HardlyNever
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G.I. Joe Classified Figures and Toys
HardlyNever replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I basically just want Alley Viper at this point (who has been teased on the poster, but no figure yet). I'm willing to admit I would probably pay $30+ if needed (assuming it turns out good). I might get the Stormshadow they showed, but I'm not loving it. I would prefer a v1 or even v2 based variant. -
G.I. Joe Classified Figures and Toys
HardlyNever replied to sh9000's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I'm a casual GI Joe fan, so I only wanted a few. Just getting the standard release Snake Eyes (not the Pulse exclusive) was a bit of a chore. It seems like any of the popular figures are hard to come by. It's getting exhausting collecting, well... anything it seems like. I'm used to scarcity with Macross stuff, but $20 GI Joe figures now? Really? I know COVID-19 is partially to blame for this, but it really seems like manufacturers are dialing up the "artificial scarcity" factor lately. -
This is what the bot @SpaceCowboy made uses. It works (it can successfully complete a transaction), it just isn't all that fast, and it is "fragile." Just to reiterate: A bot is possible. A fast bot is possible. I'm fairly confident there are scalpers using them. Making (and maintaining) one is not easy, but if you were doing this on a large scale (or were a group of people doing this on a large scale), the development and maintenance time would be worth it, especially if you live in a part of the world where your individual labor per hour is on the lower end. Especially if you were doing this to say... scalp a lot of high demand/low supply products. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from trying this, I was just weighing in with my experience. As far as what vendors can do to combat them (more than they already do, and I think they do some things (see above)), implementing a captcha of some kind would definitely help, but the push back from customers who are not aware of the situation would definitely be a headache. If they were to ask me, I would tell them to implement it on the most scalped products (mainly the Bandai stuff) on a short term, when they go up for pre-order. But there are still X number of customers who would still not understand why it is there, and how it (potentially) helps them, and they would definitely complain. So I can understand why a lot of these vendors don't even bother. Also, as I said before, I still believe most of the buyers are actually humans, so on our end, our experience wouldn't be much different (we'd just have to fill out a captcha before being told the product is sold out).
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Yup, that's where I'm at with it. I've collected long enough to realize what I value, and how much certain products are worth to me. I'm fine with paying up to $250 shipped for a DX 1/48 (I haven't had to pay that yet, but I feel like that is about what it is worth to me). Anything more than that, and I'll personally feel like I overpaid, and it will hurt my enjoyment of the purchase. So I just won't pay that much. But that is my personal line in the sand, and that is just for this particular product. I've paid over $500 for an SDF-1, and been very pleased with my purchase, and paid less than $100 for an HMR, and felt a little bit disappointed. It's all about personal value assessment, and realizing what things are worth to you individually.
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There is a 0% chance they do that. You might be able to come to some compromise on a smaller box, but I doubt it. The shipping is always the problem with the Monster. You can usually find it at a decent mark-down, but getting it out of Japan is costly. If you're patient, your best bet is to try to find someone here that is selling one, as they generally "eat" most of the shipping cost for you. I got mine for $175 shipped from a member on here a few years ago, and I've seen others sell in the sub $200 range (shipped) on this site. It sounds like you already purchased, though. So maybe just a word of advice for anyone else that might read this that is interested in the Monster.
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Remember, there's like a 99% chance we will be getting a DYRL Roy. A TV VF-1S Hikaru is also pretty likely. So if you're weighing paying inflated prices for this release, keep in mind that you'll have 1, maybe 2 more chances at scoring a PO on a very similar toy. I know some people want every single release in this line, but if not, you've got a couple more chances at scoring a Skull Leader (just sand display-stand) at pre-order prices.
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Sorry, I misread your post, I thought you asked about SSP the first time. The only missile sets they have "in stock" are crazy marked up, so I dunno what they are doing for people that pre-ordered a in the second wave. How did you get DHL shipping from NY? I've asked about DHL specifically, and they just said they do UPS
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They've had them for a while, it seems like. If you're in the US, they won't ship them to you unless you use their (expensive) UPS option. EMS is detailed to the US, so it seems like they are not even bothering to ship those out yet. Ferry might be an option, but I haven't seen anyone say they have had theirs shipped via ferry yet.
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Nevermind.
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Bandai: Puts TV Roy up for pre-order Also Bandai: Reveals TV Hikaru with super parts at event a few days after pre-order Is that something they would do? I think the answer is yes.
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Logging in is one of the easier tasks to automate. Overall speed is one of the biggest issues. Also, I'm 90% sure the major retailers intentionally change things (like IDs/labels) on their site to combat botting. So how often do you want to manually update your bot vs just ordering yourself is a legitimate question, for those of us that are only interested in a handful of products.
