Bandai 1/60 DX Chogokin Macross 7 Fire Valkyrie

[Lolicon]

4 hours ago, MacrossJunkie said:

A few more shots in fighter mode.

Fantastic work, as always! Did you paint the landing gear too?

[Lolicon]

Mine is still sitting in HLJ PW until the tariff situation is settled, but you jerks posting all these great pics made me go pick up another one so I can actually handle it myself. Thank goodness for Yahoo auctions! 

[MacrossJunkie]

1 hour ago, Lolicon said:

Fantastic work, as always! Did you paint the landing gear too?

Thanks! I did.

Edited Thursday at 12:33 AM by MacrossJunkie

[Lolicon]

1 hour ago, MacrossJunkie said:

Thanks! I did.

Beautiful! That should be what we're getting out of the box. Freaking Bandai. 

[PointBlankSniper]

6 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Mine is still sitting in HLJ PW until the tariff situation is settled, but you jerks posting all these great pics made me go pick up another one so I can actually handle it myself. Thank goodness for Yahoo auctions! 

That is one of the units I've been eyeing last lol

[m0n5t3r]

6 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Mine is still sitting in HLJ PW until the tariff situation is settled, but you jerks posting all these great pics made me go pick up another one so I can actually handle it myself. Thank goodness for Yahoo auctions! 

Great snag! That's even lower than current HMR VF-19P prices right there. 

[Mommar]

There's a very good chance we aren't seeing any other 19 variants if prices are dropping off that fast.

[Chronocidal]

6 hours ago, Mommar said:

There's a very good chance we aren't seeing any other 19 variants if prices are dropping off that fast.

You know the really funny/stupid thing.. this is essentially the exact same mistake Yamato made: spending a mountain of money developing a line of toys so niche that they really didn't even have enough of a domestic market to turn a sustainable profit.

Bandai could easily milk the market for all it has to offer if they focused on something there is an established domestic demand for... but no, they just want to chase a market that is likely even smaller than the one Yamato targeted, because apparently they're just completely certain Macross 7 will be profitable this time.  In a market where it never originally aired, and is probably the most mocked in the franchise as a whole.

But what do I know. I'm not one of Bandai's market analysts.  Maybe they just know history better or something.

Edited 21 hours ago by Chronocidal

[davidwhangchoi]

i want the sound force 

[PointBlankSniper]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

You know the really funny/stupid thing.. this is essentially the exact same mistake Yamato made: spending a mountain of money developing a line of toys so niche that they really didn't even have enough of a domestic market to turn a sustainable profit.

Bandai could easily milk the market for all it has to offer if they focused on something there is an established domestic demand for... but no, they just want to chase a market that is likely even smaller than the one Yamato targeted, because apparently they're just completely certain Macross 7 will be profitable this time.  In a market where it never originally aired, and is probably the most mocked in the franchise as a whole.

But what do I know. I'm not one of Bandai's market analysts.  Maybe they just know history better or something.

I'm not sure how true all that is. I've seen that Fire Bomber is generally revered as a classic band in japanese pop culture, while general macross awareness has spread to girls through frontier and delta music. Mecha hobbies like gunpla, armored core gaming, has been getting popular with japanese girls as well. Had they priced this thing dirt cheap to the point of seemingly subsidized like some main character starter gunpla units, this could have been the gateway drug to DX Macross collecting for a lot of new people with a little nostalgia bait marketing. A one and done super robot looking display piece of a legendary front man should in theory be an easier sell to casual new fans, than something like a whole rainbow airshow military attack team.

Instead of not having domestic fans, there seems to be a lot of japanese fans refusing to buy it. Their criticism is the same as we have here.

The fans want the full sound force, as seen just above, and accessories like sound boosters. What bandai has shown though, is consistently declining QC, non commitment for accessories and completing rosters, and now, worst of all, fleecing their customers with sky high pricing on a barebones item under the guise of inflation. Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated and priced it out of demand and affordability, while over supplying as if fans are mindless moneybags. Very few bought into their insane pricing, causing the never closing PO listings to reveal the slow sales.

Then they reinforce their noncommittal status by rolling out the half baked 17 with no ability to wear a super pack, building a very serious wait and see audience, because it's very clear a hypothetical storm valkyrie and sound boosters would be just as screwed, if those ever even had a chance of being made. The sound force collectors then see no reason to start a new collection when their yammie/arcadia actually has a sound booster already. The backfire keeps compounding because all the retailers want to clear inventory and get into panic clearance. This being so new, would never sell for a loss, so now with a still profitable price drop, everyone can see as plain as day, the insane fleecing behind the MSRP. PO buyers are burned and pass the sour mood onto the wait and see buyers, reinforcing the whole price drop watching game.

