UPDATE: Now that Gundam GQuuuuuuX has been announced, that explains where all the gunpla releases up to Q2 2025 went. It's currently speculated there will be about 12 releases at least, or something like that, so that's good. The PV for the new kits looks very promising. The collaboration of Sunrise with Khara to produce the show is... Interesting, to put it one way. It definifely makes me doubt Bandai's own confidence even more. Everything else from the Gundam Conference Winter 2024 is just the same dissappointing nonsense already happening right now, aside from the World Expo Gundam Pavillion, which I don't really have an opinion of. I'm sure it'll be an entertaining venue.
TBH, I'm really starting to get disappointed in Bandai, since they're now prioritizing HG, and neglecting MG (basically in life support), and PG to dust recently. Well I guess it's for the best, at least for me personally anyway since my shelves are starting to get crowded with Gunplas.
@@francisquebachmann7375 you had no point. you said bandai is starting to prioritize hg when they always did, just look at how many there are vs sd/mg/pg/rg. nice try though, stay mad 😅🤣😂
My absolute crackpot theory is that the building of the new factory has slowed down the production of new kits while it's still tooling up and training new staff. So maybe in late 2025 or mid 2026 kit releases will be more normalized. However I do know this is a lot of wishful thinking. Here's hoping things do get better and not just spiral more price gouging.
@@narutoman876 yeah the last few older kits i'm glad they gave a chance for me to get was the MG Rick Dias and just over a week ago the MG Gundam G04 but i'm wishing they would do is the Old MG GM Custom Quel Kai and other early 2000s kits
@ oh yeah the OYW RX-78-2 would be nice like those kits are regular release kits so you would think at some point they would reprint them sure it’s easier for them to make the HG versions which are nice but i would like a bigger version of the GM Kai and the frame of it is based off the first Gundam Ver Ka from 2002 which came out after the GM Kai so surely they could reprint it easily
Bandai is building a new factory? That's news to me.. just checked reddit and it looks like a post was made 3 years ago saying Bandai was building a new factory for the increased demand in gundam kits. Someone under that post said they're expecting the factory to being operations "in 2024" so it's likely been in operation for a bit now unless of course it's experienced delays.
@@Its_MTG There was another announcement a month or so ago that the factory's currently scheduled to open Q1 2025. It's not opening as originally scheduled, but it's on its way.
My main problem with bandai not releasing more kits is just their absolute incapability to give people something they want. A lot of people want WfM master grades or even just full mechanics models. A lot of people want updates for older kits eg. MG kampfer, MG gouf custom etc. I get that designing a master grade kit is time consuming but they had a lot of time to do so, but it seems like they don't even try. Even the frequency of reprinting the existing kits seems lazy.
To be fair, Bandai is a Japanese company, who are historically hyper resistant to any change, and they’re also incapable of listening to fans. The amount of times people have said “MG G Self” for the new Ver Ka is crazy, considering every Ver Ka since that has been something completely different (and also UC)
they just had reprints of build fighters and ibo. and they just bought a big factory for more machines to make kits. also, they have plenty of mgs but hgs are the best sellers so they will stick with that for the most part
Not a non-Tomino Gundam person, but that Blue IBO guy is something that should've existed maybe 2 months after the original Barbatos released, if Bandai liked money we would be up to our necks in IBO MGs in 2024. Those 00 MGs were on track to have their final release be a MGEX of the main suit to round off that set but Bandai manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and seems to quietly shelf the MGEX Subline after two releases. Perfect Grades are seemingly not up to Bandai's standard for the absolute pinnacle of Gunpla so they introduce PGU so they can release even less models in that grade, RGs dabble into 2.0s just clog the potential release pipeline a little more. MGSDs.
Speaking of, we're only two weeks away from MGSD Wing Zero, yet the product page still shows only CGs and not an actual built model. Same with Bolinoak Sammahn. RG 2.0 was also disappointing to me in the same way as for you: We're 14 years past the original RG and I don't even know how many RG Zaku variants, but still no RG GM... There's such a vast catalog of mobile suits-some with very unique designs and potentially broad appeal!-that never saw the light of day when Bandai was still more "generous." And I wonder if some of them may have missed their time to shine, or even if their day will ever come.
@@citrusjuicebox ZZ mooks like the Jamru Fin, Ga-Zowmn, Geymalk are probably not happening anytime soon. HGUC should be Bandai's bread and butter line that they can always fall back on, it feels unreal to see it has become a 1-2 release per year subline.
Funny story about the MG Gundam Vidar, there’s a Bandai US guy in the r/Gunpla server who said that the Vidar was in the works since soon after Barbatos released in 2020 but it was so severely delayed by the pandemic that it only now saw the light of day. I do wonder how many kits this has happened to, or that still remain in that void
@@smoldream2908 nope, no, i'm not buying it. you can count the number of regular MG releases from 2020 to 2024 on two fucking hands. one, if you don't count the ver.ka kits. there's no fucking way the vidar is a 4-year delay. for fuck's sake, it's the same goddamn barbatos frame with blue armor on! that took four fucking years?
As an EU collector, the heavier focus on P-Bandai for releasing BRAND NEW MOLDS was the point where I finally realised Bandai was not interested in my money anymore. I'm somewhat of an impulse buyer, and having to plan purchases 9-12 months in advance on third-party websites is too much of a hassle. Their focus has always been and will always be Japan/SE Asia of course, but I could still do with HLJ, Amiami, Hobbysearch etc. Nowadays, only HLJ gets stuff and even then in meager quantities (still waiting for my 2 33MM Armored core kits frorm them that I ordered the second they were up for preorder). Honestly I'm just tired of jumping through hoops and waiting on orders for stuff I used to be able to buy and get delivered from Japan to my house in 5 days. And I haven't even brought up the price factor in all this : being EU based, I have to pay the expensive P-Bandai kits, third-party fee, shipping costs, and import duties. Shit gets expensive. The only kit I'd be interseted in buying nowadays is an MG GP03S 2.0 or more Turn-A qtuff, but lord knows neither or those are happening, just more SEED slop. Anyway sorry for yapping, glad someone else is talking about this downward trend. Fuck preorder culture and fuck artificial scarcity.
You're absolutely right. For all the "world" this and "global" that in Bandai's marketing, they certainly don't act like they care that much about access at all anymore. In a strange way, gunpla felt more fair in the days before PB, when _everyone_ had a hard time finding the rare stuff, which, while cool, never gatekept any unique molds.
@@citrusjuicebox I remember like a year ago at the largest convention in France Bandai had a panel where they were so proud to annouce that Premium Bandai was gonna be available in Europe so I decided to check it out, they straight-up had like 4 kits on there, it was worse than not having access to the service. I just checked it out, it ALREADY cooked. here's what it says: "Important notice: temporary suspension of service To prepare and provide a more satisfying shopping experience, we will be temporarily suspending our service during the following period. Effective date: January 21st 5PM~ (CET), 2025 This temporary suspension of service is expected to take around one year, however, we kindly ask for your understanding that the schedule is subject to change. If you have any orders waiting to be shipped, rest assured, it will be shipped accordingly." This is the exact shit they did in the early 2000s, they released a few 1/144 Wing and 1 or 2 MGs (for some reason??? I remember seeing a MG zeta 1.0 int the toy isle when I was like 6 or 7), then some 1/144 no grade seed and then they pulled out of the market a year later. Bandai's motto : barely try, give up, repeat.
Even when they do throw Europe a bone, it’s only ever France. It’s even worse in a non-EU European country, I can barely afford shipping from european based stores, officially licensed or not
“still waiting for my 2 33MM Armored core kits from them that I ordered the second they were up for preorder” Same. I pre-ordered two back in April and I’ve not got them yet. I probably won’t have them by the end of the year.
@@Herr_Gamer And they are shutting down European P-Bandai in january for an entire year, maybe they will open it up to rest of EU after but for all we know they could just not reopen ever again.
As someone who loves UC for it's more _"realistic"_ designs, it sucks to see Bandai just not make detailed MG or RG designs for the mobile suits in that timeline. Like man, imagine RG GMs, Jestas, Gelgoogs, Goufs, dammit I'll even take an RG ball!
I wish Build Divers didn't sour people on Re;Rise, genuinely great show and even better kits, but its reception (or lack thereof) seems to have deflated the passion something fierce
Honestly I feel Build Fighters was where things started going wrong. The Gunpla Builders of the 30th Gunpla anniversary was a cute one-off but someone thought it'd be good to serialize that. From there we get lazy retoolings and designs and shows no one asked for to get retail. Who wanted the Crimson Gouf HG as retail? Who wanted a Build Series Altron as a retail instead of the original Altron? Granted some designs were cool but people have been wanting other things more than those. And I realized that at the same time, P-Bandai was selling models of MSs that people actually wanted: MG Norn, HG Woundwort, MG Heavyarms Custom, etc (regardless of serialization issues revolving Sentinel and AoZ). No sane person ever asked for a Metaverse and yet they put the Build franchise in front of it. I knew this obsession with Build series would lead to bad decisions and I'm honestly conflicted on whether to feel good or bad about it for being right 10 years ago. Now I do appreciate how they ventured into YuGiOh. As a Yugi Boomer seeing Ra, BLS, Blue Eyes, and Exodia so I'd build those when I didn't want to build a Mobile Suit so I'll give em that. But even that's not coming out at a fast enough rate to keep YuGiOh fans interested (but that's just me). If they wanted to focus on the young people through the Build series, looks like things are going swimmingly on that front eh? Tsk Tsk Bandai: there are better ways to do that than this.
Just my perspective as someone from Japan. I also work in IoT and automation for manufacturing. First everything has become considerably more expensive here. It's certain that bandai cost has gone up. We import most resources here, especially for energy. Looking deeper at what it cost to produce kits, the plastic is made from crude oil which is much more expensive than 20 years ago. This also means an increase in logistics cost. Then inflation pushing up wages. The cost of energy has gone up making running the machines more expensive. Just because the mold has paid for itself doesn't mean it's a license to print money, those machines don't run themselves, the include things like QC and packing. Keeping 20 year prices isn't reasonable. Bandai is not one big company but separate entities spread across 4 divisions. It's not as simple as don't spend money on the metaverse and use that for gunpla, it's an entirely separate business operation. They can also barely keep up with demand but yet they should release more kits? What's the point of releasing more kits that you can't produce? This is why they need to spend more money on a new factory. All of Bandai's have been profitable over the last year, including the gaming division. Somebody liked the metaverse. That being said the toys division has a profit margin of about 15% This publicly available knowledge. Going this long without price increases more often and still be the cheapest Japanese manufacturer of models is impressive. The only thing I can really agree with is pbandai. I don't like it either but this kinda thing is normal in Japan. At the end of the day it's still a business and the money line must go up.
Thank you for your insight. The point about "releasing kits they can't produce" is a good one. Between all the lines that Hobby Division could choose to slow down, I'm sad that the choice came down to gunpla, but as I also said, it's not an unreasonable choice. I appreciate you for watching! (Although I really doubt gaming division was profitable because of Metaverse. I'm sure Elden Ring and a few other _actual_ games were responsible.)
This comment really should be pinned because I don't think most gunpla hobbyists understand all the costs associate with even a mostly automated manufacturing process. To your point, I hear Japan is also slated to increase a lot of taxes on oil, further driving up the materials costs for model kits. This would be why they were experimenting with Limex and wood in their molding processes. And to your point about not being not being able to produce new releases, I believe this is already true with how many kits which get released with previous years on the runners. Some kits we're only getting now have had the previous one or two years on the runners, seeming to indicate they've been sitting on ideas like the Vidar for a while with no means to really produce or distribute it. Demand is also way higher now than pre-pandemic. They'd already opened a new factory which has made all the shortages way less pronounced, but new stock still runs out quickly so it's really easy to see why a new factory would be necessary, especially when new kits are being released with the delays we're seeing.
@@TheVanillaQueen new factory isn’t open yet. It is slated to open in mid 2025, and be at full operational capacity by 2026. They had a minor expansion of a handful of machines in 2020, which was planned pre Covid. This was not adequate for the Covid and WFM boom that happened.
To add to this, as Bandai has expanded to other countries officially they have also had to incorporate whatever regulations/laws for sale of products into the overall price of the products they make. Many countries have varying levels of standards and governing bodies for product testing and safety and even the type of information displayed on packaging. Large retailers may require stricter documentation to reduce their liability, so what ends up happening is Bandai has to follow the most rigorous policies and this all added expense. In the U.S., for example, as an official importer and to have relationship with certain large retailers Bandai not only has to follow CPSC rules but also be a member of CTPAT. No company can have a separate set of procedures for every single country so at some point a common process has to be followed and that ends up being as part of the product globally even if those added things don't even violate anything within the Japanese domestic market. As an example, Japan doesn't need to put English on the boxes/instructions, but Bandai has to because they want to sell X,Y,Z speaking country which may require information be in English. Regarding the price, I wanted to add while other companies have been increasing their prices every couple of years in real time to adjust for material costs, even with this price increase, Bandai's price to plastic ratio is still ridiculously unmatched. You could just look at any other competitor''s model kit product price example here th-cam.com/video/VaoNMYR4z7g/w-d-xo.htmlsi=glumxeU4PrYMT6pL&t=1387 .
It's almost surreal how closely this echoes my feelings. I got into the hobby about 8 years ago on the tail end of the heyday, endured the scalping hellscape of COVID and gradually grew tired of Bandai's antics. Third party kits and girlpla kept me engaged for a while longer but ultimately I lost motivation. I still get the occasional urge to build but I've got too much else going on. So of course I'm sitting on a backlog of my own. There was a local gunpla shop that mirrored my path through the hobby. The place thrived for a while but got screwed hard by Bandai's shifting strategy and P-Bandai in particular. The owner had a hard time getting his hands on the few new kits that got standard releases. He tried diversifying but the writing was on the wall and the shop closed its doors for good this past September. It was telling that he struggled to unload inventory even with big discounts because turns out that people aren't really interested in 15 year old high grades. Honestly, I could be here all day complaining about this stuff but my hot take is that the community itself is at least partially complicit in enabling Bandai's behavior.
The year or two of PB "drops" instantly selling out definitely helped push us in this direction. And now PB is in the same boat, with unmoving in-stock inventory and pre-orders that stay open for even weeks or months at a time. Even now, PB' IG is still trying just to hype, hype, hype. And it's getting old.
My man. The prices going up is a japan wide thing right now. The yen rate decreased significantly in the last 2 years and people are just now adjusting prices. Been living here 5 years and im feeling the prices going up.
I'll always love Bandai for being "cheap" in the ever so expensive world of hobbies, but MAN do I wish we'd get more designs and that those designs are NOT PBANDAI.
