The Waiting Game`

The amount of time between first seeing a Japanese action figure announced, to having it in your hands (especially if you live outside of Japan) can be quite astronomical.  Let's look at some examples, for figures I have personally purchased.

My first example is an extreme one: the notorious Armor Plus Kongou no Shuu from Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (or Kento of Hardrock, for you Ronin Warriors fans).  He was first seen at a figure show in February of 2011, but not released until April of 2013.  That's over two years!

Tamashii Features 2011

It's worth noting that, as Shuu is part of a 5-man team, he was announced along when his teammates were.  He was the final one to see release, meaning he had by far the longest delay between announcement and release.  Bandai could have released them closer together, however, but perhaps they wanted to wait for fans' wallets to rebound.  Whatever the reason, waiting over two years is just ridiculous.

Here's a more recent example.  S.H.Figuarts Darth Vader.  First shown at Tokyo Toy Show in early June of 2014, he just saw release a day or two ago.  About one month shy of a year between his first sightings and release.  Now, as an American collector, we have to tack on the several days or weeks for it to ship to my house.

Lord Vader's first appearance

I think this is too long.  Far too long, in fact.  The best time to release a figure is when those looking forward to it are at the peak of excitement.  The memories of opening it and first posing it will be so much more positive.  For most collectors, however, the hype for a figure spikes much earlier than a year after announcement.  By releasing them so much after-the-fact, toy manufacturers are shooting themselves in the foot.  Less excitement means less buying, and those that do buy them will remember them less fondly, hurting future business.

So, why do they announce figures so far ahead?  I have a few ideas.  Hype is also built up through cross-promotion.  S.H.Figuarts Darth Vader was probably announced when he was in order to ride the hype-train that Star Wars Episode VII is generating.  Another factor in this case is competition.  Several other manufacturers were announcing Star Wars figures at this time, and Bandai did not wish to be late to the party and come across as ripoffs.  Perhaps companies like Bandai are overzealous, constantly overestimating how quickly they can develop a figure from prototype.  

My final theory is one I really hope is untrue.  Maybe by showing off a future figure so early, a toy company can gauge fan reaction, and, if negative enough, abort a figure before it has cost too much to develop.  While this might avoid a costly failure of a figure, it also greatly seeds mistrust between consumers and companies.  Even though almost all figure announcements say something to the effect of "Display Only" (meaning the figure is not guaranteed to be made) everybody knows what the strong implication is.  If you show a figure, you are expected to sell it.  By announcing later in development, a toy company would be forced to follow through on their word.  That would require much more cautious planning on their part, however.  That means less "experimental" figure announcements.  So maybe the price of such diverse figure offerings is long wait times and the occasional canceled figure.

I'd rather receive less figures, but at the height of my excitement for them, than have more to choose from, but get them over a year later.  How about you?

amiibo Part 2

Despite many of the complaints I have with the Super Smash Bros. line of amiibo, I have purchased several.  They are of fairly high quality, and likely the only Smash Bros. figure line we'll see in our lifetimes.  There are other "meta-Nintendo" lines, most notably Jakks Pacific's World of Nintendo line, but I appreciate that these amiibo are specific to Smash Bros.  The particular versions of the costumes, as well as the poses, are lifted directly from Smash Bros., with the Smash Bros. symbol as their base.  The problem, exclusively in America, has been in getting them.

I have been fairly lucky with my amiibo hunts.  I, apparently, like popular characters, because only a few of the ones I've wanted are considered "rare".  The few rare ones I did want, I suppose I was in the right place at the right time; I was able to easily pre-order them in my local Toys R Us.  There are more coming out I desire, however, so, hopefully, my luck will not run out.  I have several theories as to why they are so hard to collect here in the US.  Here are some of them.

Nintendo is a family company.  They are not accustomed to, nor interested in, pandering to collectors.  They are targeting younger audiences by flooding shelves with the characters most popular with kids (Mario, Kirby, Yoshi, etc) while ignoring some of the great characters from their more mature games.  Their sales numbers might back this up.  Mario always sells well, while the few Fire Emblem figures ever made might not have.  I hope the data from American amiibo sales do not reinforce this idea.  After all, if you ship less Marths, you'll sell less Marths.

