VFTF1

If it's just some people and transforming mecha - then what's the point? Actually - even if it's Robotech - what's the point? Pete

Recently, instead of washing my SOS t-shirt after wearing it at an anime convention here for two days straight, I ended up putting it on the passenger seat chair in the front of my car - so people can see it out the window -even at night, I've found the symbol shines forth fairly prominently. Now I just need some Gurren Lagann stickers or something for my side mirrors. I dunno - the older I get, the less I care about what people will think etc etc. Besides, I run a damn anime store, so what am I supposed to do? Wear a suit and tie? And finally - most of my colleagues in Poland drink excessive amounts of vodka. I used to do this too, just because I wanted to show respect for their culture, but ever since being inspired by Agent One, I've stopped drinking liters and liters of vodka on a daily basis and instead worked out. I now weigh in at 110 kilograms, out of which 15 kilograms is muscle - or something - but it sure ain't my gutt, which has vanished - or at least flattened considerably from the sorry state it found itself in when I turned thirty earlier this year. But anyways - now I eat tempura and maguro on a regular basis, wear anime inspired clothes, work out and feel better about life. All of these things are connected. I couldn't bring myself to stop wearing the stuff out of fear of "what would people think" - especially when you consider the various real or imagined vices that people who wear "normal" clothes engage in anyways... But I don't have any Macross clothes - yet. It's just I figure spending all that money on the Yammies and DXs kind of is "enough" for Macross stuff...I need left overs for other pursuits Although I certainly would go for a skull squadron jacket.... Oh yeah - and did ANYBODY end up getting that Alto school shirt? I wanted one when it first came out, but they were a bit on the expensive side and I ended up getting super robots instead... Pete

If I, being a 26 year devoted Transformers fan, could not be assed to walk into the cinema and see ROTF and am not exactly holding my breath waiting for the DVD release then Robotech, which consumed a fraction of my time as an RPG in fourth grade, is not about to see me caring a whit about its' LAM. so - no. Pete

I'm not crying about it. I'm just making fun of them. Pete

Hm. When I last flew into the JFK, the guys there were two...I dunno...officers...at the check out/passport checking place who thought that some ground up mints that I had in my bag was cocaine. I have no luck Pete

Have I just spied a subtle reference to Haruhi Suzumiya (surely it couldn't be the other way around, since Macross Frontier came AFTER season 1 of Haruhi)... or.... what does Sagittarius mean in Japanese? And is it the same word as in the video game that SOS brigade plays - Day of Sagittarius? Pete

I had the exact opposite day. In the morning, some old lady thought that the NERV pin I wear on my jacket was a Nazi symbol and started mumbling that I must be a neo nazi. Then, while getting Macdonalds, the lady noticed another pin on my jacket - this one with Haruhi Suzumiya in her Endless 8 bikini sucking on a ice-cone. I got the "he's a pedophile" look. When I was leaving the counter and she got a look at my Nia (from gurren lagann) pin...I got the "yeah -total pedophile" look. Ok...actually...I just made all that up (except I really do have the pins)... I just felt jealous that you actually get recognized Pete

It's all an act. Mikuru Asahina just acts that way so guys fall in love with her, and then she gets them to do what she wants. In reality, she's a blood thirsty, evil monster from the future who hangs esper boys just for kicks, and plots to take over the universe. Be careful of that doll. If you thought Chucky was bad... just wait until you discover the terror of Asahina Mikuru! On a more serious note... I just don't like the sculpt. The body is anorexic - Mikuru Asahina is not that skinny. She's a full girl - not bare bones. I much prefer the figma and Revoltech figures. Pete

Right, and we all know that to run a profitable business, you need to keep conversations completely bland, uninteresting and generally ban and censor anybody with anything interesting to post. You also need to make sure that the main discussion topic on your website is constantly the legality of what you're doing rather than, say, I dunno...how cool the stories are...or the animation or the mecha or whatever. It's almost hard to believe that HG is a business, given how horribly they run the thing. It feels more like it's two guys sitting in the basement who happen to have a contract from 1983 that gives them a legal basis to send mean letters to people. Pete

