Tag Archives: shoppers gonna shop

Nov 24 2011

Bring It On, Bandai! I Will Fight!

Tamashii Nation 2011 is this weekend, and there’s already a ton of pictures of Tiger & Bunny figures on display there. Dengeki has a pretty nice report, but the official Tiger & Bunny Twitter account posted some pictures that weren’t on Dengeki.

Although I think Lunatic looks awesome, and H-01 is pretty sweet too, what really got me going was this:

Hiding there, inconspicuously in the corner like he’s taken photo-bombing lessons from Origami Cyclone… that’s an actual Wild Tiger crapsuit edition figure (maybe with a surprise bulge and dangerous underpants like director Satou wanted). I haven’t been able to find a full photo of it but if it’s even nearly as sweet as I hope it is, I’m going to fight for it. (It might finally be the figure that will make Amiami’s servers go up in flames when the preorders open.)

Aki wished me luck…

…and I think she was laughing.

By the way, Hirata Hiroaki, Morita Masakazu and Inoue Go are at Tamashii Nation on Sunday 11/27. They’ll be on Tamashii’s Ustream program at 16:00 JST with reairing at 21:00 JST, and it’s not region-locked.

Nov 22 2011

Sweet Dreams With A Hero Of Your Choice

We leave most of the merchandise blogging to Sternbild Central Market these days, but I can’t resist this. Partially because it almost got me to do a spit-take at my screen.

There’s been that fanmade mildly NSFW hug pillow cover available at Mandarake and Toranoana, but these… These are actual, official merchandise.

They’re bedsheets, your choice if you want to sleep with Kotetsu or Barnaby. There are also matching pillow cases, Kotetsu & Barnaby versions. I wonder if these will pop up on Bandai’s shopping webcast next time…

Update: These aren’t exclusives after all, above links go to CDJapan now, but they are available at Amiami and Hobby Search, too.

This photoshopped version is making me think that just like in this photoshopped composition of the posters, the poses on the sheets are a bit too intentional. As is that strip of bare midriff Barnaby is flaunting on the sheet and the poster.

And while I’m going on about merchandise and spit-takes, the character song album that was set for December has been pushed back to February 2012. It has a title now, too, BEST OF HERO. I can only hope the delay is to ensure we have another spontaneous discharge epic experience like “sandy beach, sandy beach” waiting for us.

I also got the new official books, Hero TV Fan vol. 2 and Official Hero Book 2, in the mail today. Review coming as I have time to get acquainted with them.

Oct 25 2011

It’s not a real TaiBani figure release if an online store doesn’t go down with it

That delicious Figuarts Zero Kotetsu T. Kaburagi I’ve been lusting for went up for preorder through Premium Bandai completely without warning. I think I’ve managed to secure myself one… Now I better get Barnaby, too, or I’ll be a very sad panda. I dunno if others suffer from the same problem, but when it comes to figures of Kotetsu and Barnaby, I just can’t think of having one without the other.

…meanwhile in a 20 mile radius of this event…

The funny thing with this figure release is that it’s made-to-order web shop exclusive. Now I’m not a figure collector and definitely not an expert, but one of the regulars on our chat channel is a collector and he told me some interesting stuff about the made-to-order figures. They’re usually ones that Bandai expects will not sell very well, so they don’t want to be left with extra stock collecting dust and taking up warehouse space. Usually these figures are available to preorder for about a month. The bonus to selling the figures like this is that there are no retailers taking their slice of the cake when Bandai is selling them directly.

(If their reasoning really was that this figure won’t sell, just ahahahaha oh wow…)

…webshops crashing…

However, the general opinion on the chat channel was that this may have backfired on Bandai. The web shop actually crashed, and our figure collecting friend told me he’s never seen that happen with made-to-order items. (Note, the web shop only ships within Japan, so it was only the Japanese fans overloading the site with orders.) It seems they didn’t take into account how well Wild Tiger Figuarts has been selling, nor the case with the Katsura art book + original coloring Wild Tiger set which was also made-to-order. The book and figure set was intended to be available for preorders for a month, but they closed the preorders after two days because they got a “flood of orders”. There’s a limit to how many their factory can produce, so that has to be taken into consideration too. On the other hand… this’ll give actual data of how sought after these figures are. The tweet from Premium Bandai actually said that people don’t have to worry about first come, first serve because the figure is made-to-order, but keeping in mind that art book thing, it’s best to order sooner rather than later…

…Bandai making more exclusives…

Then there’s Darkness Edition Bunny, which will be an exclusive at Tamashii Nation 2011 event at first. It’ll probably be available at the web shop in a few months for those who couldn’t go to the event. It’s not perfect – at least not the prototype – director Satou himself noted how the “ears” on the helmet are in the wrong angle. Still, it’s one sleek piece of plastic.

I’ve seen both figures are already available for preordering at resellers, but the prices are pretty steep. Especially with Darkness Edition Bunny – and no guarantee if there’ll be enough to fill the preorders.

TL;DR. Do not underestimate the desire that T&B fans have for spending money on merchandise of the series.

It was fabulous. THE END.

Well not quite the end yet because there are some…

Other updates:

This is a teeny bit odd, but there’ll be a NEXT PROJECT SET of BD Limited Edition vol. 1 packaging and extras. This is also made to order, and it seems it’ll basically be all the stuff that came with the first LE BD – only without the BD itself. So if you got the regular edition you can upgrade it to limited with this.

The release dates for Hero TV Fan vol. 2 and Official Hero Book 2 have changed, and instead of the original 10/25 release they should be coming out 11/16. It gives a small breather for my credit card, since October has been really expensive for me.

Oh and ANN are having a contest where you must design an own, original super hero card. Looks like fun, and although they’ll only ship the prizes within USA & Canada, the fine print says that you can get a friend to act as your proxy so in other words, everyone can take part!

Update: I wrote a small primer some time ago, when we got some questions about buying merchandise from Japan. If you’re not sure how to go about this business, look here.