One problem that’s kind of related to this video is the “for customers in Japan only” on the parts replacement sheet in every Gunpla manual. Why can’t there be a system to replace Gunpla parts for customers outside of Japan? At this point, I don’t care if it’s tedious. I just want to replace my broken parts without buying a second kit just to use 1-3 parts! 😭
There's a reason to it A long time ago, any gunpla consumer can email to Bandai for replacements parts even if you're outside from Japan. Some dingbats in the Philippines exploited this by requesting a lot of replacement parts and then made a profit out of it. Bandai wasn't happy with it and decided to stop offering it. I know this because I was in several Filipino Gunpla groups that do this and it's not cool
Bandai Namco/Bluefin in the US will let you order up to six parts per kit with proof of purchase for free, but only once per kit. A system where you can purchase more than that, or even whole runners, would be great.
Really? Is it still valid for only one month after I buy a kit? Let’s say if I buy a kit, but break a part two months later, can I still be able to replace it using Bandai/Bluefin?
@@alexanderchapman6529 They guarantee parts availability within six months purchase. After that, if the kit's most recent print run is too far past for parts to still be available, they'll let you know.
OMG, why are all my Robot themed franchises mistreated so poorly? I moved to Gundam cause Lego terribly mishandled G2 Bionicle, so Gunpla was a natural transition...until pandemic hit and collecting kits got harder than ever.
Assuming that they couldnt make any new and good content in a form of anime (their form of commercial), they could easily die as u said. But it does seems like they are reducing the fund for their anime product with just a movie (seed) and short series (battlelogue) and not for a proper series. I was even surprised wfm only got a 24 ep and was expecting more from it.
@zangetsu27 I got the vibe from WFM that it was also rushed towards the end, as if it was intended to at least have 36 episodes, and then cut short on funding.
@zangetsu27 I'm gonna day something controversial: *SEED IS PART OF THE PROBLEM.* Seed was an awful show (I literally couldn't even finish episode 1), it's a dumb gimmick, ans we don't need 31 Berjillion Strike variants with 12 kits for each variant. Seed just swamps releases with constant slight tweaks to what are basically just Chinese Bootleg UC suits.
One big thing I've noticed since the pandemic; actual value for the customer no longer matters. PERCEIVED value is everything and, thus, marketing departments take over and products become less exciting and more expensive.
16:27 I want to add something onto this. I am european, and i just wish to say that P-bandai kits are littereally impossible to get for normal prices, hell in general they are impossible to get. P-bandai EU doesn't exist, they only ship to France and that is really about it, if you want a p-bandai kit well expect to pay some really stupid prices (Like 70€ (about 75USD) for HG MSD Full armor gundam). And it is about to become even harder to acquire p-bandai kits cuz the p-bandai web store is going to be closed for about a year. Also a thing that really bugs me is how just stupidly hard some kits are to get (That are retail releases btw), like littereally the entire origin line, sure we get some reissues here and there (Like next year the Dom Test type and Early Guntank are being reissued) but it can be just really discouraging to go "Hm yes, i want a Bugu" only to check ebay/buyee/any type of marketplace and just get slapped in the face with some really bad prices. Another thing is the price increase, it does worry me to some extent how this will affect the pricing of kits here. Model kits in EU are just not as cheap as they are in japan. And i am just worried about how much this will jack up the price. A example i suppose would be HGUC Z'gok, cute kit, fun little guy, what is there to say. In japan the Z'gok costs 770 yen, which is 4.70€, however once it is imported to EU it costs between 10-12€. Now with the price increase going to 1,040 yen, it just makes me wonder how much more expensive it'll be, cuz paying like 20€ for HG Z'gok ain't it man. That's all i really wanted to add, love your vids!
To add onto the P-Bandai BS, they're also restructuring their EU website from 25/01/2025 onwards, which they say will take them a year. So there's no way to effectively get official P-Bandai things reliably within Europe unless you know people in countries where P-Bandai does sell their products.
As a Southeast Asian aka one of Bandai's second market after Japan and China, I am disappointed that Bandai decided to throw the G-Fans like me to the curb. Like, There's almost no upgrades nor even reuse of some parts to create a 1.5 of a kit. That thing I am talking about is the RG Build/Try Burning Gundam. Like, Bandai could do it, they just decided not to. That's why I am disappointed.
Heck, the only build fighters RG is the Build Strike Gundam Repackage. They did not even make an RG Universe Booster for it. Man. Gundam Amazing Exia and Hi-Nu Gundam Vrabe in RG would be fantastic.
I appreciate the small updates to thr MG IBO Gundam frame were getting with Vidar, but for the love of God, that surely means they can start shitting out more IBO MGs right? They all use the exact same frame, thats like 60% of the work done. The just need new armour and weapons which should be comparatively easy as hell. At most you'd need new forearms for Lupus Rex but other than that there's no reason not to just start pumping them out like they did with HG.
I started this hobby around 2016 and I build mainly MG. Thinking back it’s basically gotten worse every single year peaking during COVID. I pretty much stopped building all together in 2020 and picked it back up in 2022 and the lack of standard releases has been disheartening.
My friends usually tell me not to blow off my disposable income on gunpla. Nowadays when they say that, I can't even think of any kits I'm excited to buy or build.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Over the last couple of years, Bandai has been putting all of their effort into making Gundam a "globally-recognized IP" instead of making products. I guess they think if they build enough statues and have enough Miku concerts in the Metaverse then people will talk about them like they do Star Wars, Marvel, or One Piece... or hell, even Transformers. But it's come at the cost of the actual driver of engagement with their IP: product. I don't know a single Gundam fan who doesn't either build Gunpla or collect figures. Some people get excited for a new Gundam series *specifically because* they are interested in what new kits will come out of it. At a time when modelling and miniatures are gaining in popularity around the world, Gundam is moving away from their own potential cash cow. As you pointed out, the two pillars of Gunpla product, MG and HG, have had their once-abundant production slowed to a crawl. Even if you add together all of the store exclusives and web exclusives, there simply isn't the output we used to see. And it's not like there isn't new product that could be developed. HGUC has tons of old kits that could be reworked, new and crazy AoZ designs, and a few suits from the OVAs (Xamel my beloved) that haven't been put to plastic yet. Let's not forget the several relevant designs from WfM that just weren't given kits at all. And the list for Master Grade possibilities is even bigger. If all of Bandai's investments in the IP were successful, then I would accept those facts as a sad reality, that Gunpla just doesn't make as much money as all of the fluff anymore, but as you pointed out, a lot of these projects feel like pure vanity and haven't been very successful at all! I haven't bought a kit after I finished my WfM collection last year. And genuinely, Bandai hasn't put out anything since then that I would actually want. If nothing else, I guess I will save money.
And if they really wanted to make Gundam globally recognized, they could try building those statues literally anywhere but Asia. Anime fans in Shanghai or Tokyo are already familiar with Gundam
It's worth noting, a lot of this doesn't apply if you are a new builder (assuming you started recently or have only built a handful of kits) there is more than enough gunpla out there already for this to be your hobby for at least a decade! videos like this are important mainly for the rest of us (and future you) but don't let it discourage you for now :D
I've been in the hobby for a little over a year. I'm a bit concerned about the price increases and such, and the whole PBandai thing drives me a bit nuts. But so far, it's been a good time overall. There's almost too many choices on the occasion that I order a few kits!
My grievances with Bandai for the past few years: -MG IBO should have been a thing a long time ago. They are literally sitting on a gold mine, yet they refuse to do so. -It's frustrating for me that HGAC and G-Unit kits are few and far in between, and most future kits are probably going to be regulated to P-Bandai because Bandai would rather sell SEED slop. -Most releases of new kits are P-Bandai, and it sucks because of artificial scarcity practices on Bandai's part.
I’m probably in the minority whose upset that we’re getting an MG Gundam Vidar, while Bandai hasn’t even released an MG Gusion, Gusion Rebake, or a Kamaris, yet.
Remember when we used to get like a brand new MG every 1-2 months, then the “big release” during the holidays? Good times… PG gramps Unleashed released 4 years ago… and as of now no new PG Unleashed version of like a Zaku or even a Strike… like they can revise some of the older PG designs…
I've slowed down on Gunpla the past few years due to several factors. Dissatisfaction with the builds (weak plastic and C-clips), retail stores barely carrying new stuff, and also growing as a builder who'd wanna do more with one kit like painting. Most kits I've built are from Kotobukiya now who give a lot more bang for your buck from what you pay for with much better plastic. I do think when it comes to their gunpla output it must be due to how much more complex they make the models now tham before. The SEED Freedom Z'Gok was never planned to have a model kit, but due to popular reception Bandai immediately got to work in giving it a kit. And it took roughly 8 months to get a working prototype. So the lead time for a model kit to to get conceptualized and then turned into a prototype must have extended. MGs have gotten scarce for that reason too most likely
You 100% hit my feelings on current gunpla with the insane amount of exclusive that they've been releasing. I always kept away from the hobbies that overly relied on that gimmick and seeing Gundam falling to that that has been really disheartening. The Gundam base tour was completely atrocious with early scalpers buying huge chunks of inventory with no sales limits (not to mention the insane wait times) and it seems that premium bandai is the only way they're releasing interesting and new kits anymore.
When they started to release prominent kits as PB like the HG Jegan Type-D, that it should be a normal release. That was the first sign for me. Later PB started to become more common, and for me, the moment that I started to really hate Bandai. The release the Woundwort HG. A completly new mold web exlclusive, and for me was the beginnig of the end. Later all the AOZ line including the old Hazels with nothing new, The G unit Kits with fully colored boxart, The MK-V with also full colored boxart, 2022 with only 1 HG release and more the 20 Pbandai releases. And going back to the Jegan, MG Type-D and The StarK Jegan as Pbandai. And being from south america, its sucks being in the hobby like this, we even don't have acces to pbandai, shipping is more expensive for importing and now, local store are selling HG at MG prices because of lack of availability of products and stock. Things are not looking great. And funny enough. Bootlegs are becoming more common and more desirable. HG Woundwort for 10 bucks, yes plis
Adding on to the miku thing, i have been dreaming of seeing an offical miku gundam collab, but when i saw it was some metaverse concert instead that completely killed my vibe. I was hoping for some cute crossover kits not.. a digital concert.
The manufactured scarcity is what really irks me. Whether it be from lack of re-printing, or releasing web exclusives of interesting kits. I just don't want to pay double the retail price for something because of either of these reasons.
I think when the new factory is built we'll see a resurgence of new Gunpla and molds, but right now we are probably in a drought era. I wouldn't be surprised if they have already developed new kits/molds but are just trickling down releases for now so that we at least get something the next 2-3 years. MG and RG fans are certainly getting the short end of the stick because of this, with there only really being 1-2 new releases for each line. I'm kinda at terms with this since I basically have a backlog tower right now, and probably won't finish when they start ramping up gunpla production lol
The price increase makes sense honestly. The Bandai kits are cheaper than other models while still maintaining or in some cases, improving quality. I had to understand the cost of production going up when I started seeing Star Wars action figures, Transformers and Legos start to go up in price like 15 years ago or so. When costs go up, the price does too to maintain quality or quality drops to maintain the price. Lego out of those 3 decided to keep the quality, but raise the price. The quality in action figures and Transformers tanked very hard to maintain that same price. For Bandai to try to keep the same price as long as they have is crazy. I imagine the price might go back down or stabilize once the new factory goes into full production allowing more kits to be made and sold. 15:09 This is just a thing Japan does for a lot of things to try to stop scalping items. Is it dumb? Sure, but this is in no way a thing untie to Gunpla, it's just what Japan does to try to combat the problem. I'm also kinda surprised you're having a problem with not being able to buy kits at 20-30% off. IDK, it's very normal in the US to just pay retail unless there is a holiday sale, the store just has sales on rotation (HobbyLobby) or a liquidation sale when the store wants to get rid of its stock or is going out of business and wants to get rid of as much stock as possible.
one thing i think could help bandai is if they ACTUALLY REPRINTED STUFF. ive only been a part of the hobby for 4 years but i feel like ive seen maybe like 30% of what they have to offer in that time, online or offline, straight from them or at retailers. its just silly.
They’re reprinting hundreds of items per month. They do reprint stuff. But their factory is only so big. The expansion will help some but only just some.
It sucks but the past year has been great for reprints. so much stuff that hasn't been seen for years is coming back. we're even getting the ZZ Doven Wolf early next year
Totally agree Ive only been in the hobby for like a few months, so seeing how many kits Ive missed - ESPECIALLY P-Bandai - would be great to see anywhere other than some scalping reseller's ebay account
I have waited years for reprints of stuff loke the hg dreisen, gundam airmaster, origin act zaku. Now you cant even get origin zaku half cannon or hi mobility zakus since theyve been out of print 3 years as well, but can get bootlegs of them though.
Some points you didn't touch was for example the Amaim kit line that was a massive failure, with stories of shops selling them at 500 yen, that's just molds and engineering that is just wasted because they still have so much stock
That's true! I've heard those stories. They make the reprints (if they are reprints 🤭) of those kits even more baffling. I somewhat alluded to this with "insecurity about creating new stories," but I didn't want to speak on something I didn't do too much research about.
The Amaim kits are cool but the anime was so garbage that most people have headaches when see a kit of that anime, Bandai CEOs are old mens, that thinks that anime is just for kids, so you can make any trashy anime to sell millions of toys like in the 70s
It's super sad cause from a hobby perspective it's my favourite line. They size up nicely between HG and MG with their odd scale and the mechanical designs are just a mecha dream. But yeah. The anime didn't live up to to kits 😂😂
About 4 months ago Ive pretty much gone to the 3rd party market and haven't looked back since. Currently working on the en era aurora, nearly perfectly gold plated metal inner frame, panel lines so deep the blind could see them. I swear the gold painted runners in this kit makes the freedom's look so cheaply plated,. I have the lizard from en era in the queue next
@jonathana607 snap build, no need for clear coating nor paint, everything is undergated on the runners and it comes with a stand. There's a few videos on here showcasing it, I promise none of them are using any color filters, it's one of the best kits I've built so far,
Re: pricing - the yen is really struggling which means that material costs are way higher than they would have been previously. Their input costs have gone up so it doesn't feel unreasonable that they're having to adjust output costs to be able to provide the same products. Most of the kits that are seeing price increases are older releases that were designed and priced back when the yen was in a much stronger position. Look at the prices of the newest MG sinanju stein ver ka (narrative version), 8,800 yen for what is ostensibly the same kit from 2013 that was 7,350 yen. That's roughly a 20% increase, the yen is down about 20% vs. the US dollar over the last 10 years, plastics are predominant a product of oil and oil is priced in USD. Bandai have always been more creative than just straight price increases where possible. You see it with stuff like the F91 being substantially smaller to maintain price point despite Japan going through a recession at the time I was designed and first produced. They've just not been able to fudge around it like that for reprints of pre-existing kits that don't warrant a revive or re-release with some new bits. Re: gunpla releases, I'm not sure what to say there. It's not like bandai aren't releasing anything, they're clearly just focusing more on the 30 minutes line at the moment (especially the armoured core kits). Outside of a couple of requiem for vengeance suits (gimme that gouf custom damn it) there's no real hype wave for them to tap into that would appeal to a wider market. Especially compared to the last couple of years that have been riding hard on the wave of WfM and Seed Freedom. I'm not going to fully defend bandai, I'm still mad as fuck that I had to give a grey channel importer 4x the actual price to get my lfrith pre-production model because bandai won't officially sell that shit to the UK.