Exactly. That means it's ok to talk about thermon-nuclear war, the death and incineration of billions of human beings, people flying in giant killing machines smashing their brains and dying ghastly deaths in space. but no sex. Pete

I might be accused of beating a dead horse - but I have more to say on this subject, and I think it's important because we as anime fans DO spend a lot of money on these items, and it would be bad if people thought that they were getting ripped off. Naturally, I am a retailer, so you might say I have a different view of the matter of prices - but actually - the interests of retailers, consumers, producers, suppliers and distributors DO coincide - it just takes a bit of thinking to see it. I want to address this point about people "wishing" the Yen were "cheaper" and wondering aloud if the Japanese government could "help" by artificially depreciating their currency - I explained above why I think that's a bad idea - but the explanation was kind of general. Here, I want to be very specific. Let's say - for the sake of argument - that the US government decided to "help" the anime industry like it's been "helping" the auto industry and other segments of the economy by "stimulating" them. To that end - let's say that ALL OF YOU got special credit cards with a 5 thousand USD limit on them to spend on anime goods. Let's also say - for the sake of argument - that all of you decided to spend your new credit with me and everyone maxed out their 5 thousand USD credit cards by paying me. Now - here's where the problem starts. First- since you got the money "for free" (or at least your payment for the credit is defered in time), you will not be as discriminating as consumers as you would be if you could only utilize money that you actually had to trade VALUE for (aka work/time). You would "splurge." And furthermore - I, as a retailer - would not really comprehend the source of your splurge. Well - ok - I would - but most retailers are much bigger than me and wouldn't. Most retailers just see one figure: sales. They don't see and don't ask "where is this money coming from?" If everybody on this board suddenly got a government credit card for 5 thousand bucks and spent it on anime goods - you'd send a signal to retailers: a signal that says: "people are buying a lot of stuff agian!" Now - understand what a retailer usually does in this situation. If he sees a huge increase in sales he goes to the bank. If I see that say a hundred thousand USD of sales suddenly came my way then I would be inclined to go get a loan for half a million dollars and invest that money in expanding my assortment, my offer, my stock. And this is where reality kicks in. It would suddenly turn out that - after you guys all max out your new "stimulus" credit cards - you're back to being broke - or at least back to having as little money to spend on this stuff as you did prior to the "stimulus." Actually - you'd be worse off - because you'd have 5 thousand USD more in debt. Meanwhile - I - the retailer - would be in debt for half a million dollars and have an order of goods that nobody can afford to buy. Producers would get my half million dollars and higher workers and engage resources to make stuff and also plan based on these figures to make even more stuff next year - and to do that - they would take out a couple million dollars in debt. But since the original demand was artificial - and only the result of a "stimulus" credit card - everyone down the line would be screwed. You'd be screwed because you would have added 5 thousand dollars in debt to your already overburdened bank accounts. I'd be screwed because I would have taken half a million in loans for stuff nobody could buy. Producers would be screwed because they would have highered workers, built factories and bought machines to produce stuff that nobody could buy. And then prices would collapse as people tried to get SOME money back - but all of us would be screwed because we could still not pay off our debts. Then banks would come after our real assets - anything we mortgaged to get our loans - houses, buildings, land - because they would also want to recover their losses. But banks would also be screwed because just like the prices of the toys would fall - the prices of the real estate, factories and houses would fall too because in a panic everyone would try to get their money back - some of it at least. So in effect - banks would also go under for making stupid loans to producers and retailers who in turn took stupid loans after consumers took a stupid loan to buy more stuff that they couldn't afford. Does this all sound familiar? It ALREADY HAPPENED. Repeating the process by giving yourself a loan - even if it's in the form of a government artificially manipulating exchange rates - hurts everybody. What needs to happen is REALITY needs to be allowed to reassert itself. The US dollar is worth negative right now. It's worthless. It is in effect a completely worthless piece of paper. It's worthless because the Fed keeps printing more and more of it to bail out banks which should have been bankrupt years ago. The last thing you want is for that cancer to spread to the rest of us - for us to get stimulated into doing things we can't do. Once prices reflect reality - production will finally adjust to REALITY. We will finally know exactly how many people want what and what price they are willing to pay. Right now - the value of money is in radical flux - and therefore prices mean NOTHING. One day they're lower, the next day they're higher. And it all means nothing because it's all speculation. Speculation needs to be stopped - and that means governments need to stop manipulating prices, exchange rates etc and just let reality set in. So don't "wish" for the Yen to go up or down - but for the price to reflect reality and not be manipulated. Pete