To really execute themselves and their M7 plans, they surprise drop the anniversary Kairos for cheaper than this thing. Formerly limited, they retail release it this time, so everyone rushes there, only to realize its a small production run, so the panic buy compounds. Now none of the small budget fans have money spend on this, no matter how cheap it gets. Seeing these sales, speculation for the fate of Blazer Valk sets in, stopping the last of the collectors from wanting to even start this set, so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Thus sales of of this will continue to be worse.

At this point, everyone is familiar with how bandai interprets their sales numbers. They are going to say nobody likes toys anymore, and toss out the perfectly good molds because their storage is not profitable, and instead, sink funds in some meme worthy collapsing investment bubble again. Crypto, VR, metaverse, NFT, AI, DX Chogokin Labubu, you name it, they've done it. It makes it pretty hard for fans to buy into this product line with bandai's attitude being like this.

Story of bandai's life. I cry everytime.

[Chronocidal]

11 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

I'm not sure how true all that is. I've seen that Fire Bomber is generally revered as a classic band in japanese pop culture, while general macross awareness has spread to girls through frontier and delta music. Mecha hobbies like gunpla, armored core gaming, has been getting popular with japanese girls as well. Had they priced this thing dirt cheap to the point of seemingly subsidized like some main character starter gunpla units, this could have been the gateway drug to DX Macross collecting for a lot of new people with a little nostalgia bait marketing. A one and done super robot looking display piece of a legendary front man should in theory be an easier sell to casual new fans, than something like a whole rainbow airshow military attack team.

Instead of not having domestic fans, there seems to be a lot of japanese fans refusing to buy it. Their criticism is the same as we have here.

The fans want the full sound force, as seen just above, and accessories like sound boosters. What bandai has shown though, is consistently declining QC, non commitment for accessories and completing rosters, and now, worst of all, fleecing their customers with sky high pricing on a barebones item under the guise of inflation. Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated and priced it out of demand and affordability, while over supplying as if fans are mindless moneybags. Very few bought into their insane pricing, causing the never closing PO listings to reveal the slow sales.

Then they reinforce their noncommittal status by rolling out the half baked 17 with no ability to wear a super pack, building a very serious wait and see audience, because it's very clear a hypothetical storm valkyrie and sound boosters would be just as screwed, if those ever even had a chance of being made. The sound force collectors then see no reason to start a new collection when their yammie/arcadia actually has a sound booster already. The backfire keeps compounding because all the retailers want to clear inventory and get into panic clearance. This being so new, would never sell for a loss, so now with a still profitable price drop, everyone can see as plain as day, the insane fleecing behind the MSRP. PO buyers are burned and pass the sour mood onto the wait and see buyers, reinforcing the whole price drop watching game.

To really execute themselves and their M7 plans, they surprise drop the anniversary Kairos for cheaper than this thing. Formerly limited, they retail release it this time, so everyone rushes there, only to realize its a small production run, so the panic buy compounds. Now none of the small budget fans have money spend on this, no matter how cheap it gets. Seeing these sales, speculation for the fate of Blazer Valk sets in, stopping the last of the collectors from wanting to even start this set, so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Thus sales of of this will continue to be worse.

At this point, everyone is familiar with how bandai interprets their sales numbers. They are going to say nobody likes toys anymore, and toss out the perfectly good molds because their storage is not profitable, and instead, sink funds in some meme worthy collapsing investment bubble again. Crypto, VR, metaverse, NFT, AI, DX Chogokin Labubu, you name it, they've done it. It makes it pretty hard for fans to buy into this product line with bandai's attitude being like this.

Story of bandai's life. I cry everytime.

I think we're making the same point, but about different markets.  I'm mostly speaking from Bandai's perspective, so when I'm talking about the domestic markets, I mean Japanese customers.  Everyone else is international customers.  Maybe a weird way to say it, but it made sense in my head.  

But yeah, that's basically what I mean.  Bandai's doing the stupid, and instead of making and selling products that they know would sell well both domestically and internationally, they're chasing the imaginary money of an international fanbase that probably does not even exist.

Bandai isn't in the same financial position as Yamato by any means, so they aren't going to sink or swim based on this one franchise.  But if you think of their product funding as a "Macross account," they're making the same mistake Yamato did.  They built up a ton of profit and good will with products people really wanted (Frontier, Delta, SDFM, Plus), and now they're rapidly burning through it by making an entirely new line for the oddball sibling in the family.  It's maybe over-generalizing, but I think Yamato burnt itself out making the Macross7 releases, because they were too expensive to produce, relative to the demand that existed.  They hit the VF-1 out of the ballpark, but they over-produced it, and it couldn't support the rest of their production lines forever.