I truly understand your feeling too and as a long time Gundam fan (since 2013) I have to say this 45th anniversary truly broke my back with all the stuffs like Bandai still insulting customer as scalpers, seiyuu scandal, inflated price and selling bad product at ridiculous price (RG Akatsuki) makes me fell out of love from something that was a part of my life for long time. I am no longer a Gundam fan, I'm greatly regret that I was once a fan of this series, I'm very regret that I once supported their products and I hope Bandai will get what they deserve...
So what your saying is... that for the next few months I will NOT be forced to spend hundreds of dollars in order to make sure I get my hands on new products I want before they go out of stock, giving me time to work away at the hundred-or-so kits I have stored in my backlog closet? 🤔
You have no idea. Being a fan of several series, not just gundam, is like a curse to my wallet. So I kinda envy people who are very selective with their purchases. And with salaries in Japan not being increased for the past 30 years now and all the weak yen situation recently I feel like I can afford less and less things to buy. So I'm kinda happy I can actually get some breather for now at least.
My optimistic theory is that they are working on a somewhat new design philosophy and making sure that new HG kits are similar to the WFM kits, RG kits are more like the 2.0 RX-78, etc. Those types of kits are considerably better than the kits from 10 years ago, and they are working on figuring out how to adapt all of their kits similar to that.
just as a devil's advocate, please allow me a few counterpoints: 1. bandai is by far the cheapest manufacturer of model kits (bootlegs aside) - vs kotobukiya or aircraft/armor kits - even a low end company like Trumpeter tends to be pricier 2. based on #1, it's a plausible theory that bandai has been losing money or breaking even on some products like the reprinted HG kits that are still on original SRP for decades. why do this? well, it's to keep your brand relevant and the demand high - think of it as advertising, except it's subsidized by the customer in this case 3. from #1 and #2, in order for bandai to be profitable, they need to leverage their high-end/premium lines - which is exactly what they've been doing - more and more lately. for those statues, I'm inclined to think that their sales/marketing studies find them to be efficient advertising strategies. seems expensive upfront - but think about the cost of a 30 second superbowl commercial every year for 5 years (~35m usd) - that makes these giant statues cost look like pocket change. for the new factory, growth = survival in business - that is simply a fundamental and immutable rule. we'd never have the kits we loved if bandai was some timid company that just focused on what the consumers want and still sell products at low SRPs. overall, while it's unfortunate that we have this price hike, and we're getting questionable products here and there - I have to give the benefit of doubt for a company that offered high end products with unparalleled fixed low pricing for decades - if anything, I'm actually quite surprised they managed it for so long.
Not only that, but their economy has recently taken a massive downspike that doesn't really allow them to be more experimental these days, I'd have to guess.
About point 2, the pricing isn't fixed. The price hike has always been baked into the increasing prices of _new_ products over time. Bandai has always been able to sell older products at a fixed price because they're dirt cheap to actually make and their R&D costs would've already been recuperated. And the massive volumes of model kits they sell allow them to price low. If Trumpeter, Dragon, Tamiya, Aoshima, Airfix, Italeri, Revel, etc. could sell products at the volumes Bandai does, their kits would be even cheaper. This is what I mean by not getting into the math of it. The problem is that the price increases in the past have generally accompanied a comparable rise in quality (parts count, weight, density, etc.), and this is not the case anymore. In fact, during the years when Bandai was more publicly focused on improving their manufacturing efficiency, after adjusting for Japan's meager inflation at the time, gunpla prices even _deflated_ for a while. Bandai managed to do this for so long because this _was_ their strategy the whole time. Evidently, their priorities have changed.
Point No. 2 hits the nail on the head. Majority of the kits getting the 40% price increase that all the people seem to be cherry picking are OLD kits that cost a little less than 10 USD. Of course they're bleeding money trying to sell those kits using prices from 20 years ago. Japanese Yen is at a historical low, Bandai is still trying to increase their production with new factories popping up all over the place, and HGs are improving at an INCREDIBLE rate, just look at how the build on WFM kits (already cheap and great) were improved upon wven further by the Seed Freedom and RFV kits.
@@citrusjuicebox , well, the fixed price is just simple fact. trying to invalidate it thru the price of newer kits is simply a fallacy of argument. as for bandai baking in profits into latter kits, someone from a newer comment has explained it pretty well, in short we can't just attribute the new products' increased prices on profiteering and neglect the other increasing costs (imports, labor) associated with production over the decades (not just years) as far as other companies being able to just sell cheaper if they had similar sales - it's a pretty baseless and somewhat naive assertion, without citing any precedent - looking at large companies we've had that dominated their market, our candidates might be: apple, samsung, intel - not an encouraging bunch. if anything, historically, what we observe is that as companies grow bigger, their products tend to get worse (butterfly switch?) and yet their prices still increase - certainly not what we've observed from bandai. just to add, tamiya is very successful and top-tier for non-gunpla, but we're not exactly seeing a disproportionate low price-tier from them despite enjoying the same economic stability bandai had. but let me just leave this food for thought: isn't bandai selling large volumes precisely because they've adhered to a principle of low-profit pricing? and they are just now increasing price simply to sustain or maybe improve profitability? I would think an occam's razor would most likely lead in this direction. finally, tbf, you did disclose at the start where you're from emotionally and none should be taken as fact. which ofc, doesn't stop dogpilers from parroting. now c'mon, I need to see that level-headed citrus who provided a sound take on the HGUC Tristan.
They do seem to really be focusing on squeezing as much out of every machine and every mould they have right now. But I'm honestly not too depressed about it, as you said there are already hundreds and hundreds of kits I could want. And on top of that there's so many other companies that also produce really cool high quality model kits. Like even if you're not a painter type you can get some cool stuff from Kotobukiya, Max Factory, and Good Smile Company, and overall the quality across the industry is rising right now. Chinese model kits are also improving in quality, and it's getting easier and easier to find solid non-bootleg original model kits from there as well. I do agree that bandai is sort of hitting a nadir right about now, but as a fan of cool robots and great model kits? it's a wonderful time.
Maybe bandai can start releasing some of their pbandai shit as regular releases and let us regular people get some kits that we've been wanting. They already have all the molds so why not? It also serves the added bonus of screwing over scalpers too.
Funny thing is before PBUS launched, several PB kits in Japan came here as normal releases, like MG Astray Turn Red. That's how I got my MG Exia Avalanche and MG 00Q Full Saber-picked them up from Hobbytown. I really wished that distribution model would last, but Bandai had other plans.
@@citrusjuiceboxthey do still do that to this day but less often for Gunpla. ie, recent RG Evangelion Weapon Set was JP PB but retail US. Then the Gunpla that were released that way do still get US Retail runs when they’re up on JP PB, or even independent of that.
Oh yeah, I just saw Gundam Pros get the RG Eva transporter platform thing. That was PB, right? Maybe there's some hope. After all, if PB has the inventory that's not selling, might as well move it some other way...
This is the same with us who collect Transformers. We getting less accesories and similar mould from a few years back just scaled down. Yes scaled down to appeal to the market that once smaller TF but at the same time a price increase... but what to do we cant do much cause the market is huge and it will sell no matter what.
15:21 I wish it was better, I went to japan this year in June and one of the things I was most looking forward to was the gundam base in Odaiba since I didn't get a chance to go to it on my last trip. We get up to the entrance only to be met with staff holding up a sign saying that there was no more tickets being sold that day (it was 2pm) and that we could not enter without a raffle ticket. Within diver city mall, of course there were other shops with gunpla, but the price was either above retail, or the kit selection was so minimal that you'd only want to buy something because it was more expensive back home or because you felt like you had to. I left diver city mall that day with nothing purchased. Even the satellite gundam base had a very small selection of gunpla. The weirdest part about it all was the crazy lack of variety at most of the retail stores I went to. Having gone to Japan twice now in 2 years, I was slightly disappointed that it was so hard to find even newer MG or RG kits. Shopping at reseller stores like manadrake and akihabara Specialty Shop definitely helped, but you end up paying slightly more because the kits are "rare." All this is to say that its not as easy to buy gunpla in Japan anymore, at least for folks who dont always want whatever random HGUC kit Bandai decided to reprint that year.
All too true. There was a time when Mandarake was a genuine bargain bin too, because they had to price lower than the department stores to move their inventory. Now, they turn any kit that's not being reprinted into a profit opportunity.
I too was there in early June and was hoping to get some rarish kits and Gundam 00 HGs if possible too. I was in Ikebukuro for hotel, went to Akihabara, and to Diver City Gundam base. Gundam Base was a little bit disappointing as they did not have any rare kits of sorts nor any of the exclusives I wanted.... Ikebukuro had a Mandrake store, which was ok for what I could get. Found GN Arms Type D, but I had no more room for it sadly. Akihabara was were I got some good stuff from Suruga-Ya, Mandrake, and thrle Gundam Specialist Store too, which I was able to get a nice variety of stuff I wanted in the end.
That's why I like doing custom builds. It helps keep things fresh, imo. I try to have a few different projects going on at the same time. Mainly because I can work on something different each time I sit down to do some building
It's one thing for us customers to be ranting about recent development in Gunpla but can you imagine how difficult it is for hobby shops? Since the pandemic, some of my favorite hobby shops has to either sell bootlegs or turn into a funkopop wasteland just to stay in business...
It's been dreadful. I cut out the part about physical retail where I talked about this exactly, because I wasn't confident enough in my take, but seeing several US shops close just this year was crushing.
@@citrusjuicebox should have kept it! The voices of the struggling business owners need to be heard! It's been really rough to remain in the hobby for me too. In my location before 2020 (Taiwan) you're guaranteed to find any regular release if you travel enough hobby shops, but those days were gone and for a while I was just buying what was available even if it was something was only marginally interested with, just to remain in the community. But eventually I got tired of doing that and it led me to nearly stopping any gunpla activity altogether. I have not bought nor built a single kit this entire year.
I feel like we've been there for a while with the peen bandai scalper insanity over the last few years. Placing the majority of the best kits on peen bandai is telling me that they don't want my money. Hell, look at MG.
Some perspective: I'm just getting back into Gunpla after a 20+ year hiatus. Back then, the only kits I could find locally were 1/100 HG Wing and some oddball assorted SD. Anything else required buying from less-than-reputable dealers on eBay. Now I can walk into a local shop and choose from literally hundreds of kits that are often leaps-and-bounds above anything that was available to me before, at prices that are generally way lower when adjusted for inflation. It may seem like a dark days for some, but compared to the early 2000s, things seem downright sunny and bright to me.
It's not even the number of releases. It's the lack of FOCUS. Bandai seems to be a in a directionless mess. MG is in limbo. MGEX has nothing. Introduced MGSD and we don't know what the heck is in there. RG is in 2.0 mode right now, so older molds are frankly irrelevant now. And somehow, Bandai is entangled with all the other animes and franchises they seem to offer more toys for than Gunpla.
As an alternative, you can check out kits from other companies such as Moshow, In Era, and Mecha Core, to name a few. These companies have high quality kits and are cheaper right now in the market compared to Bandai.
Bandai's recent announcements stirred up some thoughts that I wanted to share. I hope my sentiments don't upset anyone. If the discourse here becomes too chaotic, I'll disable the comments.
No need to disable comment, as a avide plamo kit builder especially the gunpla for over a decade now,i already seen the downfall of bandai with ever expensive kit that not that technology advance as they're a decade ago,also when the recent tamashii nation announcement has fk ton of release which i rather they're just plastic kit but no they're not gonna do that so that's basically calling us to shift toward other brand than bandai because they don't have much to offer now in term their release and feature where they're praise highly before,that excitement has really drop alot before a decade ago
i'll never understand pouring several hundred grands on RnD for new molds and then making them exclusively pbandai. im almost exclusively buying 3p and bootlegs now cuz recent releases have been stale and not what i wanted be made as kits
like ive heard many ppl talk about how the MG Age series affected them, going off of that it almost feels like they cant decide if they want to learn from that or not. idk maybe im biased because im from america and ive seen nothing sell out for almost a year.
The MG Age kits flopping absolutely sent the message to Bandai that quality didn't matter and it wasn't enough to sell a kit; and that they should reserve more expensive developments for safer products.
00 kits have hit the Shitter for HG Pbandais. They literally put 0 effort into Zabanya and Harute Final Battle kits, and that was 2022 or 2023 released, nothing else since then. Season 1 kits have issues for the gundams, but we can easily get new stuff for minor varients for Season 2 MS units! Plutone HG literally only had ONE RUN of kits the last I checked, which is sad.
@knightx605 I didn't even known those happened or existed but modern tech to do an exia 2.0 or something would be so nice. 00 getting dubbed on scifi channel is what got me back into gundam and got me into gunpla in the first place and the tech has just warped so far past the kits from 09
I think one of my big issues I have with Bandai is the whole premium bandai site new original molds are being released on there when I thought the whole premise is to release color variants of molds that were already out or some really obscure designs. While I appreciate having a US site to finally have access to some of the variants, new stuff that should be regularly released or not on their 7th wave of reprint in a short time frame. Also the serious dwindling of the MG line and even the PG line is extremely bad considering what we used to get. I don't like how we get 2 if we're lucky ver ka kits a year and even the sinanju stein narrative was just a lazy reprint of a kit only a few years old with stuff that version should have came with. It's sad in my opinion
The only way I can an actual comeback for a bunch of new kits is if they make anime’s of gundam manga like a cross bone or moon and makes kits from those series or just make new original anime with new mobile suits. the whole problem is that they’re trying remake the wheel on advertising model kits and spending a bunch of money on giant statues to make 2-3 kits when with that they could’ve just made a anime for 20-30 kits.
Another thing is that they could make kits of mobile suits that beaver had one like a mk 4 gundam or they could more original kits for retail than p Bandai like the new g gundam kits and I don’t know why they stop to remake old kits like all of the mg gpo gundams,the zaku 1 or the ground gundam but it’s better to reuse the same old kits and slap new parts on it like that p bandai build kampfer and don’t forget the dead re 100 line or some scrapped gundam kits like the mg age 3 they’ve done it before. it’s free money
@@citrusjuicebox the main problem I think is that most of the decisions Bandai has been doing is just to please investors which is probably why they started the metaverse thing
Its just that they have more then just gunpla now, so many other lines of model kits, and it makes sense. No big boom of gunpla hobbyist have come in a while and making models for old materials is less profitable than new shows, games or things that are timeless
I usually hunt second hand or buy smaller and older kits at hobby shops. Currently looking for the HG origin full armor gundam and heavy gundam. right now its probably best to fight the backlog or try customizing gunpla, because that will keep me more occupied at the moment.