Mind you - the sex only comes out to about 300 bucks - the other 2200 is for the singing ability. Good looks and open legs are overstocked; singing talent is not. Pete

Oh my god!! You're right!! hahahahah that's awesome! I love Haruhi! Pete

Huh? Yes they would. They would thanks to the internet - it's this thing that has given people the opportunity to experience tons of shows and anime from decades past that they never would have found in video rental stores and would have never been able to find time to watch on tv - assuming they even got re-run on TV... This assumption that HG somehow "saved" Mospedea and Southern Cross is erroneous. If anything -HG did what it could to bring anime in general to the West - and for that I'll give them credit. Back then no one could predict what would happen with the internet etc. They saw some cool anime and wanted to bring it to western audiences. Syndicates said "we need more episodes" - they were on a tight budget and time was of the essence (lots of competition from other cartoons and the fear that if you missed your chance, then the "fad" would pass). I really understand all of this and appreciate the effort. But right now it's gotten counterproductive. They are not bringing anime to America - they are hindering anime culture in America. And no - they didn't save Mospedea and Southerncross from obscurity. If anything - Robotech only lends to the confusion and blurs the originals from seeing the light of day. As Gubaba demonstrarted a few posts back in his "discussion" with Pizza the Hut - "winning" in an argument with one of those guys is NOT worthy of a Nobel Prize, nor does it require much IQ or knowledge of anime or even the subject matter. It seems that it's enough that you can spell basic words correctly, and know the Alphabet song from Sesame Street. Pete

Yeah - I just read that..good job Gubaba. Although I didn't know you were a son of a hoe. I had you pegged as a son of a rake, a shovel maybe - but a hoe? Hm - I'm going to have to reconsider whether or not admiring you is an obserd proposition now... Sigh... This is bad for the Robtoech fandom. It's like...it's like... Here in Poland we have a term we use for certain Transformers fans - we call them "Children of Cybertron." A "Child of Cybertron" is basically a 5 year old kid with access to the internet, whose parents buy him the latest TFs, and who has a digital camera. He then posts reviews of his toys on youtube. These reviews are invariably ridiculous and funny. Of course, no one can venomously blame a 5 year old for being 5 - but it's still kind of funny to watch as these kids usually can't even transform the toy they're reviewing properly... They also like signing up to message boards and using bad grammar, no punctuation, and totally misspelling words... This guy you had a discussion with... seems to be of the same mould. Poor Harmony Gold. Their fans are like their Masterpiece Veritechs .... Pete

