HardlyNever
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Everything posted by HardlyNever
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That would be odd, since it is still available at NY for 27,500¥. Amazon JP has similar prices. I'm still fence-sitting myself, hoping for another cheaper pre-order window. I'm ok if I miss out on this one, though.
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That looks pretty rough. There is definitely a lot of pressure there during transformation, but that looks like a manufacturer defect to me. Sucks this particular model suffers from so many QC issues, as it is a great piece if you are lucky enough to get one with minimal problems. That might be fixable, at least to hold together better in fighter mode. That thing's transformation days look like they are over, though.
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Personally, I don't think Bandai would ever listen or respond to the foreign market when it comes to these products(even though they are an international company). We just aren't a big enough source of revenue to them to have an impact on their management. We could, theoretically, be big enough to affect one or more of the major retailers, though, if we acted collectively. However, asking people here to collectively boycott a particular retailer that has a product they want is like asking a junky on skid-row to not buy from a dealer that you don't like. It simply isn't going to happen. And honestly, trying to press people into boycotting something isn't really something I would want to do, even if I thought it were possible (which is isn't). So I don't really think we can do much as a group. As an individual, you can always move on to something else, or deal with this BS from time to time. I wish we could do more, but I don't really see it.
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You basically summed up my thoughts exactly. I'm in this hobby for fun and relaxation, and chasing ridiculous pre-order windows or dealing with scalper prices is neither. Some sort of loyalty reward or priority for pre-ordering early with a particular vendor would be nice, but even that kind of system could be abused by scalpers (I'm sure many of them are collectors themselves, and also scalp other product lines, so they probably do a lot of business with these online retailers, too). Still, an early pre-order window with a limit 1 per customer (with bans for people caught trying to circumvent it with multiple accounts/addresses) for long-term customers could help the situation somewhat. I can deal with this once or twice a year, but if this is the "new norm," I'll just have to go find a different hobby. That isn't some threat to Bandai or something, I know they couldn't care less, it is just the reality of the situation. They'll end up quietly losing customers they probably never even knew they had. Which is partially why the situation is the way it is now, I guess.
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The SV-262 is low-key one of my favorite valks, and my wife's favorite (in my collection at least, "because it's shiny"). I bought it when it was bargain-binned, and I got either a QC test sample, or a QC reject. I would assume it was a test sample, as there is nothing wrong with it, as far as I can tell (it was just already opened, which I knew when I bought it from Manda). I still don't have anything wrong with it, other than a tiny scratch on one of the legs, which is bound to happen with this toy. I don't think the transformation is even that bad. It is just gerwalk, especially that one bracket in gerwalk, that is a PITA. I'll admit that is definitely a design failure on Bandai's part. But fighter->battroid and battriod->fighter (skipping gerwalk) really isn't that bad. I'd say it's about the same frustration/difficulty level of the Bandai YF-19. The battroid mode is honestly a work of art. Also packing the sword, shield and missile pods separately was a low blow, but Bandai gonna Bandai.
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Go for it. I'm glad someone enjoys it; I definitely got a chuckle. Just leave the watermark, if you don't mind.
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As we learned this week, Max can destroy more than just wallets:
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Yeah, I also miss figinstock. It was way better than the website notifications. I have alerts/notifications set up on the various websites, but they are way too slow to get these 1-2 openings. The only one that actually worked was the NY one, and that was for the price-hiked version.
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The SV-51 is downright gigantic; one of the biggest valks in the Macross universe IIRC. So I'd say it's pretty accurate.
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All these pre-order open at 2 and 3 am for me. I can do one night of pre-order madness here and there, but I'm not going to try to do multiple nights of that. Unless I happen to catch a random re-opening during the day, I probably won't be able to get one. Amazon JP prices keep going down, so maybe the launch day price of this won't be too insane. Or maybe I'll just pass on this one. Kinda sucks, because I really like this line.
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Yeah, the gouging from NY was predictable. I stopped checking them a while ago, knowing that it would be ridiculous when it resurfaced. I kind of hate giving them money for even their reasonably priced stuff, but sometimes they are the only option. I just wanted a VF-1A of any variety. If I would have known Max was going to be such a cluster, I would have just slept in. Hopefully I'll catch a mass production or Kakizaki version, with less madness.
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I feel like between the DX Chogokin PO madness, and the HMR line in general, we need a "Guess the inner workings of Bandai" thread, where we all try to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get any real answers this far down the food chain. And while I enjoy speculating what goes on at Bandai management as much as the next guy (and I genuinely do), I feel like we just spin our wheels and rehash the same arguments every time things like this happen. For my part, I can understand how we got here with the Frontier valks (to some degree). But that was almost 8 years ago. I don't really understand why things haven't improved for manufacturer, distributor, and consumer. But Bandai is definitely top-dog in the Macross world now, so I don't know how much incentive they have to change how they manage things.
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Yup, the ceiling seems to be about 30k yen. It's already trending downward. As much as this PO has sucked, it doesn't really have the makings of the next Vf-31A, yet. Now if pre-orders start getting canceled, or people don't receive shipments at release, then it could turn into something crazy like that.
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Noticed this as well. In fact I was refreshing right when it changed from 1 to 20 limit per customer. I'm assuming it is just an automated setting that sets it to that after a certain amount of time. I'm trying to not read anything into it....
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Arcadia rarely has this problem. They also seem more comfortable having their stuff available at retailers a while after release. Bandai seems to despise shelf warmers with a blazing fury. I don't see them changing the practice of pre-order madness anytime soon.
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Prices seem to be dipping down a bit on Amazon Japan. ￥ 29,960 shipped isn't completely ridiculous. Still a little more than I'm willing to pay, but if it creeps down a little lower, I might bite.
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Unfortunately, I don't think Bandai cares about botters/scalpers. As long as product isn't warming shelves, they don't care who buys it. I also have a hunch that word got out that this release would have a fairly low production run, making it a good target for scalpers, but that is just a feeling. This pre-order madness definitely felt worse than any others that I've been involved in, but I don't think it is going to get Bandai to change its practices. Our concerns don't even register on their radar, imo.
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Ethical issues aside, it wouldn't be that hard to to write a site-specific bot, especially once you have the product page id. Scripting something that crawls all the major vendors and places orders would be a lot more involved, but not impossible. The problem is, if you're overseas, you're still at a pretty significant disadvantage compared to the botters in Asia who have much lower latency to the retailers' servers. Fractions of a second matter in situations like that, and there isn't a way for someone that isn't in Asia to overcome that. This is what I'm hoping for. Just set up all the relevant alerts, and hope the botters have backed off, I guess.
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This is eerily similar to what happened to the concert/event ticket market about 10-15 years ago, when all those sales moved online. Botters ruined that market too, and it turns out a lot of the venues and promoters were in on the take. I'd like to assume Bandai just doesn't care that much about Macross and doesn't really care to resolve the issue. I really hope they aren't actively profiting off of the botters/scalpers.
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I'm surprised Bandai doesn't get more push back from the online retailers for these shenanigans. Certainly getting DDoS'd every time a chogokin figure goes up for preorder is bad for business. We could definitely use a change in the system.
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We should all get a discount for having to deal with this BS. It's early, I'm tired, but I with some of the others right now. This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to switch hobbies. I don't see the reason for defending retailers/sellers for this kind of stuff.
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Gonna call it. First pre-order madness where I didn't get a single one. Maybe we'll get another chance before release. I still can't believe this is the "system."
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Sums up tonight:
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Looks like we're all getting cart jacked. AmiAmi keeps teasing me.
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Pre-orders closed at AmiAmi.