Ah the HG FA-78-1 Full Armor Gundam is a very good kit sure its p bandai but you get a lot of parts and the armor pieces go on smoothly compared to the old MG version where you had to use those small pieces of tape to attach it to the main body
Clearly something changed in Gunpla releases. The main proof of that is the MG Line. Usually, there would be multiple models of the same movie, coming out in the same breath almost. As it should have been after the MG Barbatos, we should have had the Vidar few months after at best. Not a couple years after. We should have had multiple MGs from Witch From Mercury. So I don't know where it's going, but I made peace with this situation. The next HG are very good (Mk 2 and Bolinoak), the HG Seed Freedom are excellent. And I'll add that I think it's not relevant to be se much riled up by the weak annoucements from 4 days ago. I think it was just there, but we decided to make this out as huge thing when we (the customers) had no ground to do so. Second, some great kits came out, from other series by Bandai (the HG Dunbine, Votoms, the Batsh from L-Gaim, the RG EVAs, the RG Go Gai Gar). There's the last two MGEX that were groundbreaking, the MG Zeta Ver Ka and Narrative, the RG Gao Gai Gar etc... Sure, one might not like that, but there isn't "nothing". As you said, the back catalogue is still great, there are a good number of kits that I haven't built. And also, the scarcity of MGs can be an occasion to look for other manufacturers. Like there's the recent (few days ago) Daccas from the Five Star Stories GTM series, that came out in a plastic model kit, and it seems it's a good kit (I have it, but I didn't build it). So, I get the frustration, but what we got is what we got. And it may not be as opulent as we'd like, but what we have is pretty excellent.
Last year I bought a HG Zowort Heavy for around 15 bucks, and when I came back to look for new kits this year, I saw that one exact kit I bought last year had its price bumped up to over 20 bucks. Being a person who would only look and buy new kits every once or twice in a year, I'm worried if I could even continue this hobby in the future considering the gradual price increases :(
I had a some sticker shock when I wanted to buy an HG 1.5 Gundam this year. Everywhere was asking over 24 USD, when I paid maybe 20 USD for one back in 2011 while the exchange rate was so much worse (76:1 at the time).
The last "set" they put out, besides the seed movie, was from the G series and they were all P-Bandai. 😶 Too expensive, no stock. The seed movie kits were all above $30 in the US. So, I feel ya on the prices believe me. Now it's going to be an all around price hike with nothing to show for it.
bandai has a plethora of unused designs, 2.0 possibilities, etc. they just sit on or make p-bandai and it’s so sad to see, at least the figures and gaming side of bandai uses them but regardless it sucks
What amazes is we just had the most successful and popular Gundam show and movie back to back, G Witch and Seed Freedom respectively, and Bandai just.. put out a few HGs and called it a day. Both lines are still experiencing massive shortages, people are being absolutely ravenous for both.. not a single MG, and only a single FM kit from the both of em, barely any SDs even. It's almost sad cuz G Witch was supposed to be a massive push for international markets for the franchise, and it succeeded, and they did absolutely nothing with it, and Seed Freedom could've at least kept up that momentum but they showed it twice in 2 theaters and called it a day, don't even get me started on how they treated Gundam Evolution, let alone the Metaverse lmao. It's as i always say, this franchise keeps succeeding despite Bandai's best efforts, they just don't wanna make money off of this propert.
@@BlueAmerican26 Oh no belief necessary, objective data straight from Bandai showed that G Witch was not only massively popular, but single-handedly doubled the franchise's lifetime profits in only its first six months of existence. Gundam X is my favorite Gundam show and that was a massive flop, I am not out here lying about Gundam shows because I like them, yet I suspect you've absolutely nothing to back up your claims.
1. They can literally ask the fandom for the new ideas for kits like my friend and I have been begging for an RG or a revive HG RGM-79 GM and we have yet to get that even though we have new RX-78-2 Gundam kits with repaint potential also they could accept more ideas they just choose not to for whatever godforsaken reason. and 2. They're just throwing money in the air at this rate with all the promotions and collabs with Fortnite, Call of Duty and so on. Then the statues like about keeping the statues clean...the Unicorn in Shizuoka is gathering rust and looks yellow on certain areas like it hasn't been cleaned at all. Like Transformers for example is having a magnificent 40th anniversary, new figures, a movie that just recently came out, game collabs, products out the wazoo and yet Bandai can't do anything for Gundam which is just disappointing especially with the 45th anniversary around the corner all I can hope is Studio Trigger also do something for Gundam because I love these franchises and I don't want them to die like this.
A lot of the recourses for Gunpla in general have been diverted for stuff like 30mm and frs. The more those sell, you can count on gunpla actually dying. Video was pretty bang on and I’ve had these thoughts for a while. And I wish more fans opened up their eyes to these things that are happening behind the scenes so that they won’t be so clueless as to how the only MG we’re getting atm is a well overdue retool.
I'm sure there will be an end of year announcement during their online event. Sometimes things have to slow down, clear some path, and then you can go full speed again. Remember not everything go straight up forever.
As someone who is relatively new to the hobby some of the decisions baffle me. I mainly collect RG because of the limited space I have and I would love to build a Freedom. But why the hell does a straight up better version of the RG exists but only as a Gundam Base exclusive? Why do they have a better version already out but they keep producing the famously shitty and fragile version from before as the product available to people?
One of my biggest issues with being a Gunpla fan since the late 90s is now we have P-Bandai kits and how hard those are get here in Canada. Now I hear Bandai is going down the Games Workshop path of jacking up prices dear god my hobby is dying or dead at this point.
While i don't agree with everything in this video i do think you're right in a lot of places,i remember literally 5 years ago i was able to just go to my local an pick up any kit i want without worrying, nowadays i have to buy stuff as soon as they drop because bandai produces so little of it
I kinda stop caring about new releases. Especially their "Suprised" announcements. Because, everyone knew that the Announcement that everyone is hype for is either a Suit we got for like, the 50th Time, Another Unicorn, Freedom or the RX or a Suit that nobody cared. Don't forget the Pricing too. It just feels they overcharge alot of the Kits especially the Remastered Seed kits from 2002. Why would I spend 15$ on a Kit that has little no Articulation and Color Accurate. When the same price, I can get a Build Diver 00 that has better Articulation and color separation? Not to mention alot of the Great ones are still out of print and shouldn't cost more than 30$. Idk if this was the Sellers part or Bandai's Part. Despite the Weird Price range they put and been a Fan since 2015. I just Buy HGs when I'm bored and wanna excuse to build and hearing OST that I'm itching to listen. Gunpla is like what happen to transformers. They overcharge Items that shouldn't be over 20s and they barely give the characters we want.
I will say this as someone who's not really that big on buying a whole bunch of new model kits at least this gives me a good amount of time to buy some that either I've been missing or some that I have been thinking about for the past couple of years. So that is not a problem for me and most of my friends....... That said what has been a problem is the random increase of PB exclusive stuff that really honest-to-God should have just been standard releases. You mean to tell me that 3 of the 5 shuffle alliance members have to be PB but Domon, Master Asia, a horse and Allenby are the ONLY ones to get standard releases? When witch from Mercury came out we did get a good chunk of the models but by the time it came for I don't know a certain weapon set for three and half moble suits, THOSE as well as certain mass Production types of mobile suits are PB despite those mass Production types being shown in the show and the prologue and aside from the ace weapon set, we STILL don't have the supposed weapons for the Zowart but the Demi trainers have a weapon set that is standard. And that's on top of them just not coming out with revive versions of specific mobile suits that have been needing it for years and still don't have it so I know that the plastic production has been very slow but damn Bandai needs to up their game.
Firstly, A tier bunbuns. I agree that Bandai has been spending their money poorly. I get that they want to eat up market share by expanding the types of kits apart from Gundam. They're focusing on the younger audience but their execution has been sloppy at best. P Bandai seems more prevalent because yes, it's a money grab, but it's really just tossing us a bone to gnaw at so we don't complain. I think the loudest among us complain but the massive majority stays silent and eats it up (hey that's me!) but honestly, I don't care about the sparse releases too much, like you mentioned, their current offerings are more than enough to satisfy the hobby. Anyone saying gunpla is dead may be overstating things when a trickle instead of a stream is fine. I think what makes it difficult for some, and me included, is that these new kits have such unimaginable engineering that each new kit to release is a fantastic experience and I need MOAR! I don't think you need onslaughts of new releases to be relevant, I just hope they keep the wow factor up as those few new entries come.
I'm only interested in the Advance of Zeta kits these days. And since they only come out like every 6 months that means I'm saving up quite a bit of money that I used to burn on Gunpla. We're definitely in the dark ages but that just means I'm saving up money. Can't complain too much. But also fuck SEED and it's discount UC looking designs.
Bro. Everything is up. Literally, every single hobby is pricing people out. Warhammer, tcg's, fishing, cycling, like all of it. Dont take bandai trying to remain profitable as an insult.
@@BlueAmerican26 The percentages these are increasing by are larger than inflation. Nobody is denying the cost of living crisis exists. Hope you voted blue.
@@bushybeardedbearshould also consider that the yen has been incredibly devalued for a while now, paired with increases in raw material cost due to the conflicts in East Europe and West Asia. The potential tariffs that are coming into play in the US in January are going to have effects all over the global economy In parts of the West, like the US/Canada, we're isolated from this, since the US is the largest oil producer (and consumer) in the world
I'm new into the hobby like a year or so. So i don't know what it was like before. There are plenty of things for me to build, but i do feel agrivated about slow reprints. On a more positive note tho. Bandai is a giant in plamo, they have a massive marketshare, and them slowing down new production leaves oppertunity for the new companies to start building some exciting plamo. We can already see some thirdparty entering the ring.
At it's best, I can see maybe a golden age of creative hg custom creations with the price increase. But I'm also upset that the incoming American tariffs stacked on Bandai's price increase.
It was so good when Bandai restock every kit from every grade, scale and year maintaining the price; and you could find kits in every japanese store. At least U.S. is a target market for Bandai. A lot of areas have been totally neglected.
The problem is Japan has no idea what fans want. It’s just like with Nintendo. Bad Japanese business practices. I’ve been in this hobby for over 18 years and I still have kits I want to build. Bandai needs to wake up and realize how many old kits need to be updated. I’m tried of seeing just more HG’s that no one really wants besides new hobbyists. This is still the best past time to have and I will continue this hobby even when I’m old and grey
Hikaru no kyojin a japanese ultraman toys reviewer said bandai apparently bandai stoping china manufacturing factory and move to vietnam because the cost of producing goods in china have been up and make the price to high, that's also why the recent new toys from bandai have many quality control problem
@citrusjuicebox yeah and according to hikaru no kyojin all the small shokugan candy toys already moved to vietnam, i don't know about dx tho because bandai china have theirs own products different from their japanese counterpart
I've been looking for either an MS-06F or J type mass production MG Zaku 2.0 for less than 50 dollars since 2020 and I still haven't found anyone selling them for less than like... $90 on the aftermarket. It's ridiculous. I don't even wanna talk about how long it's been since I've seen Mass Production Gelgoog 2.0 out there. :/
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I definitely agree with some of your observations and criticisms. The whole price raising thing honestly doesent suprise or bother me too much since with inflation being so high it was bound to happen at some point and prices stayed the same for a long time now. What bothers me more personally is the general price hike of gunpla. mgs are releasing slower and keep getting more expensive (with even full mechanics kits now costing more than similarly sized mgs used to) and even hgs are starting to creep up to being 30$ as a base line. Combine all of that with bandais awful distribution outside of japan and everything is getting prohibitively expensive..... One thing that unexpectedly helped rekindle my interest in the hobby recently has been trying out other model kit lines from china since those keep getting better quality wise at prices that are more reasonable than bandais current output. Since you're already having to limit which kits you want to get based on what you want to display with limited shelf space those kits might not be very interesting in your case. Its definitely an odd time for gunpla. I think the quality of releases is better than ever imo but between premium bandai kits and distribution issues and scalping getting kits just feels like a headache now. Im interested in how things will develop but if bandai keeps gouging prices and make even more kits premium I reckon 3d party companies will just become more and more prevalent.
I'll start by stating that I basically stopped purchasing from WOTC to switch my hobby to Gunpla. With that being said, I'm not happy to hear that this is a concern with Bandai. I'm too fresh into the Gunpla world to feel these affects personally, but id like avoid being in another Consumer vs. Corporation, if you catch my drift.
@optiondezzo1513 yeah. I only buy it if i wanna customize the kit. Usually I just buy Hgs for straight build. MGs have such a high price in the West its annoying to get one at a reasonable. I doubt this is gonna make it better
@@citrusjuicebox oh no, i was not referring to the price increase in the past. I forgot that the price will be raised from 2% to 42.9% next year. No need to go after my throat like that
On the gunpla side, yes 100% it sucks not having lots of releases like back in the day. But as someone who loves anything mecha and has also watched a lot of other series, we've been eating good. The Moderoid line from GSC is the gift that keeps on giving. So many IP's that I never would have expected to be made into model kit form actually happened thanks to them. I also appreciate Bandai continuing to put out kits from SRW OG like the most recent Gunleon kit. I'll give em that. I guess now is a better time than ever for people to venture out and to try different plamo kits from different series since gunpla releases are very slow.
never picked up any WfM kits due to the excessive use of C-clips which often easily wears out. Also noticed the price increase for newer kits with the new Seed Freedom kits nearly hitting the cost of a Master Grade while the EG Strike is sold out, the Striker pack price is almost the cost of a full HGUC kit. Just glad to maintain a backlog and will probably just clear them slowly.
To me WfM C-clips seem to be stronger than EGs or 30MM kits. My Schwarzette and Demi Trainer that I've posed as much as one of my 30MM kits are way more solid. Only time will tell for years and years in the future though.
@@bushybeardedbear That's my point. People acting so outraged at C-Clips you'd think it's a failure on Bandai during the production process. C-clips were a design choice that works well enough.
I feel like Bandais biggest blunder is focusing too much on P-Bandai and universe Bias, we've been getting soooo many Gundam seed and UC kits cause they sell well. Even then Seed has been dominating the market so much, like how the MG F90 was P Bandai but the Eclipse was general release like what?. And all the recent announcements have all been Seed related, hell we got a new Seed movie announcement before Hathaways Flash 2
Instead of spending a boat-load of money on that stupid Metavverse project, why couldn’t Bandai/Sunrise make remastered versions of old Gundam video-games from the 1990s and 2000s, but with better graphics? (One game I often think of is “Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: the Blue Destiny.” 🔵)
P-Bandai's biggest issue is that it's pre-order +10USD per month bullshit. They just need to turn it into a normal hobby shop with in-stock items, free shipping thresholds, hobby supplies (which they have, somewhat), and PWs. Though I guess it would hurt the normal hobby shops even more if they made it no longer more expensive and worse to buy from. also, 2025 (especially mid-year) just seems like a lull year for the genre as a whole. High profile stuff is targeting 2026, the next Gundam anime is far more likely to release in 2026 than 2025, etc.