I think people are over reacting. Although EXO is right about one thing - this is a bad way, PR wise, for Yamato to go about this... in the sense that I THINK, as some members have said, that this is the price for individual customers to come to them and say "make this for me" - and they'll make ONE for YOU. AKA - it's not mass produced. On the other hand - there's been no confirmation of this - at least not in english. But Yamato officially doesn't sell outside of Japan - so can you really fault them for not communicating directly in english about it? Yes - this is a big failure for Yamato - but not because they are "stupid" and "made the price so greedy and high." It's a failure because they did the R&D on something that - even at 500 bucks per piece - apparently is not going to sell well enough to warrant them risking a mass production run. It's not their "fault" and I really doubt they're expecting the mass of fans to pony up 2000 bucks. It's not a mass production piece. Have you guys seen it on pre-order at Overdrive, HLJ, Angolz or any other Japan-based or Hong Kong based shop? I haven't. I haven't gotten any word from suppliers that this this is even in the pipe line for general distribution. Other than seeing it on Yamato's web-page - is it available anywhere else? Will it be? Can you walk into a store in Japan and get this? I doubt it. Maybe I'm wrong (I'm often wrong, since I talk a lot...so it kind of goes with the territory) - - but I really get the feeling that it's not a mass production piece. You guys should be happy they tried. Yeah, sure, it sucks they failed to make it a mass production piece. Who knows why? Probably a mix of problems - bad economy, costs too much, shipping, R&D blah blah - who knows. But at least they tried. And with all due respect - comparing this to the Batmobile - you yourself admit it's a whole different ball game. Macross is a niche. Macross has nowhere near the general recognition as Batman and the Batmobile - which has been a global brand since at least WWII. As for this board - yes - it has thousands of members - but how many of them actively buy things? How many of them actively collect? A hell of a lot - yes. But enough to sustain a mass production run of this thing? No. These are my totally biased and unsubstantiated opinions. I would also like to say that I really love the pictures - especially how the legs panel slides open to reveal the city. It would require lots and lots of paint though to make that city believable. Maybe one day Yamato will do it. I applaude them for trying and for pushing the envelope in a crappy economy. They remain my favorite company on the market for anime goods. Pete

I can only sympathize for how alone you must have felt back then - with no internet, and legions of people ready to say "It's true cause I saw it on Television!" ... Interesting stuff Pete

Heh heh - excellent idea Keith. Also... This is a really good point - and I hadn't given this as much thought as it deserves. Tell me guys --- NOW we know that Robotech is composed of three seperate anime but... back in the 80s... Who knew? Nobody - right? I mean - people might have had suspicions - but it was not widely known that Robotech was pasted together from three different anime that had nothing to do with eachother... So... oh man! Look how they screwed with your head! Every time somebody mentions ANYTHING from the Macross Saga in Masters or Southern Cross.... you THINK that maybe there's hope that in later episodes Rick and Lisa or the SDF-3 or whatever will show up... Given how they actually sometimes combined footage from the Macross Saga with Masters or Southern Cross...you were brought to think it was even possible... And so you keep watching through these episodes...thinking...maybe next week I'll see Lisa? Maybe next week we'll find out what happened to Rick?.... But the whole time - it's just hinted at and mentioned. However - HG knew from the beginning that you'd NEVER SEE THEM. Because they were never in the original footage for Mospedea and Southern Cross. Talk about leading people on And doing it on purpose! "Hah hah - these stupid Robotech fans will keep watching because if we keep mentioning Rick and Lisa - they'll hope to see them in later episodes" ... the strategy seems to have carried over into Shadow Chronicles... Pete