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Just adding to @SpaceCowboy, as I helped him with his bot and used it as well. It basically confirms everything I said earlier; every individual retailer needs it own special bot, and they need to be constantly updated to have a chance at being successful. We had to update ours like 3-4 times between inception and use (and we only focused on HLJ). There is also the very real question of how "competitive" a homemade bot is. Finding an item and completing an order is one thing; having it do it faster than a human on PO madness night is another. Of course you could run multiple bots, but how many different accounts do you really want to have? The takeaway for me is that most of these things are actually being bought by humans, despite some people believing otherwise. Where bots are involved(and I do believe they are involved), they are made and maintained by "professional" scalpers that buy way more than Macross stuff, and do this on a scale your mere collector/enthusiast cannot keep up with. Just my experience, a theory and my 2 cents.
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Roy_preorder.gif Good luck tonight, all.
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As far as I can tell, she doesn't say thing about the red triangles specifically in the narration. She doesn't really say anything about the paint except that it has skull markings because he is skull leader, is the best I can make out. But I'm definitely still learning japanese, so maybe someone else can pick something out. I think the actual answer is something along the lines of basically (literally?) every other TV valk has red shoulder triangles, so when people who are used to coloring TV valks go to do the triangles, they make them red, without realizing that Skull Leader (generally) has yellow triangles, But that is just my theory.
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He has red shoulder triangles during the transformation animation. Lol, it continues.
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Yeah, that's fine.
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This one took a little longer than I hoped, but I guess Roy deserves it. Roy ready to wreck our wallets on PO night:
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Based anime accuracy was always so close: I was actually just working on something else Macross-meme themed in PS, when I checked this thread (so I just put that together real fast). Hopefully I'll finish what I was working on this weekend.
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I'm a fan of the TV style hands (even though I think the DYRL hands objectively look better) more for nostalgia sake than anything else. I didn't like that they did not include TV style fists, so I made my own. Even I wouldn't be too excited about articulated TV style hands; I don't think they would look right if they actually had any functional articulation (probably too skinny), so I think fixed-posed work fine for TV style needs. Gun-gripping, splayed hand and fist are enough to cover basically any pose I want, though I do wish we had left gun grip and right splayed hands. I have a hunch Bandai is going to try to package TV style fists with their GBP accessory, possibly up-scaled a bit.
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Honestly, I wouldn't read too much into the "special" part, as I've seen that get thrown around for a while. It basically means Roy Focker custom/use, but for whatever reason "special" gets used sometimes, especially for Roy. I don't really know why. They did the same thing with their HMR Roy. And yes, one of those did come with a "special" display stand, they also did a release that didn't come with a display stand, and still called it "Roy Focker Special." I'm pretty sure I've seen that used for other Focker toys, but I can't find another example at the moment. But I believe it's been around since the 90s, maybe even the 80s. Edit: Arcadia calls theirs Roy Focker specials, too.
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There are definitely a lot of animation errors in the series, no doubt. But there is always that question of what is intentional versus animation error. The red triangles show up in more than just those few scenes, and they show up in multiple episodes. I don't want to spam the thread with a bunch of screenshots, but they are there. Currently, I'm thinking the red triangles only show up (sometimes) in episodes 28 and on, and even then it's maybe a 50/50 split between red and yellow. It may be that you never see red triangles on Skull Leader when Focker pilots it, in which case props to Bandai I guess for getting it right (intentionally or unintentionally). Memory is a funny thing, as when I think of TV skull leader in my head I pretty much always see it with red triangles, but in the animation that is a minority of the time.
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It looks like it is another case of color changing. The 3M shows them as red, but they are often yellow in the anime. Here are some shots of the red shoulder triangles in the anime (one is even weirder, with the triangles outside of the black): But now you've got me thinking, maybe it only appears as red when Hikaru has the 1S? I wonder if they ever appear as red when Focker is piloting Skull Leader. I'll have to go back and look, but odds are they are more often yellow than red, at least when Focker is piloting, so I'll give Bandai the benefit of the doubt on that one.
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I dunno why, but I'm just not that excited about this one, at this point. Maybe I've just had my fill of VF-1s. I dunno what is going on with the head arrows, like others have said. Even if they go with the yellow one (which is DYRL), it should have a black border around the arrow to make it stand out more. Really makes me think the arrows are added on in post for those photos. The TV Skull leader should also have red triangles on the shoulders, instead of yellow, but I don't think Bandai will fix that. I'm glad they beefed up the pilot, as the TV pilots just seem off currently. I'll probably try to get one on pre-order, but I'll live if I don't get this one. I kinda prefer the DYRL Roy. Will TV super parts be a thing? I guess we'll find out.
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I'm pretty sure those are pictures from a display that Bandai did for the DX VF-1 a while back, right before it came out (so like late 2017). So you probably won't find much higher res, as it is just people taking pictures of a display. Actual CAD probably exists at Bandai, but I doubt they will be releasing that to the public any time soon. Is where they first start showing up.
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Eh, it's not perfect, but assuming what we see is fully transformable, and has all the appropriate accessories (fast packs, guns), I'd buy what they already showed. The fact that they didn't show any accessories lends credence to the idea that they are in fact still working on the mold. I do hope they improve it before retail, but I'm pretty impressed with what we've already seen.