As far as model kits, my interest is narrow, and gunpla uniquely delivers the narratives, designs, quality, and value that I enjoy. I'm not particularly interested in plastic model kits or figures in general.
Tbf your concerns are valid and i agree its bad that bandai is kind of neglecting gundams right now. But imo as a business, the decisions u mentions shud have considered ROIs and such. I also think that the previous pandemic period could have affected what they are doing now. Im just hoping that these other ventures would mean that they can sustain and result to them being able to create more gundam related products.
UPDATE: Now that Gundam GQuuuuuuX has been announced, that explains where all the gunpla releases up to Q2 2025 went. It's currently speculated there will be about 12 releases at least, or something like that, so that's good. The PV for the new kits looks very promising. The collaboration of Sunrise with Khara to produce the show is... Interesting, to put it one way. It definifely makes me doubt Bandai's own confidence even more.
Everything else from the Gundam Conference Winter 2024 is just the same dissappointing nonsense already happening right now, aside from the World Expo Gundam Pavillion, which I don't really have an opinion of. I'm sure it'll be an entertaining venue.
GCucks is going to suck makjor balls. rest in piece military warefare gundam series, you were lost to the woke globalist agenda
TBH, I'm really starting to get disappointed in Bandai, since they're now prioritizing HG, and neglecting MG (basically in life support), and PG to dust recently. Well I guess it's for the best, at least for me personally anyway since my shelves are starting to get crowded with Gunplas.
@@francisquebachmann7375 jokes on you, they always put high grades at the front
@@kidrobot. So what? my point still stands. You kinda failed to give a proper comeback. Try again!
@@francisquebachmann7375 you had no point. you said bandai is starting to prioritize hg when they always did, just look at how many there are vs sd/mg/pg/rg. nice try though, stay mad 😅🤣😂
>spend 120 millions metavers for nothing
>Doesn't make Hathaway part 2
Also doesn’t make a HG Rick Diaz Revive, MG Rick Diaz Version 2.0, and a HGUC GM revive.
Don't forget the part where they rushed WFM ending, just like AGE.
Age's ending wasn't rushed @notani3533
Metaverse didn't do anything
Hathaway part 2 is in the works. Just don't expect it so soon. And don't think that it's Bandai who's making it.
My absolute crackpot theory is that the building of the new factory has slowed down the production of new kits while it's still tooling up and training new staff. So maybe in late 2025 or mid 2026 kit releases will be more normalized.
However I do know this is a lot of wishful thinking. Here's hoping things do get better and not just spiral more price gouging.
@@narutoman876 yeah the last few older kits i'm glad they gave a chance for me to get was the MG Rick Dias and just over a week ago the MG Gundam G04 but i'm wishing they would do is the Old MG GM Custom Quel Kai and other early 2000s kits
@ oh yeah the OYW RX-78-2 would be nice like those kits are regular release kits so you would think at some point they would reprint them sure it’s easier for them to make the HG versions which are nice but i would like a bigger version of the GM Kai and the frame of it is based off the first Gundam Ver Ka from 2002 which came out after the GM Kai so surely they could reprint it easily
Bandai is building a new factory? That's news to me..
just checked reddit and it looks like a post was made 3 years ago saying Bandai was building a new factory for the increased demand in gundam kits. Someone under that post said they're expecting the factory to being operations "in 2024" so it's likely been in operation for a bit now unless of course it's experienced delays.
@@Its_MTG There was another announcement a month or so ago that the factory's currently scheduled to open Q1 2025. It's not opening as originally scheduled, but it's on its way.
@@Its_MTGfrom what I know it was delayed to 2025
My main problem with bandai not releasing more kits is just their absolute incapability to give people something they want. A lot of people want WfM master grades or even just full mechanics models. A lot of people want updates for older kits eg. MG kampfer, MG gouf custom etc. I get that designing a master grade kit is time consuming but they had a lot of time to do so, but it seems like they don't even try. Even the frequency of reprinting the existing kits seems lazy.
The mg gouf 2.0 exists, so why doesn't bandai base the gouf custom off of that
To be fair, Bandai is a Japanese company, who are historically hyper resistant to any change, and they’re also incapable of listening to fans. The amount of times people have said “MG G Self” for the new Ver Ka is crazy, considering every Ver Ka since that has been something completely different (and also UC)
@@milktenders6219 lucky mg series seed,oo series don't have ver ka...... maybe soon omg
@@flamestoyershadowkill sure...soon on list premium bandai💆
they just had reprints of build fighters and ibo. and they just bought a big factory for more machines to make kits. also, they have plenty of mgs but hgs are the best sellers so they will stick with that for the most part
Not a non-Tomino Gundam person, but that Blue IBO guy is something that should've existed maybe 2 months after the original Barbatos released, if Bandai liked money we would be up to our necks in IBO MGs in 2024. Those 00 MGs were on track to have their final release be a MGEX of the main suit to round off that set but Bandai manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and seems to quietly shelf the MGEX Subline after two releases. Perfect Grades are seemingly not up to Bandai's standard for the absolute pinnacle of Gunpla so they introduce PGU so they can release even less models in that grade, RGs dabble into 2.0s just clog the potential release pipeline a little more. MGSDs.
Speaking of, we're only two weeks away from MGSD Wing Zero, yet the product page still shows only CGs and not an actual built model. Same with Bolinoak Sammahn. RG 2.0 was also disappointing to me in the same way as for you: We're 14 years past the original RG and I don't even know how many RG Zaku variants, but still no RG GM...
There's such a vast catalog of mobile suits-some with very unique designs and potentially broad appeal!-that never saw the light of day when Bandai was still more "generous." And I wonder if some of them may have missed their time to shine, or even if their day will ever come.
@@citrusjuicebox ZZ mooks like the Jamru Fin, Ga-Zowmn, Geymalk are probably not happening anytime soon. HGUC should be Bandai's bread and butter line that they can always fall back on, it feels unreal to see it has become a 1-2 release per year subline.
Funny story about the MG Gundam Vidar, there’s a Bandai US guy in the r/Gunpla server who said that the Vidar was in the works since soon after Barbatos released in 2020 but it was so severely delayed by the pandemic that it only now saw the light of day. I do wonder how many kits this has happened to, or that still remain in that void
My boy MG GN-XIV has been in the hole since 2010 along with HG GN Flag...
@@smoldream2908 nope, no, i'm not buying it. you can count the number of regular MG releases from 2020 to 2024 on two fucking hands. one, if you don't count the ver.ka kits. there's no fucking way the vidar is a 4-year delay. for fuck's sake, it's the same goddamn barbatos frame with blue armor on! that took four fucking years?
As an EU collector, the heavier focus on P-Bandai for releasing BRAND NEW MOLDS was the point where I finally realised Bandai was not interested in my money anymore. I'm somewhat of an impulse buyer, and having to plan purchases 9-12 months in advance on third-party websites is too much of a hassle.
Their focus has always been and will always be Japan/SE Asia of course, but I could still do with HLJ, Amiami, Hobbysearch etc. Nowadays, only HLJ gets stuff and even then in meager quantities (still waiting for my 2 33MM Armored core kits frorm them that I ordered the second they were up for preorder).
Honestly I'm just tired of jumping through hoops and waiting on orders for stuff I used to be able to buy and get delivered from Japan to my house in 5 days.
And I haven't even brought up the price factor in all this : being EU based, I have to pay the expensive P-Bandai kits, third-party fee, shipping costs, and import duties. Shit gets expensive.
The only kit I'd be interseted in buying nowadays is an MG GP03S 2.0 or more Turn-A qtuff, but lord knows neither or those are happening, just more SEED slop.
Anyway sorry for yapping, glad someone else is talking about this downward trend. Fuck preorder culture and fuck artificial scarcity.
You're absolutely right. For all the "world" this and "global" that in Bandai's marketing, they certainly don't act like they care that much about access at all anymore. In a strange way, gunpla felt more fair in the days before PB, when _everyone_ had a hard time finding the rare stuff, which, while cool, never gatekept any unique molds.
@@citrusjuicebox I remember like a year ago at the largest convention in France Bandai had a panel where they were so proud to annouce that Premium Bandai was gonna be available in Europe so I decided to check it out, they straight-up had like 4 kits on there, it was worse than not having access to the service. I just checked it out, it ALREADY cooked. here's what it says:
"Important notice: temporary suspension of service
To prepare and provide a more satisfying shopping experience,
we will be temporarily suspending our service during the following period.
Effective date: January 21st 5PM~ (CET), 2025
This temporary suspension of service is expected to take around one year,
however, we kindly ask for your understanding that the schedule is subject to change.
If you have any orders waiting to be shipped, rest assured, it will be shipped accordingly."
This is the exact shit they did in the early 2000s, they released a few 1/144 Wing and 1 or 2 MGs (for some reason??? I remember seeing a MG zeta 1.0 int the toy isle when I was like 6 or 7), then some 1/144 no grade seed and then they pulled out of the market a year later.
Bandai's motto : barely try, give up, repeat.
Even when they do throw Europe a bone, it’s only ever France. It’s even worse in a non-EU European country, I can barely afford shipping from european based stores, officially licensed or not
“still waiting for my 2 33MM Armored core kits from them that I ordered the second they were up for preorder” Same. I pre-ordered two back in April and I’ve not got them yet. I probably won’t have them by the end of the year.
@@Herr_Gamer And they are shutting down European P-Bandai in january for an entire year, maybe they will open it up to rest of EU after but for all we know they could just not reopen ever again.
As someone who loves UC for it's more _"realistic"_ designs, it sucks to see Bandai just not make detailed MG or RG designs for the mobile suits in that timeline. Like man, imagine RG GMs, Jestas, Gelgoogs, Goufs, dammit I'll even take an RG ball!
I'll happily buy any of those. Early on (like 2011-ish), there was so much excitement about the line too.
FR! I would kill for a RG GM Sniper II with the tech from RG RX-78-2 2.0 😞
@@csat4363 based comment... I would want an RG GM Sniper 2 as well
To me it really feels like the last time gunplas were truly in full on passionate mode was the first Gundam Build Fighters.
Yes, that was right around 2013 to 2014. I'd say you're spot-on.
I wish Build Divers didn't sour people on Re;Rise, genuinely great show and even better kits, but its reception (or lack thereof) seems to have deflated the passion something fierce
Honestly I feel Build Fighters was where things started going wrong. The Gunpla Builders of the 30th Gunpla anniversary was a cute one-off but someone thought it'd be good to serialize that. From there we get lazy retoolings and designs and shows no one asked for to get retail. Who wanted the Crimson Gouf HG as retail? Who wanted a Build Series Altron as a retail instead of the original Altron? Granted some designs were cool but people have been wanting other things more than those. And I realized that at the same time, P-Bandai was selling models of MSs that people actually wanted: MG Norn, HG Woundwort, MG Heavyarms Custom, etc (regardless of serialization issues revolving Sentinel and AoZ). No sane person ever asked for a Metaverse and yet they put the Build franchise in front of it. I knew this obsession with Build series would lead to bad decisions and I'm honestly conflicted on whether to feel good or bad about it for being right 10 years ago.
Now I do appreciate how they ventured into YuGiOh. As a Yugi Boomer seeing Ra, BLS, Blue Eyes, and Exodia so I'd build those when I didn't want to build a Mobile Suit so I'll give em that. But even that's not coming out at a fast enough rate to keep YuGiOh fans interested (but that's just me).
If they wanted to focus on the young people through the Build series, looks like things are going swimmingly on that front eh? Tsk Tsk Bandai: there are better ways to do that than this.
Just my perspective as someone from Japan. I also work in IoT and automation for manufacturing.
First everything has become considerably more expensive here. It's certain that bandai cost has gone up. We import most resources here, especially for energy.
Looking deeper at what it cost to produce kits, the plastic is made from crude oil which is much more expensive than 20 years ago. This also means an increase in logistics cost. Then inflation pushing up wages. The cost of energy has gone up making running the machines more expensive. Just because the mold has paid for itself doesn't mean it's a license to print money, those machines don't run themselves, the include things like QC and packing. Keeping 20 year prices isn't reasonable.
Bandai is not one big company but separate entities spread across 4 divisions. It's not as simple as don't spend money on the metaverse and use that for gunpla, it's an entirely separate business operation.
They can also barely keep up with demand but yet they should release more kits? What's the point of releasing more kits that you can't produce? This is why they need to spend more money on a new factory.
All of Bandai's have been profitable over the last year, including the gaming division. Somebody liked the metaverse. That being said the toys division has a profit margin of about 15% This publicly available knowledge. Going this long without price increases more often and still be the cheapest Japanese manufacturer of models is impressive.
The only thing I can really agree with is pbandai. I don't like it either but this kinda thing is normal in Japan. At the end of the day it's still a business and the money line must go up.
Thank you for your insight. The point about "releasing kits they can't produce" is a good one. Between all the lines that Hobby Division could choose to slow down, I'm sad that the choice came down to gunpla, but as I also said, it's not an unreasonable choice. I appreciate you for watching!
(Although I really doubt gaming division was profitable because of Metaverse. I'm sure Elden Ring and a few other _actual_ games were responsible.)
This comment really should be pinned because I don't think most gunpla hobbyists understand all the costs associate with even a mostly automated manufacturing process.
To your point, I hear Japan is also slated to increase a lot of taxes on oil, further driving up the materials costs for model kits. This would be why they were experimenting with Limex and wood in their molding processes.
And to your point about not being not being able to produce new releases, I believe this is already true with how many kits which get released with previous years on the runners. Some kits we're only getting now have had the previous one or two years on the runners, seeming to indicate they've been sitting on ideas like the Vidar for a while with no means to really produce or distribute it. Demand is also way higher now than pre-pandemic. They'd already opened a new factory which has made all the shortages way less pronounced, but new stock still runs out quickly so it's really easy to see why a new factory would be necessary, especially when new kits are being released with the delays we're seeing.
@@TheVanillaQueen new factory isn’t open yet. It is slated to open in mid 2025, and be at full operational capacity by 2026.
They had a minor expansion of a handful of machines in 2020, which was planned pre Covid. This was not adequate for the Covid and WFM boom that happened.