If the Japanese want to deppreciate the yen - they could just peg it to the US dollar And that's not a joke. It's about as funny as "If the Federal Reserve wants to stimulate bank lending and inject credit into the economy to get it moving - they can set the interest rate at zero." Oh - but they HAVE set the interest rate at zero. And guess what banks are doing? NOT LENDING - despite zero to .025% interest rates. They can get free money from the fed - and they are taking it - and then they are....holding it. Why? Because last year, when they gave that money away, all they got were people who couldn't pay it back and a bunch of worthless real estate from those who defaulted. They are scared to lend. The situation with anime products is identical - and probably the same everywhere in all other industries. During the boom, retailers stocked up. Producers kept making more and more because demand was growing, and sometimes there would be shortages and the prices of the goods sky rocketed. Retailers had an incentive to order mountains of this stuff - way more than what was on pre-order from customers - because they could count on the value of it appreciating in time. Now half the customers have trouble putting food on their tables, let alone valkyrie on their shelves. Orders are down. Producers are forced to attempt to stimulate orders by lowering prices. This is how it ought to be. Eventually, a low enough price will come around that will get people buying. If it doesn't - the industry will collapse. My bet is on the former and not the latter happening. However - if, in the meantime, the Japanese government artificially depreciates the Yen by tightening interest rates that will BE BAD. Why? Because then retailers will ONCE AGAIN order a zillion products that nobody wants. The last thing you want to do is continue an artificial, fake situation. You want reality to set in. You want the dollar to collapse because the US has too much debt and too much spending. When the dollar collapses - it will bring with it the collapse of bad government habits. If the US Dollar is "rescued" - like the US economy - by artificial phoney and fake means - then the bad policies that got us into this mess will continue and we will always be in this mess. The world is not naturally in disequillibrium. Prices - when they are left alone - indicate reality - they indicate how many people want what and what they're willing to give in return. Keep messing with prices because you want them to go up or down and NO BODY will know what is worth anything. Money will cease having any meaning whatsoever - it is already happening. Gold is over 1000 USD per ounce right now. It was 220 USD before all this started happening. If the Japanese government depreciates the Yen and anime goods become "cheaper" simply because the Yen becomes cheaper - we're all screwed. We will just have a buying frenzy that will eventually collapse when reality re-asserts itself and the Yen shoots up. It already happened last year and people took tremendous losses due to excess inventory and excess production. You don't want it to happen this year. You want the Yen to keep going up - getting more expensive - until it reaches a stable market price - the REAL price. And you don't want to interfere with it. Pete

With all due respect, but you do realize all three of these 'common reasons why people like Robotech' are...how to put this diplomatically...mildly unconvincing? Somewhat lacking? Ok...they suck! I mean - I understand them - but if that's the best that Robotech fans can do...well... it's not much. I mean - doing things in life - ANY things out of sentiment, ignorance or willfull ignorance usually doesn't work out very well I had hoped that there would be RT fans who would actually come out and shine some light of the creative genius behind the series ... but ... hm... Look how they aren't even in love with "Lisa" ! Notice how there are no dedicated threads to character art appreciation or people having Minmay vs. Lisa fights - and I'm not surprised. Robotech Lisa was a cardboard cutout from a 1920s movie where female actressses were mainly expected to : a) go "aaahhh!!" whenever a monster showed up b) swoon and say "I love you" to the lead male I dunno...I just...the whole woman vs. soldier conflict that SDFM TV presents in her character - which makes her so attractive - it's gone... But ok. I guess I'm beating a dead horse here. I'm actually quite fine with "I like Robotech 'cause it played a role in my sun shine childhood years and I don't know anything about anime." I could say that about myself. I played the RPGs. I didn't know anything about anime. Now I know about anime. The end? can we close the thread now? Pete

I have found that the "why" question, insofar as Robotech is concerned, only works if you're talking to a penguin. Pete