Nintendo of Japan is proud.  Nintendo of Japan, like many, many older Japanese game companies are either completely mystified by Western tastes, or more likely, look down on them.  This pride lead them to foresee American amiibo shoppers as unsophisticated - simply wanting flagship mascots of children's games.  While it is true, Americans love Mario and the gang, the amiibo debacle has also re-proven that Western gamers have complex taste in games.  This pride could also be blamable for the breakdown in communications.  Nintendo of America has said almost nothing regarding the shortages, and I believe, a big reason is that they know very little of Nintendo of Japan's plans or ideas.

Nintendo is inexperienced in merchandise.  First, I will admit that there has been, literally, thousands of Nintendo-related toys released over the decades.  What I am referring to, specifically, is Nintendo's lack of experience in handling the manufacture, shipping and marketing of figures.  They have always licensed their merchandises out to other manufacturers, but with amiibo, they have taken on much of the responsibility.  And, frankly, they don't know enough yet to satisfy the myriad of consumer types around the world they have.  They completely missed the mark when predicting sales in the US, made too few of some characters and too many of others, and have shipped them in batches so small, they only exacerbate rather than relieve the situation.  Even retailers are frustrated with Nintendo, hurting relationships a more experienced company would already have cemented.

Nintendo is gun shy.  As this is their first real foray into collectibles, they likely erred on the side of caution, preferring to under-produce than over.  Figures not selling and sitting on shelves would have been costly for them, as well as edged out future shelf space for the next series of amiibo.

Nintendo is, maybe, an evil genius.  The amiibo situation greatly resembles the original Wii shopping madness.  Is Nintendo under-shipping to drive up demand?  For the case of the Wii, it worked quite well.  People were going crazy over it and, I believe, people that never would have otherwise bought one did for two reasons.  One, people who would have otherwise never heard about a console release learned of the Wii from news reports about its scarcity.  Two, people who were on the fence about buying one, when confronted with the chance to acquire one from the insanely low supply, felt pressured to get it now, or miss out forever.  Perhaps Nintendo was trying to recreate this fever with amiibo.

Hopefully, collectors who missed out on their favorite characters will get a chance in the future.  But with more and more amiibo being announced every month, I doubt it.

amiibo Part 1

Me and my fellow Smash Bros. fan friends were very excited for Nintendo's new toys-to-life series, called amiibo.  The initial line of amiibo are based on Super Smash Bros. for WiiU/3DS, a brilliant move, as Smash Bros features characters from throughout Nintendo's considerable history.  The initial prototypes looked great.  The promised gameplay sounded fantastic.

But, upon release, my friends and I were in for disappointment.  The first thing I noticed was the released versions were not as brilliant as the prototypes.  Now, as an action figure collector, I am very used to this, with regard to paint quality and sculpt accuracy.  The difference that bothered me, however, was the stands.  The prototypes boasted small, round, and clear tubes to hold aloft the flying or jumping characters.  The actual stands were much thicker, square and all sorts of different translucent colors.  I understand the thickening of the stands; these are family toys and stands the size of the prototypes would likely snap in a 4-year-old's hands.  But why show such a drastically different stand?  Did you actually believe you could have produced them that way?  I suppose, since this is one of Nintendo's first forays into figures, that can be forgiven ... lack of experience.  Far worse than the size however, was the decision to make them colored.  Clear plastic is perfect for stands, it minimizes their appearance, adding to the illusion the figure is gliding or hovering.  By making them brightly colored, they draw attention, rather than hide it.  For the Link figure, in particular, they chose to have a pee-yellow colored stand drip from between his legs down to the base.  It really looks like a power stream of urine.

The look of these figures is only half their appeal.  You can tap them on your console and bring them to life in the game.  But, as amiibos were getting into people's hands, me and my friends hopes were dashed again, as their functionality was strange, unfun and obscured.  Firstly, you could not play as your amiibo.  You could only spar with it, fight alongside it, or watch it fight alone.  Not a huge deal-breaker, but putting time and effort into strengthening a character would be best enjoyed by playing as it, as any RPG can tell you.  They also claimed the figure would learn from the events of the battles it was in, specifically.  That you could teach it moves and counter-moves by showing them it.  It is very unclear if this is the case.  There is no way to tell how or what your amiibo has learned, or if there is any more to the "learning" system than the amount of time it has fought.  You can only gauge its strength by its level, 1-50.