To add to this, as Bandai has expanded to other countries officially they have also had to incorporate whatever regulations/laws for sale of products into the overall price of the products they make. Many countries have varying levels of standards and governing bodies for product testing and safety and even the type of information displayed on packaging. Large retailers may require stricter documentation to reduce their liability, so what ends up happening is Bandai has to follow the most rigorous policies and this all added expense. In the U.S., for example, as an official importer and to have relationship with certain large retailers Bandai not only has to follow CPSC rules but also be a member of CTPAT. No company can have a separate set of procedures for every single country so at some point a common process has to be followed and that ends up being as part of the product globally even if those added things don't even violate anything within the Japanese domestic market. As an example, Japan doesn't need to put English on the boxes/instructions, but Bandai has to because they want to sell X,Y,Z speaking country which may require information be in English.
Regarding the price, I wanted to add while other companies have been increasing their prices every couple of years in real time to adjust for material costs, even with this price increase, Bandai's price to plastic ratio is still ridiculously unmatched. You could just look at any other competitor''s model kit product price example here th-cam.com/video/VaoNMYR4z7g/w-d-xo.htmlsi=glumxeU4PrYMT6pL&t=1387 .
@@feral404 That would probably mean the argument goes doubly so then lol
It's almost surreal how closely this echoes my feelings. I got into the hobby about 8 years ago on the tail end of the heyday, endured the scalping hellscape of COVID and gradually grew tired of Bandai's antics. Third party kits and girlpla kept me engaged for a while longer but ultimately I lost motivation. I still get the occasional urge to build but I've got too much else going on. So of course I'm sitting on a backlog of my own.
There was a local gunpla shop that mirrored my path through the hobby. The place thrived for a while but got screwed hard by Bandai's shifting strategy and P-Bandai in particular. The owner had a hard time getting his hands on the few new kits that got standard releases. He tried diversifying but the writing was on the wall and the shop closed its doors for good this past September. It was telling that he struggled to unload inventory even with big discounts because turns out that people aren't really interested in 15 year old high grades.
Honestly, I could be here all day complaining about this stuff but my hot take is that the community itself is at least partially complicit in enabling Bandai's behavior.
The year or two of PB "drops" instantly selling out definitely helped push us in this direction. And now PB is in the same boat, with unmoving in-stock inventory and pre-orders that stay open for even weeks or months at a time. Even now, PB' IG is still trying just to hype, hype, hype. And it's getting old.
My man. The prices going up is a japan wide thing right now. The yen rate decreased significantly in the last 2 years and people are just now adjusting prices. Been living here 5 years and im feeling the prices going up.
How did the yen (¥) going down in profit even happen, anyway?
I'll always love Bandai for being "cheap" in the ever so expensive world of hobbies, but MAN do I wish we'd get more designs and that those designs are NOT PBANDAI.
One problem that’s kind of related to this video is the “for customers in Japan only” on the parts replacement sheet in every Gunpla manual. Why can’t there be a system to replace Gunpla parts for customers outside of Japan? At this point, I don’t care if it’s tedious. I just want to replace my broken parts without buying a second kit just to use 1-3 parts! 😭
There's a reason to it
A long time ago, any gunpla consumer can email to Bandai for replacements parts even if you're outside from Japan. Some dingbats in the Philippines exploited this by requesting a lot of replacement parts and then made a profit out of it. Bandai wasn't happy with it and decided to stop offering it. I know this because I was in several Filipino Gunpla groups that do this and it's not cool
Bandai Namco/Bluefin in the US will let you order up to six parts per kit with proof of purchase for free, but only once per kit. A system where you can purchase more than that, or even whole runners, would be great.
Really? Is it still valid for only one month after I buy a kit? Let’s say if I buy a kit, but break a part two months later, can I still be able to replace it using Bandai/Bluefin?
Those people in the Philippines sounds a lot like what is going on in the pharmaceutical industry, right now.
@@alexanderchapman6529 They guarantee parts availability within six months purchase. After that, if the kit's most recent print run is too far past for parts to still be available, they'll let you know.
welp I guess gundam will end up like bionicle from savior to a dead man
edit: btw this channel is so underrated
Kopaka was my jam
OMG, why are all my Robot themed franchises mistreated so poorly? I moved to Gundam cause Lego terribly mishandled G2 Bionicle, so Gunpla was a natural transition...until pandemic hit and collecting kits got harder than ever.
Assuming that they couldnt make any new and good content in a form of anime (their form of commercial), they could easily die as u said.
But it does seems like they are reducing the fund for their anime product with just a movie (seed) and short series (battlelogue) and not for a proper series.
I was even surprised wfm only got a 24 ep and was expecting more from it.
@zangetsu27 I got the vibe from WFM that it was also rushed towards the end, as if it was intended to at least have 36 episodes, and then cut short on funding.
@zangetsu27 I'm gonna day something controversial: *SEED IS PART OF THE PROBLEM.*
Seed was an awful show (I literally couldn't even finish episode 1), it's a dumb gimmick, ans we don't need 31 Berjillion Strike variants with 12 kits for each variant. Seed just swamps releases with constant slight tweaks to what are basically just Chinese Bootleg UC suits.
One big thing I've noticed since the pandemic; actual value for the customer no longer matters. PERCEIVED value is everything and, thus, marketing departments take over and products become less exciting and more expensive.
Very true. I've observed the same in my other hobbies.
16:27 I want to add something onto this. I am european, and i just wish to say that P-bandai kits are littereally impossible to get for normal prices, hell in general they are impossible to get. P-bandai EU doesn't exist, they only ship to France and that is really about it, if you want a p-bandai kit well expect to pay some really stupid prices (Like 70€ (about 75USD) for HG MSD Full armor gundam). And it is about to become even harder to acquire p-bandai kits cuz the p-bandai web store is going to be closed for about a year.
Also a thing that really bugs me is how just stupidly hard some kits are to get (That are retail releases btw), like littereally the entire origin line, sure we get some reissues here and there (Like next year the Dom Test type and Early Guntank are being reissued) but it can be just really discouraging to go "Hm yes, i want a Bugu" only to check ebay/buyee/any type of marketplace and just get slapped in the face with some really bad prices.
Another thing is the price increase, it does worry me to some extent how this will affect the pricing of kits here. Model kits in EU are just not as cheap as they are in japan. And i am just worried about how much this will jack up the price. A example i suppose would be HGUC Z'gok, cute kit, fun little guy, what is there to say. In japan the Z'gok costs 770 yen, which is 4.70€, however once it is imported to EU it costs between 10-12€. Now with the price increase going to 1,040 yen, it just makes me wonder how much more expensive it'll be, cuz paying like 20€ for HG Z'gok ain't it man.
That's all i really wanted to add, love your vids!
To add onto the P-Bandai BS, they're also restructuring their EU website from 25/01/2025 onwards, which they say will take them a year. So there's no way to effectively get official P-Bandai things reliably within Europe unless you know people in countries where P-Bandai does sell their products.
As a Southeast Asian aka one of Bandai's second market after Japan and China, I am disappointed that Bandai decided to throw the G-Fans like me to the curb. Like, There's almost no upgrades nor even reuse of some parts to create a 1.5 of a kit. That thing I am talking about is the RG Build/Try Burning Gundam. Like, Bandai could do it, they just decided not to.
That's why I am disappointed.
They had all the time from 2015 to make a HGUC GM Revive using the parts from the RX-78-2 Revive, but they never did.
Heck, the only build fighters RG is the Build Strike Gundam Repackage. They did not even make an RG Universe Booster for it.
Man. Gundam Amazing Exia and Hi-Nu Gundam Vrabe in RG would be fantastic.
I appreciate the small updates to thr MG IBO Gundam frame were getting with Vidar, but for the love of God, that surely means they can start shitting out more IBO MGs right? They all use the exact same frame, thats like 60% of the work done. The just need new armour and weapons which should be comparatively easy as hell. At most you'd need new forearms for Lupus Rex but other than that there's no reason not to just start pumping them out like they did with HG.
Coming soon to PB...
I started this hobby around 2016 and I build mainly MG. Thinking back it’s basically gotten worse every single year peaking during COVID. I pretty much stopped building all together in 2020 and picked it back up in 2022 and the lack of standard releases has been disheartening.
My friends usually tell me not to blow off my disposable income on gunpla.
Nowadays when they say that, I can't even think of any kits I'm excited to buy or build.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
Over the last couple of years, Bandai has been putting all of their effort into making Gundam a "globally-recognized IP" instead of making products. I guess they think if they build enough statues and have enough Miku concerts in the Metaverse then people will talk about them like they do Star Wars, Marvel, or One Piece... or hell, even Transformers.
But it's come at the cost of the actual driver of engagement with their IP: product. I don't know a single Gundam fan who doesn't either build Gunpla or collect figures. Some people get excited for a new Gundam series *specifically because* they are interested in what new kits will come out of it. At a time when modelling and miniatures are gaining in popularity around the world, Gundam is moving away from their own potential cash cow.
As you pointed out, the two pillars of Gunpla product, MG and HG, have had their once-abundant production slowed to a crawl. Even if you add together all of the store exclusives and web exclusives, there simply isn't the output we used to see. And it's not like there isn't new product that could be developed. HGUC has tons of old kits that could be reworked, new and crazy AoZ designs, and a few suits from the OVAs (Xamel my beloved) that haven't been put to plastic yet. Let's not forget the several relevant designs from WfM that just weren't given kits at all. And the list for Master Grade possibilities is even bigger.
If all of Bandai's investments in the IP were successful, then I would accept those facts as a sad reality, that Gunpla just doesn't make as much money as all of the fluff anymore, but as you pointed out, a lot of these projects feel like pure vanity and haven't been very successful at all!
I haven't bought a kit after I finished my WfM collection last year. And genuinely, Bandai hasn't put out anything since then that I would actually want. If nothing else, I guess I will save money.
And if they really wanted to make Gundam globally recognized, they could try building those statues literally anywhere but Asia. Anime fans in Shanghai or Tokyo are already familiar with Gundam
It's worth noting, a lot of this doesn't apply if you are a new builder (assuming you started recently or have only built a handful of kits) there is more than enough gunpla out there already for this to be your hobby for at least a decade! videos like this are important mainly for the rest of us (and future you) but don't let it discourage you for now :D
I am new!
W
It still feels bad when it seems their shying away from MGs or just making more new cool stuff
I've been in the hobby for a little over a year. I'm a bit concerned about the price increases and such, and the whole PBandai thing drives me a bit nuts. But so far, it's been a good time overall. There's almost too many choices on the occasion that I order a few kits!
I'm already discouraged
My grievances with Bandai for the past few years:
-MG IBO should have been a thing a long time ago. They are literally sitting on a gold mine, yet they refuse to do so.
-It's frustrating for me that HGAC and G-Unit kits are few and far in between, and most future kits are probably going to be regulated to P-Bandai because Bandai would rather sell SEED slop.
-Most releases of new kits are P-Bandai, and it sucks because of artificial scarcity practices on Bandai's part.
I’m probably in the minority whose upset that we’re getting an MG Gundam Vidar, while Bandai hasn’t even released an MG Gusion, Gusion Rebake, or a Kamaris, yet.
Remember when we used to get like a brand new MG every 1-2 months, then the “big release” during the holidays? Good times… PG gramps Unleashed released 4 years ago… and as of now no new PG Unleashed version of like a Zaku or even a Strike… like they can revise some of the older PG designs…
Some months we'd even get two MGs! That was truly a Golden Age.
I've slowed down on Gunpla the past few years due to several factors. Dissatisfaction with the builds (weak plastic and C-clips), retail stores barely carrying new stuff, and also growing as a builder who'd wanna do more with one kit like painting. Most kits I've built are from Kotobukiya now who give a lot more bang for your buck from what you pay for with much better plastic.
I do think when it comes to their gunpla output it must be due to how much more complex they make the models now tham before.
The SEED Freedom Z'Gok was never planned to have a model kit, but due to popular reception Bandai immediately got to work in giving it a kit. And it took roughly 8 months to get a working prototype. So the lead time for a model kit to to get conceptualized and then turned into a prototype must have extended. MGs have gotten scarce for that reason too most likely
You 100% hit my feelings on current gunpla with the insane amount of exclusive that they've been releasing.
I always kept away from the hobbies that overly relied on that gimmick and seeing Gundam falling to that that has been really disheartening.
The Gundam base tour was completely atrocious with early scalpers buying huge chunks of inventory with no sales limits (not to mention the insane wait times) and it seems that premium bandai is the only way they're releasing interesting and new kits anymore.
Why does it feel like the ones ranting are the rabbits. Like they are talking about it while eating.
When they started to release prominent kits as PB like the HG Jegan Type-D, that it should be a normal release. That was the first sign for me. Later PB started to become more common, and for me, the moment that I started to really hate Bandai. The release the Woundwort HG. A completly new mold web exlclusive, and for me was the beginnig of the end.
Later all the AOZ line including the old Hazels with nothing new, The G unit Kits with fully colored boxart, The MK-V with also full colored boxart, 2022 with only 1 HG release and more the 20 Pbandai releases. And going back to the Jegan, MG Type-D and The StarK Jegan as Pbandai. And being from south america, its sucks being in the hobby like this, we even don't have acces to pbandai, shipping is more expensive for importing and now, local store are selling HG at MG prices because of lack of availability of products and stock. Things are not looking great.
And funny enough. Bootlegs are becoming more common and more desirable.
HG Woundwort for 10 bucks, yes plis
fr im just waiting for them to bootleg the whole AoZ catalogue. i really wanted the tr-1 hazentley without having to pay like 3x the retail price
Huh the pb hazels do come with new stuff
Adding on to the miku thing, i have been dreaming of seeing an offical miku gundam collab, but when i saw it was some metaverse concert instead that completely killed my vibe. I was hoping for some cute crossover kits not.. a digital concert.
The manufactured scarcity is what really irks me. Whether it be from lack of re-printing, or releasing web exclusives of interesting kits. I just don't want to pay double the retail price for something because of either of these reasons.
I think when the new factory is built we'll see a resurgence of new Gunpla and molds, but right now we are probably in a drought era. I wouldn't be surprised if they have already developed new kits/molds but are just trickling down releases for now so that we at least get something the next 2-3 years. MG and RG fans are certainly getting the short end of the stick because of this, with there only really being 1-2 new releases for each line.
I'm kinda at terms with this since I basically have a backlog tower right now, and probably won't finish when they start ramping up gunpla production lol
RG Shining is nice, but where is Master? Lots of old HGUC kits can be revived too (Gelgoog anyone?) 0080,0083, ZZ Gundam, etc so much they can update.
The price increase makes sense honestly. The Bandai kits are cheaper than other models while still maintaining or in some cases, improving quality. I had to understand the cost of production going up when I started seeing Star Wars action figures, Transformers and Legos start to go up in price like 15 years ago or so. When costs go up, the price does too to maintain quality or quality drops to maintain the price. Lego out of those 3 decided to keep the quality, but raise the price. The quality in action figures and Transformers tanked very hard to maintain that same price. For Bandai to try to keep the same price as long as they have is crazy. I imagine the price might go back down or stabilize once the new factory goes into full production allowing more kits to be made and sold.