No - distributors are cutting prices too. Everyone is cutting prices except retailers at this point. This is due to a very simple reason: Retailers are hesitant to buy more because customers are hestitant to buy more. Therefore, they are not able to take such full advantage of the falling prices as they would like - therefore neither are you (aka consumers). Everybody is falling over backwards to offer lower prices - we'll see if this helps on an aggregate scale. If we're talking about Yamato specifically - Yamato lowered their prices about three weeks ago. Everybody else is now doing the same (by which I mean Bandai etc). MSRP is kind of meaningless - first, it's only a suggested retail price, and second it's a RETAIL price. What's ultimately important is how much the thing is selling for before it goes to a retailer and how many pieces a retailer is willing to buy - this in turn depends on his forcast of turnover. Lots of folks got burned by overstocking and so they are very hesitant to buy. Lots of other folks just went under or stopped importing due to exchange rate changes. Also - keep in mind that I'm talking in a time frame of literally a couple of weeks. The first signals that Yamato lowered its' prices came about three weeks ago. The rest of them (Bandai etc) - something like last week. This is probably another reason why, looking at MSRP and stuff like that - you're not seeing it yet. You might not see it at all if sales still remain low throughout the industry. In any case - my point is simple: This whole thread was opened to gripe about how high Yamato's prices are. Yamato has significantly lowered its' prices. Yamato has done everything it could to fascilitate lower prices. The rest is up to "us" Pete EDIT: Maybe a summary? I dunno - just... I'm getting a really crazy feeling of dual realities - like two universes are battling eachother - because on the one hand there are threads like this where it's like gripe gripe gripe Yamato's prices are too high... but on the other hand - look in our for sale/trade thread. Look how few people took advantage of Big Kid's group buy and my group buy? I'm not saying "blame people not Yamato" - I'm just saying don't blame Yamato as if they're being oblivious. They really are doing what they can - like everybody else. people in Japan are aggressively negotiating down prices - I don't know the details of it, I have no clue about the mechanics behind it - all I know is it is happening and the prices are going down. But it will mean diddly squat if consumers don't buy more of this stuff. It will only mean that people place less and less value on it. In any event - my writing this was just prompted by seeing people wonder aloud why Yamato's prices are so high and thereby implying that Yamato was doing nothing about it or blind to it. Yamato is doing something about it. EVERYBODY is trying to do something about it. They can't magically change the exchange rate, they can't make the recession/depression/crapoconomy go away - so they're just lowering their prices. They are doing what they can. Ultimately - no one company or one customer can change anything. It's a matter of scale. But I'm just saying that everybody - as far as I can see - is doing their part to keep the ball rolling and to lower prices in light of the bad exchange rate. They really don't have a choice. So complaining about Yamato while they are doing exactly what consumers want RIGHT NOW - and I'm talking about overseas consumers - because I'm specifically talking about stuff that is exported outside of Japan - so specifically YOU GUYS... it just makes no sense. Of course everyone has a right to their opinion, and threads like these are fun and good - but you should know - before you gripe too hard or too quickly - please know that Yamato is actually bringing their prices down and they are in the process of figuring out how to do this effectively. Pete

The only thing the comics bring for me is MW member Glane who seems like a nice guy and certainly is a very good artist. Pete

