[KOG Water Dragon]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

Unfortunately you gotta do what you gotta do. Bandai knows this, and they're working to make sure it's the only thing you CAN do.

For what it's worth, I finally got charged for a Alto YF-29 kit that had been sitting on backorder for ages. I think that's because the -29 isn't selling as well as the others in the line, though, but I have no evidence to back up the assertion, just a gut feeling.

So far the only things I've gotten from HLJ were 1 YF-29 Max, 1 YF-21, and one set of YF-21 decals. Everything else I've picked up local. Pretty bad track record.

[kajnrig]

34 minutes ago, KOG Water Dragon said:

So far the only things I've gotten from HLJ were 1 YF-29 Max, 1 YF-21, and one set of YF-21 decals. Everything else I've picked up local. Pretty bad track record.

Right, I'm not saying that's not the case. I'm just reiterating that ultimately the issue exists because Bandai wants the issue to exist.

[KOG Water Dragon]

16 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Right, I'm not saying that's not the case. I'm just reiterating that ultimately the issue exists because Bandai wants the issue to exist.

Oh I know. It's just frustrating. I'm sure HLJ would love to get more stock allocation if they could.

It's just annoying to be able to get Hasegawa, Wave, Kotobukiya, Max Factory, Tamiya, and whatever else I want in a timely manner from HLJ, but I have to go back to how it was in the 90s and just wait and wait for Bandai stuff.

[kajnrig]

Yeah, that's why I no longer feel any qualms whatsoever about buying bootleg if and when the fancy strikes me.

[sh9000]

Box art.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, sh9000 said:

Box art.

At least it’s not the usual monochrome web exclusive box

[Graham]

I'm really looking forward to these HG VF-22S kits.

I've always been more of a fan of the VF-22S than the YF-21. Especially Max's VF-22S.

[Bolt]

Gamlin made it!

[lechuck]

On display at the All Japan Model & Hobby Show this weekend.
https://hjweb.jp/article/1775465/

 

[Graham]

I've just been putting together the HG YF-21 kit the last few days. It's a really fun kit to build and really well designed. Definitely my favorite out of the HG Macross kits.

I'll be starting building the HG Gamlin VF-22S this weekend.

[Convectuoso]

Some progress on Gamlin's

[Mommar]

Built Gamlin Saturday.  Very simple. Instructions aren't written nearly as well as the Gundams kits are, however.  Their parts forming solution for Fighter and Gerwalk/Battroid has essentially been my recommendation for the 1/60 toys to get a proper fighter proportion.  Actually looks correct in all three modes.  And next to its 1/60 counterpart makes the DX look like an absolute joke.