15:09 This is just a thing Japan does for a lot of things to try to stop scalping items. Is it dumb? Sure, but this is in no way a thing untie to Gunpla, it's just what Japan does to try to combat the problem.
I'm also kinda surprised you're having a problem with not being able to buy kits at 20-30% off. IDK, it's very normal in the US to just pay retail unless there is a holiday sale, the store just has sales on rotation (HobbyLobby) or a liquidation sale when the store wants to get rid of its stock or is going out of business and wants to get rid of as much stock as possible.
one thing i think could help bandai is if they ACTUALLY REPRINTED STUFF. ive only been a part of the hobby for 4 years but i feel like ive seen maybe like 30% of what they have to offer in that time, online or offline, straight from them or at retailers. its just silly.
They’re reprinting hundreds of items per month. They do reprint stuff. But their factory is only so big. The expansion will help some but only just some.
@@feral404 reprinting a billion dogshit SEED designs, sure. this is why morosawa should have dragged fukuda with her, the bitch.
It sucks but the past year has been great for reprints. so much stuff that hasn't been seen for years is coming back. we're even getting the ZZ Doven Wolf early next year
Totally agree
Ive only been in the hobby for like a few months, so seeing how many kits Ive missed - ESPECIALLY P-Bandai - would be great to see anywhere other than some scalping reseller's ebay account
I have waited years for reprints of stuff loke the hg dreisen, gundam airmaster, origin act zaku. Now you cant even get origin zaku half cannon or hi mobility zakus since theyve been out of print 3 years as well, but can get bootlegs of them though.
Some points you didn't touch was for example the Amaim kit line that was a massive failure, with stories of shops selling them at 500 yen, that's just molds and engineering that is just wasted because they still have so much stock
That's true! I've heard those stories. They make the reprints (if they are reprints 🤭) of those kits even more baffling. I somewhat alluded to this with "insecurity about creating new stories," but I didn't want to speak on something I didn't do too much research about.
The Amaim kits are cool but the anime was so garbage that most people have headaches when see a kit of that anime, Bandai CEOs are old mens, that thinks that anime is just for kids, so you can make any trashy anime to sell millions of toys like in the 70s
It's super sad cause from a hobby perspective it's my favourite line. They size up nicely between HG and MG with their odd scale and the mechanical designs are just a mecha dream. But yeah. The anime didn't live up to to kits 😂😂
About 4 months ago Ive pretty much gone to the 3rd party market and haven't looked back since. Currently working on the en era aurora, nearly perfectly gold plated metal inner frame, panel lines so deep the blind could see them. I swear the gold painted runners in this kit makes the freedom's look so cheaply plated,. I have the lizard from en era in the queue next
How is the build quality? is it snap build or do you need some glue?
@jonathana607 snap build, no need for clear coating nor paint, everything is undergated on the runners and it comes with a stand. There's a few videos on here showcasing it, I promise none of them are using any color filters, it's one of the best kits I've built so far,
@@HomeGrownComics Thanks for sharing. I'll give their kits a try
Bandai doesn't know how to sell things. These words are the most accurate description i have heard on the topic.
Bandai doesn't even do simple things like an rg gm and rg variants for new kits
Re: pricing - the yen is really struggling which means that material costs are way higher than they would have been previously. Their input costs have gone up so it doesn't feel unreasonable that they're having to adjust output costs to be able to provide the same products. Most of the kits that are seeing price increases are older releases that were designed and priced back when the yen was in a much stronger position. Look at the prices of the newest MG sinanju stein ver ka (narrative version), 8,800 yen for what is ostensibly the same kit from 2013 that was 7,350 yen. That's roughly a 20% increase, the yen is down about 20% vs. the US dollar over the last 10 years, plastics are predominant a product of oil and oil is priced in USD.
Bandai have always been more creative than just straight price increases where possible. You see it with stuff like the F91 being substantially smaller to maintain price point despite Japan going through a recession at the time I was designed and first produced. They've just not been able to fudge around it like that for reprints of pre-existing kits that don't warrant a revive or re-release with some new bits.
Re: gunpla releases, I'm not sure what to say there. It's not like bandai aren't releasing anything, they're clearly just focusing more on the 30 minutes line at the moment (especially the armoured core kits). Outside of a couple of requiem for vengeance suits (gimme that gouf custom damn it) there's no real hype wave for them to tap into that would appeal to a wider market. Especially compared to the last couple of years that have been riding hard on the wave of WfM and Seed Freedom.
I'm not going to fully defend bandai, I'm still mad as fuck that I had to give a grey channel importer 4x the actual price to get my lfrith pre-production model because bandai won't officially sell that shit to the UK.
I truly understand your feeling too and as a long time Gundam fan (since 2013) I have to say this 45th anniversary truly broke my back with all the stuffs like Bandai still insulting customer as scalpers, seiyuu scandal, inflated price and selling bad product at ridiculous price (RG Akatsuki) makes me fell out of love from something that was a part of my life for long time.
I am no longer a Gundam fan, I'm greatly regret that I was once a fan of this series, I'm very regret that I once supported their products and I hope Bandai will get what they deserve...
Which hobby company do you think is worse: Bandai or Games Workshop?
So what your saying is... that for the next few months I will NOT be forced to spend hundreds of dollars in order to make sure I get my hands on new products I want before they go out of stock, giving me time to work away at the hundred-or-so kits I have stored in my backlog closet? 🤔
Yes, it's kind of a blessing in disguise, I tell myself
You have no idea. Being a fan of several series, not just gundam, is like a curse to my wallet. So I kinda envy people who are very selective with their purchases.
And with salaries in Japan not being increased for the past 30 years now and all the weak yen situation recently I feel like I can afford less and less things to buy. So I'm kinda happy I can actually get some breather for now at least.
My optimistic theory is that they are working on a somewhat new design philosophy and making sure that new HG kits are similar to the WFM kits, RG kits are more like the 2.0 RX-78, etc.
Those types of kits are considerably better than the kits from 10 years ago, and they are working on figuring out how to adapt all of their kits similar to that.
An American Candidate threatens 10% tariffs across the board and people expect prices to stay low.
Man, I feel like I'm getting shamed for liking 30 Minutes Missions. Those kits are still good, even if they are easily reproducible.
just as a devil's advocate, please allow me a few counterpoints:
1. bandai is by far the cheapest manufacturer of model kits (bootlegs aside) - vs kotobukiya or aircraft/armor kits - even a low end company like Trumpeter tends to be pricier
2. based on #1, it's a plausible theory that bandai has been losing money or breaking even on some products like the reprinted HG kits that are still on original SRP for decades. why do this? well, it's to keep your brand relevant and the demand high - think of it as advertising, except it's subsidized by the customer in this case
3. from #1 and #2, in order for bandai to be profitable, they need to leverage their high-end/premium lines - which is exactly what they've been doing - more and more lately.
for those statues, I'm inclined to think that their sales/marketing studies find them to be efficient advertising strategies. seems expensive upfront - but think about the cost of a 30 second superbowl commercial every year for 5 years (~35m usd) - that makes these giant statues cost look like pocket change.
for the new factory, growth = survival in business - that is simply a fundamental and immutable rule. we'd never have the kits we loved if bandai was some timid company that just focused on what the consumers want and still sell products at low SRPs.
overall, while it's unfortunate that we have this price hike, and we're getting questionable products here and there - I have to give the benefit of doubt for a company that offered high end products with unparalleled fixed low pricing for decades - if anything, I'm actually quite surprised they managed it for so long.
They remove the price on the box and change the logo blue.. IM Gona Keep my red box gunpla backlog, they are the reason why i love gunpla.
Not only that, but their economy has recently taken a massive downspike that doesn't really allow them to be more experimental these days, I'd have to guess.
About point 2, the pricing isn't fixed. The price hike has always been baked into the increasing prices of _new_ products over time. Bandai has always been able to sell older products at a fixed price because they're dirt cheap to actually make and their R&D costs would've already been recuperated. And the massive volumes of model kits they sell allow them to price low. If Trumpeter, Dragon, Tamiya, Aoshima, Airfix, Italeri, Revel, etc. could sell products at the volumes Bandai does, their kits would be even cheaper.
This is what I mean by not getting into the math of it. The problem is that the price increases in the past have generally accompanied a comparable rise in quality (parts count, weight, density, etc.), and this is not the case anymore. In fact, during the years when Bandai was more publicly focused on improving their manufacturing efficiency, after adjusting for Japan's meager inflation at the time, gunpla prices even _deflated_ for a while. Bandai managed to do this for so long because this _was_ their strategy the whole time. Evidently, their priorities have changed.
Point No. 2 hits the nail on the head. Majority of the kits getting the 40% price increase that all the people seem to be cherry picking are OLD kits that cost a little less than 10 USD. Of course they're bleeding money trying to sell those kits using prices from 20 years ago.
Japanese Yen is at a historical low, Bandai is still trying to increase their production with new factories popping up all over the place, and HGs are improving at an INCREDIBLE rate, just look at how the build on WFM kits (already cheap and great) were improved upon wven further by the Seed Freedom and RFV kits.
@@citrusjuicebox , well, the fixed price is just simple fact. trying to invalidate it thru the price of newer kits is simply a fallacy of argument.
as for bandai baking in profits into latter kits, someone from a newer comment has explained it pretty well, in short we can't just attribute the new products' increased prices on profiteering and neglect the other increasing costs (imports, labor) associated with production over the decades (not just years)
as far as other companies being able to just sell cheaper if they had similar sales - it's a pretty baseless and somewhat naive assertion, without citing any precedent - looking at large companies we've had that dominated their market, our candidates might be: apple, samsung, intel - not an encouraging bunch.
if anything, historically, what we observe is that as companies grow bigger, their products tend to get worse (butterfly switch?) and yet their prices still increase - certainly not what we've observed from bandai. just to add, tamiya is very successful and top-tier for non-gunpla, but we're not exactly seeing a disproportionate low price-tier from them despite enjoying the same economic stability bandai had.
but let me just leave this food for thought:
isn't bandai selling large volumes precisely because they've adhered to a principle of low-profit pricing? and they are just now increasing price simply to sustain or maybe improve profitability? I would think an occam's razor would most likely lead in this direction.
finally, tbf, you did disclose at the start where you're from emotionally and none should be taken as fact. which ofc, doesn't stop dogpilers from parroting.
now c'mon, I need to see that level-headed citrus who provided a sound take on the HGUC Tristan.
They do seem to really be focusing on squeezing as much out of every machine and every mould they have right now. But I'm honestly not too depressed about it, as you said there are already hundreds and hundreds of kits I could want. And on top of that there's so many other companies that also produce really cool high quality model kits. Like even if you're not a painter type you can get some cool stuff from Kotobukiya, Max Factory, and Good Smile Company, and overall the quality across the industry is rising right now. Chinese model kits are also improving in quality, and it's getting easier and easier to find solid non-bootleg original model kits from there as well. I do agree that bandai is sort of hitting a nadir right about now, but as a fan of cool robots and great model kits? it's a wonderful time.
Maybe bandai can start releasing some of their pbandai shit as regular releases and let us regular people get some kits that we've been wanting. They already have all the molds so why not?
It also serves the added bonus of screwing over scalpers too.
Funny thing is before PBUS launched, several PB kits in Japan came here as normal releases, like MG Astray Turn Red. That's how I got my MG Exia Avalanche and MG 00Q Full Saber-picked them up from Hobbytown. I really wished that distribution model would last, but Bandai had other plans.
@@citrusjuiceboxthey do still do that to this day but less often for Gunpla. ie, recent RG Evangelion Weapon Set was JP PB but retail US.
Then the Gunpla that were released that way do still get US Retail runs when they’re up on JP PB, or even independent of that.
Oh yeah, I just saw Gundam Pros get the RG Eva transporter platform thing. That was PB, right? Maybe there's some hope. After all, if PB has the inventory that's not selling, might as well move it some other way...
@@citrusjuicebox I have my own theories that long term Bandai may experiment with moving PB kits via wholesale methods.
This is the same with us who collect Transformers. We getting less accesories and similar mould from a few years back just scaled down. Yes scaled down to appeal to the market that once smaller TF but at the same time a price increase... but what to do we cant do much cause the market is huge and it will sell no matter what.
15:21 I wish it was better, I went to japan this year in June and one of the things I was most looking forward to was the gundam base in Odaiba since I didn't get a chance to go to it on my last trip.
We get up to the entrance only to be met with staff holding up a sign saying that there was no more tickets being sold that day (it was 2pm) and that we could not enter without a raffle ticket.
Within diver city mall, of course there were other shops with gunpla, but the price was either above retail, or the kit selection was so minimal that you'd only want to buy something because it was more expensive back home or because you felt like you had to. I left diver city mall that day with nothing purchased. Even the satellite gundam base had a very small selection of gunpla.
The weirdest part about it all was the crazy lack of variety at most of the retail stores I went to. Having gone to Japan twice now in 2 years, I was slightly disappointed that it was so hard to find even newer MG or RG kits. Shopping at reseller stores like manadrake and akihabara Specialty Shop definitely helped, but you end up paying slightly more because the kits are "rare."
All this is to say that its not as easy to buy gunpla in Japan anymore, at least for folks who dont always want whatever random HGUC kit Bandai decided to reprint that year.
All too true. There was a time when Mandarake was a genuine bargain bin too, because they had to price lower than the department stores to move their inventory. Now, they turn any kit that's not being reprinted into a profit opportunity.
I too was there in early June and was hoping to get some rarish kits and Gundam 00 HGs if possible too.
I was in Ikebukuro for hotel, went to Akihabara, and to Diver City Gundam base.
Gundam Base was a little bit disappointing as they did not have any rare kits of sorts nor any of the exclusives I wanted....
Ikebukuro had a Mandrake store, which was ok for what I could get. Found GN Arms Type D, but I had no more room for it sadly.
Akihabara was were I got some good stuff from Suruga-Ya, Mandrake, and thrle Gundam Specialist Store too, which I was able to get a nice variety of stuff I wanted in the end.
That's why I like doing custom builds. It helps keep things fresh, imo. I try to have a few different projects going on at the same time. Mainly because I can work on something different each time I sit down to do some building
That's very good! I find juggling multiple projects at the same time very overwhelming.
@citrusjuicebox it took me a little bit to get used to it. At first I would try and finish each project asap, lol
It's one thing for us customers to be ranting about recent development in Gunpla but can you imagine how difficult it is for hobby shops? Since the pandemic, some of my favorite hobby shops has to either sell bootlegs or turn into a funkopop wasteland just to stay in business...
It's been dreadful. I cut out the part about physical retail where I talked about this exactly, because I wasn't confident enough in my take, but seeing several US shops close just this year was crushing.
@@citrusjuicebox should have kept it! The voices of the struggling business owners need to be heard!