Oh - sorry - missed this: Simple: Exporters in Japan have lost a hell of a lot of customers - and not just retail customers, but wholesale customers especially. Their sales slumped so they started ordering far less from producers. The main reason the customers were lost was due to the exchange rate which made it harder for people to order more. Even though the exchange rate has stabilized in the second and third quarter of 2009 (with the worst being during 1st quarter 2009), the Yen is still roughly 15 to 20% more expensive than it was in 2008, and probably at least 10% more expensive than its' average from 2002 to 2008. On top of that - everybody's loosing their jobs, in debt and generally unable to buy. So the demand is only there in theory - everybody wants, but no one can afford it. The effect of this is that stores which used to overstock on PURPOSE as part of their business plan stopped doing it. Look at BBTS - they've been having a massive blow out sale on all their overstocked merchandise - now, 3 years ago overstocking was the smart thing to do because - I don't know if people still remember this - but collectibles were actually appreciating assets. These things went UP in price - not down. Now, ironically, the high returns caused producers to plan out more and more new stuff. Then bam! - the recession comes. The SDF-1 1:2000 scale from Yamato is a good example of this. It's been planned, executed and... it won't be mass produced it seems - because while the theoretical demand is there - it is just impossible. Anyways...first everybody gripes. Everybody gets mad at one another. For an example of people getting mad at one another, just check out the VT-1 group buy thread where the whole group buy at one point was in jeapordy because my supplier and I had a fight. But eventually two things kick in - the pecking order and reality. The pecking order is this: customers bitch to retailers. Retailers bitch to suppliers. Suppliers bitch to distributors and they in turn bitch to producers. As long as everybody is just bitching - nothing changes. But then, as time goes buy, people start looking at balance sheets and they see that sales are falling. Meanwhile, they look at ebay and see that things ARE selling - but at much lower prices. Then some hard questions need to be asked by everybody in the bitching-pecking order chain. 1) Can we lower the costs of production in order to lower prices, and if we lower prices will we raise sales to a level that once again makes us minimally profitable? 2) Can this happen fast enough? Now - for those people who didn't take their bitching too seriously and just waited for reality to do what bitching never achieves - well - things are bearing fruit. Everybody from Takara Tomy to Bandai to Yamato is lowering their prices. Plain and simple. No other way to put it. But the problem is that at the same time their output is falling due to less orders coming in. So you don't get to see the lower prices because if there's also less stuff, then there's no incentive on the part of retailers and distributors to share their lower prices with you - unless they feel that by doing so they will significantly increase sales. If something is gonna just sit on the shelf independent of whether it costs a bit more or a bit less - then stores will keep it on the shelf for a bit more. I've literally seen things like distributors saying - "Takara-Tomy is going to only produce exactly as many units of product X as you order - so order by deadline Y or there will be none left." If Takara-Tomy is doing this with certain Transformers, and Transformers are a "big name" brand with two box office blockbuster movies - you can imagine what smaller brands are going through. I don't know what producers did to lower their prices. I don't know whether they cut people's pay, fired people, asked people to work over time, used cheaper plastic, shut the power off for half a week - beats me. But whatever they did - it resulted in prices going down. Now the only question is - will the lower prices translate into higher sales? If they do - if producers and the whole chain gang from distributors through suppliers through retailers sees sales jump thanks to price cuts - then that will be a signal for producers that - ok - this is a bad economy - but people WILL still buy this stuff. You just need to tighten your belt and keep going. If it doesn't result in higher sales - then somewhere down the line - this stuff is going to stop being made - at least in such quantities and on such a mass scale. [EDIT: By "this stuff" I mean high quality collectibles as opposed to cheap "toys" - I mean stuff that has super attention to detail and design. Stuff that once was the domain of only garage kits but slowly but surely became available to the public en mass for prices significantly lower than what garage kits cost] It's already happening with Yamato's SDF-1. I'm sure the 2000 dollar price tag is the result of it being a "if you order one, we'll make one for you" kind of thing. They put the R&D into it, they set it all up - and suddenly it's like...sorry..but nobody is gonna buy this for 500 bucks. Or - no...let me put it another way...They probably have to sell however many thousand or hundred of these to get costs back at 500 bucks. They looked at it and my guess is that no body even wanted to risk carrying it. It's that bad. I might be wrong of course - but I wouldn't be surprised. So they did the only logical thing they could - they offer it on their site for the few diehards who might have 2000 plus bucks to toss at it - because if you invest X yen into making something, then although a loss is a loss - it's always better when your loss is higher than Zero. They are hoping for higher than zero. But the point is - people who have stuck through this business are now being rewarded for their perseverence - these companies are offering lower prices. We'll see whether customers respond to this by buying more or whether it doesn't make a difference. If it doesn't make a difference - we're all screwed. Pete

The problem with the Kushatoria isn't the price, but the fact that it's totally short packed. Unless I'm mistaken and the HG kit has been issued before hand, then this thing is totally short packed for a new release - and that's going to push up the price significantly... As for the Gelgoog Cannon - yes - except I was looking for pictures of the HGUC Geglgoog Cannon - not the MG.... But thanks to both you and Azrael - at least I know what it LOOKS like now... just need to find it in 1/144 scale.... Generally though, I agree with you about Unicorn having fantastic designs all around. And I'm hard pressed to explain exactly what it is about these mecha that is so fantastic... I think however, it has something to do with their simplicity... Pete