By level 50, the amiibo is very, very intelligent.  This excited me and my friends; something challenging to strive for.  But, we were, again, quickly disappointed.  As it get higher in levels, it also get stat bumps, making it stronger, faster and tougher than the version of that character the player can play as.  This isn't good design - its SNK Boss Syndrome.  Making something harder by giving it unfair advantages isn't fun to overcome; it feels cheap.  I wanted to be defeated by my amiibo's honed technique, strategy and skill.  Not its ridiculous stats.

All of these problems only arise if you can actually get an amiibo.  There have been horrendous stock issues regarding amiibo since the first day of their release.  These isssues have largely been restricted to the US.  Nintendo has been notoriously tight-lipped as to why, but in Part 2, I'll give you my guesses.

Iron Men

Tamashii Nations's Age of Ultron figures went up for pre-order today!  Were you able to get yours?  Of course, Iron Man has been up for pre-order for awhile, and is supposed to ship any minute now.  But wait!  There's an newer, cooler, higher-numbered Iron Man armor with this latest batch.  That's (A) awesome, because he looks much cooler and means we'll have a mid-movie upgrade, (B) almost predictable given the ridiculous rate they come out with new Iron Man variants with and (C) kinda a jerk move on Tamashii Nations's part.  They sold the Mark 43 armor as if it was Iron Man's only suit, far ahead of all the other figures.  This way, those who pre-ordered it would have little or no time to realize that if they wanted the iconic, final (I presume) Mark 45 suit from Age of Ultron, they'd have to get another yet another Iron Man figure.  Intentional?  I really don't know, but it is curious that they released the Mark 43 so far ahead of time.  Let's break it down:

In Bandai's defense::

--- The Mark 43 is a redeco of the Mark 42, making it easier to produce, and therefore, quicker to release.

--- I did have time (albeit a small window) to cancel my Mark 43.

--- It might have been part of the licensing deal with Marvel to keep the Mark 45 under wraps as part of the film's hype engine.

Now, a bit more incriminating:

--- The release for Mark 43 is far ahead of the rest: 3-4 months.

--- In all the promotional shots, they showed the Mark 43 alongside the rest of the cast, as if it was Tony's main suit.

---- They had a shadow of the Hulkbuster (presumably the Mark 44) in the announcements of the Avengers line, leading potential pre-orderers to assume that was all that was left in the series.

All said and done, I bet Tamashii Nations (Bandai) didn't try to swindle its customers, but I would believe either way.  I'm sure some of you won't mind at all and get both armors, but I think deceiving through pre-orders is pretty shady.  (See my previous rant, also about Avengers pre-orders.)  So many Iron Man suits ... 

Canceled Figures.

So, last night I popped over to Takara's Nexta website to see if they had updated the page for the Video Game Robotics HD Wolf Fang figure they advertised like 2 years ago.  It was updated, but not in the way I had hoped!  The "Coming Soon" image was gone, leaving a gaping hole in their products list and in my heart.

I was super, super excited for this figure, being a huge Wolf Fang fan, and fan of robot figures (especially with interchangeable parts!).  This bummer news makes me wonder a few things about the toy industry.  Please post below if you know anything about these matters.

1.)  Why do they show prototypes if they aren't sure they're going to produce the figure?  I imagine they're just testing the waters, or possibly an unforeseen design challenge makes the figure no longer viable.

2.)  When a figure is canceled, why do the manufacturers never announce that?  They always seem to simply remove all listings of it and never speak of it.  Perhaps they want to keep the door open to make it later, or don't like the image of canceling a figure, and hope customers just forget?  I suppose it is safer to let it fade away then make a post and show somebody who wasn't tracking the figure that they don't always live up to their word.

3.)  What can we, as buyers, do about this?  If one more figure I'm excited is simply ignored into eternity I don't know what I'll do.  Figma Hulk is breaking my heart, but this Wolf Fang matter really sent me over the edge.

How dramatic.

Speaking of Figma Hulk, I have Figma Thor, Captain America and (the limited edition) Iron Man.  That's tens of thousands of yen spent on 3/4 of the core Avengers, spent under the beliefs that I would be able to finish out the set.  After all, all 4 were unveiled at Wonder Fest several years ago.  Now I have to go with Bandai's Age of Ultron set if I want the core 4, but I don't enjoy their new designs nearly as much.  If anyone has heard anything about Figma Hulk, please let me know.