The worst part is that now Bandai is doing a worse job at it than Yamato already did.  Despite not being "allowed" to sell to international customers, nothing really stopped us from buying Yamato's releases, so while some of us will probably be suckers and buy everything anyway, I would expect a lot of the international demand for Macross7 is already "satisfied," and won't be motivated to purchase something that's either hilariously similar like the Fire Valk, or worse in pretty much every way, like Bandai's attempt at a "VF-17."  And like you said, it sounds like even the Japanese customers are rejecting the line, so Bandai can't even count on the show's original audience to support it.

The funny part to me?  All of this is just making me think that the HMR route was the right way to go with Macross7 all along.  Bandai's original 1/65 Macross7 line was absolutely a low-ball, but I think it says a lot that they were only willing to invest that level of development in those toys when the series was brand new.

Granted, Bandai is coasting on Yamato's coattails with the HMR releases right now, since they already paid for the majority of the design work involved.  But as much as I would love to see them develop a full Sound Force in 1/60, I'm thinking we'll probably be lucky to get them as HMR releases.

Edited 7 hours ago by Chronocidal

[m0n5t3r]

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I'm thinking we'll probably be lucky to get them as HMR releases.

Yeah, very lucky if in HMR at all... not so lucky for me if they go the HG route since I suck at applying stickers/decals.

[PointBlankSniper]

6 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I think we're making the same point, but about different markets.  I'm mostly speaking from Bandai's perspective, so when I'm talking about the domestic markets, I mean Japanese customers.  Everyone else is international customers.  Maybe a weird way to say it, but it made sense in my head.  

I think you misread me a little somewhere along the way. I'm also talking about the japanese market. But what I'm saying is, there is more than just the original fans there. They macross has been growinig a lot of new fans there. While bandai is trying to be the second go at the same yamato customers, there are also the fans that didn't have a chance to get in on the toy back then, and don't want to wade into the second hand/scalper scene. They do have a sizeable market of multiple groups at home, so I don't think they care that much about exporting like you assume.  What went wrong was their utter disrespect for the IP and the fans going on full display in an assortment of ways all at the same time.

I was also thinking of but forgot to mention, I think the HMR releasing in such close proximity also poisoned the well. Unlike gunpla scales where its affordability/roster selection vs details/gimmicks between HG and MG, and the distinct differences are well established and expected, DX and HMR cannibalize each others' main selling point, which is (near) perfect transformation. The differentiator falls into the size and details, but fans of details are then cannibalized by the HG, which even comes with the sound booster. Macross simply isn't big enough for them to play with self cannibalizing product lines, when we are talking about these price tags. DX collectors are even looking at HMR for cues and seeing that bandai most likely wont release the full sound force there, and are becoming sure that there is no chance the collection would be completed in DX, so there's no reason to buy the centerpiece. Bandai shooting themselves and their DX line just continues through the HMR side of things.

[PointBlankSniper]

Double posted so I'll turn this into announcing Amazon JP is now at 20,520 lol

For some reason they are now hiding the listing halfway down the first page too. Maybe bandai made them hide the price freefall?

Edited 5 hours ago by PointBlankSniper

[treatment]

32 minutes ago, PointBlankSniper said:

Double posted so I'll turn this into announcing Amazon JP is now at 20,520 lol

For some reason they are now hiding the listing halfway down the first page too. Maybe bandai made them hide the price freefall?

hmm.

Do you have a snapshot of that particular listing?

I don't see that 20,520y listing either from my phone or from my computer's browser. See added pics below.

Maybe that particular 20,520y listing is a country/region block thing?  amzn-jp's a bit notorious now for region-blocking items. 

I'm in the US.

 

edit:

phone-app:

 

browser:

 

Edited 5 hours ago by treatment

[treatment]

btw, mine just got delivered today.

It's, err, nice?  At least in default jet mode with the open intakes.

But really rather boring overall, tbh.  

Maybe the matte-finish that's triggering the meh feeling from me.

🥱

[PointBlankSniper]

Didn't realize it was probably region locked. I'm using JP postal code since I would go through buyee anyway.

Just use 100-0001 postal code. IIRC its just the Tokyo Palace so I could be certain of Tokyo availability and shipping rates that buyee would be covered under as well.

It's the default listing. And that's just the cheapest one, but there are tons of "new" sellers well below what you screenshotted as well.

Edited 1 hour ago by PointBlankSniper