It's been really rough to remain in the hobby for me too. In my location before 2020 (Taiwan) you're guaranteed to find any regular release if you travel enough hobby shops, but those days were gone and for a while I was just buying what was available even if it was something was only marginally interested with, just to remain in the community. But eventually I got tired of doing that and it led me to nearly stopping any gunpla activity altogether. I have not bought nor built a single kit this entire year.
We are at the dark days of Gunpla now 😔
I feel like we've been there for a while with the peen bandai scalper insanity over the last few years. Placing the majority of the best kits on peen bandai is telling me that they don't want my money. Hell, look at MG.
Agreed, we are in the dark days of bandai.
But for plamo in general, and for me in particular, my wallet is just as in pain as it ever was.
Some perspective:
I'm just getting back into Gunpla after a 20+ year hiatus. Back then, the only kits I could find locally were 1/100 HG Wing and some oddball assorted SD. Anything else required buying from less-than-reputable dealers on eBay.
Now I can walk into a local shop and choose from literally hundreds of kits that are often leaps-and-bounds above anything that was available to me before, at prices that are generally way lower when adjusted for inflation. It may seem like a dark days for some, but compared to the early 2000s, things seem downright sunny and bright to me.
I feel like we’re in the dark days of the Gundam franchise, as well.
Not related to Gunpla, but just to your driving-footage: You live in a beautiful area! I love those kinds of woods. The more trees, the better!
Thank you! I love the trees here too, rain and shine!
It's not even the number of releases. It's the lack of FOCUS. Bandai seems to be a in a directionless mess. MG is in limbo. MGEX has nothing. Introduced MGSD and we don't know what the heck is in there. RG is in 2.0 mode right now, so older molds are frankly irrelevant now. And somehow, Bandai is entangled with all the other animes and franchises they seem to offer more toys for than Gunpla.
As an alternative, you can check out kits from other companies such as Moshow, In Era, and Mecha Core, to name a few. These companies have high quality kits and are cheaper right now in the market compared to Bandai.
Bandai's recent announcements stirred up some thoughts that I wanted to share. I hope my sentiments don't upset anyone. If the discourse here becomes too chaotic, I'll disable the comments.
No need to disable comment, as a avide plamo kit builder especially the gunpla for over a decade now,i already seen the downfall of bandai with ever expensive kit that not that technology advance as they're a decade ago,also when the recent tamashii nation announcement has fk ton of release which i rather they're just plastic kit but no they're not gonna do that so that's basically calling us to shift toward other brand than bandai because they don't have much to offer now in term their release and feature where they're praise highly before,that excitement has really drop alot before a decade ago
@@dsleong8328agreed. Do not disable the comments. This is a dialog that needs to be had.
Listen, you are telling what you feel and you are worried for the hobby
the best thing to happen is that atleast there are chinese model kits that are becoming the new cool kids product because of how unique they make them
i'll never understand pouring several hundred grands on RnD for new molds and then making them exclusively pbandai. im almost exclusively buying 3p and bootlegs now cuz recent releases have been stale and not what i wanted be made as kits
like ive heard many ppl talk about how the MG Age series affected them, going off of that it almost feels like they cant decide if they want to learn from that or not. idk maybe im biased because im from america and ive seen nothing sell out for almost a year.
The MG Age kits flopping absolutely sent the message to Bandai that quality didn't matter and it wasn't enough to sell a kit; and that they should reserve more expensive developments for safer products.
My only complaint is how much stuff I want is behind the pbandai wall lol and probably would just love some updated kits for stuff i enjoy like 00
00 kits have hit the Shitter for HG Pbandais. They literally put 0 effort into Zabanya and Harute Final Battle kits, and that was 2022 or 2023 released, nothing else since then.
Season 1 kits have issues for the gundams, but we can easily get new stuff for minor varients for Season 2 MS units!
Plutone HG literally only had ONE RUN of kits the last I checked, which is sad.
@knightx605 I didn't even known those happened or existed but modern tech to do an exia 2.0 or something would be so nice. 00 getting dubbed on scifi channel is what got me back into gundam and got me into gunpla in the first place and the tech has just warped so far past the kits from 09
I think one of my big issues I have with Bandai is the whole premium bandai site new original molds are being released on there when I thought the whole premise is to release color variants of molds that were already out or some really obscure designs. While I appreciate having a US site to finally have access to some of the variants, new stuff that should be regularly released or not on their 7th wave of reprint in a short time frame. Also the serious dwindling of the MG line and even the PG line is extremely bad considering what we used to get. I don't like how we get 2 if we're lucky ver ka kits a year and even the sinanju stein narrative was just a lazy reprint of a kit only a few years old with stuff that version should have came with. It's sad in my opinion
The only way I can an actual comeback for a bunch of new kits is if they make anime’s of gundam manga like a cross bone or moon and makes kits from those series or just make new original anime with new mobile suits. the whole problem is that they’re trying remake the wheel on advertising model kits and spending a bunch of money on giant statues to make 2-3 kits when with that they could’ve just made a anime for 20-30 kits.
Exactly! The math ain't mathing!
Another thing is that they could make kits of mobile suits that beaver had one like a mk 4 gundam or they could more original kits for retail than p Bandai like the new g gundam kits and I don’t know why they stop to remake old kits like all of the mg gpo gundams,the zaku 1 or the ground gundam but it’s better to reuse the same old kits and slap new parts on it like that p bandai build kampfer and don’t forget the dead re 100 line or some scrapped gundam kits like the mg age 3 they’ve done it before. it’s free money
And making variant kits based on retools like a bunch of different gm kits based on the rg 2.0, a full armor gundam based on it, etc
@@citrusjuicebox the main problem I think is that most of the decisions Bandai has been doing is just to please investors which is probably why they started the metaverse thing
Its just that they have more then just gunpla now, so many other lines of model kits, and it makes sense.
No big boom of gunpla hobbyist have come in a while and making models for old materials is less profitable than new shows, games or things that are timeless
I usually hunt second hand or buy smaller and older kits at hobby shops. Currently looking for the HG origin full armor gundam and heavy gundam. right now its probably best to fight the backlog or try customizing gunpla, because that will keep me more occupied at the moment.
Ah the HG FA-78-1 Full Armor Gundam is a very good kit sure its p bandai but you get a lot of parts and the armor pieces go on smoothly compared to the old MG version where you had to use those small pieces of tape to attach it to the main body
Clearly something changed in Gunpla releases.
The main proof of that is the MG Line.
Usually, there would be multiple models of the same movie, coming out in the same breath almost.
As it should have been after the MG Barbatos, we should have had the Vidar few months after at best. Not a couple years after.
We should have had multiple MGs from Witch From Mercury.
So I don't know where it's going, but I made peace with this situation. The next HG are very good (Mk 2 and Bolinoak), the HG Seed Freedom are excellent.
And I'll add that I think it's not relevant to be se much riled up by the weak annoucements from 4 days ago. I think it was just there, but we decided to make this out as huge thing when we (the customers) had no ground to do so.
Second, some great kits came out, from other series by Bandai (the HG Dunbine, Votoms, the Batsh from L-Gaim, the RG EVAs, the RG Go Gai Gar). There's the last two MGEX that were groundbreaking, the MG Zeta Ver Ka and Narrative, the RG Gao Gai Gar etc...
Sure, one might not like that, but there isn't "nothing".
As you said, the back catalogue is still great, there are a good number of kits that I haven't built.
And also, the scarcity of MGs can be an occasion to look for other manufacturers.
Like there's the recent (few days ago) Daccas from the Five Star Stories GTM series, that came out in a plastic model kit, and it seems it's a good kit (I have it, but I didn't build it).
So, I get the frustration, but what we got is what we got. And it may not be as opulent as we'd like, but what we have is pretty excellent.
Last year I bought a HG Zowort Heavy for around 15 bucks, and when I came back to look for new kits this year, I saw that one exact kit I bought last year had its price bumped up to over 20 bucks. Being a person who would only look and buy new kits every once or twice in a year, I'm worried if I could even continue this hobby in the future considering the gradual price increases :(
I had a some sticker shock when I wanted to buy an HG 1.5 Gundam this year. Everywhere was asking over 24 USD, when I paid maybe 20 USD for one back in 2011 while the exchange rate was so much worse (76:1 at the time).
The last "set" they put out, besides the seed movie, was from the G series and they were all P-Bandai. 😶 Too expensive, no stock. The seed movie kits were all above $30 in the US. So, I feel ya on the prices believe me. Now it's going to be an all around price hike with nothing to show for it.
bandai has a plethora of unused designs, 2.0 possibilities, etc. they just sit on or make p-bandai and it’s so sad to see, at least the figures and gaming side of bandai uses them but regardless it sucks
What amazes is we just had the most successful and popular Gundam show and movie back to back, G Witch and Seed Freedom respectively, and Bandai just.. put out a few HGs and called it a day.
Both lines are still experiencing massive shortages, people are being absolutely ravenous for both.. not a single MG, and only a single FM kit from the both of em, barely any SDs even.
It's almost sad cuz G Witch was supposed to be a massive push for international markets for the franchise, and it succeeded, and they did absolutely nothing with it, and Seed Freedom could've at least kept up that momentum but they showed it twice in 2 theaters and called it a day, don't even get me started on how they treated Gundam Evolution, let alone the Metaverse lmao. It's as i always say, this franchise keeps succeeding despite Bandai's best efforts, they just don't wanna make money off of this propert.
@@BlueAmerican26 _"You people"_
Wasn't there objective data that showed it was massively successful both in Japan and internationally...?
@@BlueAmerican26 Oh no belief necessary, objective data straight from Bandai showed that G Witch was not only massively popular, but single-handedly doubled the franchise's lifetime profits in only its first six months of existence. Gundam X is my favorite Gundam show and that was a massive flop, I am not out here lying about Gundam shows because I like them, yet I suspect you've absolutely nothing to back up your claims.
The Gundam Metaverse probably undone all the previous profits. And it's a failure
1. They can literally ask the fandom for the new ideas for kits like my friend and I have been begging for an RG or a revive HG RGM-79 GM and we have yet to get that even though we have new RX-78-2 Gundam kits with repaint potential also they could accept more ideas they just choose not to for whatever godforsaken reason.
and 2. They're just throwing money in the air at this rate with all the promotions and collabs with Fortnite, Call of Duty and so on. Then the statues like about keeping the statues clean...the Unicorn in Shizuoka is gathering rust and looks yellow on certain areas like it hasn't been cleaned at all.
Like Transformers for example is having a magnificent 40th anniversary, new figures, a movie that just recently came out, game collabs, products out the wazoo and yet Bandai can't do anything for Gundam which is just disappointing especially with the 45th anniversary around the corner all I can hope is Studio Trigger also do something for Gundam because I love these franchises and I don't want them to die like this.
A lot of the recourses for Gunpla in general have been diverted for stuff like 30mm and frs. The more those sell, you can count on gunpla actually dying. Video was pretty bang on and I’ve had these thoughts for a while. And I wish more fans opened up their eyes to these things that are happening behind the scenes so that they won’t be so clueless as to how the only MG we’re getting atm is a well overdue retool.
I'm sure there will be an end of year announcement during their online event. Sometimes things have to slow down, clear some path, and then you can go full speed again. Remember not everything go straight up forever.
As someone who is relatively new to the hobby some of the decisions baffle me.
I mainly collect RG because of the limited space I have and I would love to build a Freedom. But why the hell does a straight up better version of the RG exists but only as a Gundam Base exclusive?
Why do they have a better version already out but they keep producing the famously shitty and fragile version from before as the product available to people?
One of my biggest issues with being a Gunpla fan since the late 90s is now we have P-Bandai kits and how hard those are get here in Canada. Now I hear Bandai is going down the Games Workshop path of jacking up prices dear god my hobby is dying or dead at this point.
While i don't agree with everything in this video i do think you're right in a lot of places,i remember literally 5 years ago i was able to just go to my local an pick up any kit i want without worrying, nowadays i have to buy stuff as soon as they drop because bandai produces so little of it
I kinda stop caring about new releases. Especially their "Suprised" announcements. Because, everyone knew that the Announcement that everyone is hype for is either a Suit we got for like, the 50th Time, Another Unicorn, Freedom or the RX or a Suit that nobody cared.
Don't forget the Pricing too. It just feels they overcharge alot of the Kits especially the Remastered Seed kits from 2002. Why would I spend 15$ on a Kit that has little no Articulation and Color Accurate. When the same price, I can get a Build Diver 00 that has better Articulation and color separation? Not to mention alot of the Great ones are still out of print and shouldn't cost more than 30$. Idk if this was the Sellers part or Bandai's Part.
Despite the Weird Price range they put and been a Fan since 2015. I just Buy HGs when I'm bored and wanna excuse to build and hearing OST that I'm itching to listen.
Gunpla is like what happen to transformers. They overcharge Items that shouldn't be over 20s and they barely give the characters we want.
I will say this as someone who's not really that big on buying a whole bunch of new model kits at least this gives me a good amount of time to buy some that either I've been missing or some that I have been thinking about for the past couple of years. So that is not a problem for me and most of my friends....... That said what has been a problem is the random increase of PB exclusive stuff that really honest-to-God should have just been standard releases. You mean to tell me that 3 of the 5 shuffle alliance members have to be PB but Domon, Master Asia, a horse and Allenby are the ONLY ones to get standard releases? When witch from Mercury came out we did get a good chunk of the models but by the time it came for I don't know a certain weapon set for three and half moble suits, THOSE as well as certain mass Production types of mobile suits are PB despite those mass Production types being shown in the show and the prologue and aside from the ace weapon set, we STILL don't have the supposed weapons for the Zowart but the Demi trainers have a weapon set that is standard. And that's on top of them just not coming out with revive versions of specific mobile suits that have been needing it for years and still don't have it so I know that the plastic production has been very slow but damn Bandai needs to up their game.
Firstly, A tier bunbuns. I agree that Bandai has been spending their money poorly. I get that they want to eat up market share by expanding the types of kits apart from Gundam. They're focusing on the younger audience but their execution has been sloppy at best. P Bandai seems more prevalent because yes, it's a money grab, but it's really just tossing us a bone to gnaw at so we don't complain. I think the loudest among us complain but the massive majority stays silent and eats it up (hey that's me!) but honestly, I don't care about the sparse releases too much, like you mentioned, their current offerings are more than enough to satisfy the hobby.
Anyone saying gunpla is dead may be overstating things when a trickle instead of a stream is fine. I think what makes it difficult for some, and me included, is that these new kits have such unimaginable engineering that each new kit to release is a fantastic experience and I need MOAR! I don't think you need onslaughts of new releases to be relevant, I just hope they keep the wow factor up as those few new entries come.
I'm only interested in the Advance of Zeta kits these days. And since they only come out like every 6 months that means I'm saving up quite a bit of money that I used to burn on Gunpla.
We're definitely in the dark ages but that just means I'm saving up money. Can't complain too much. But also fuck SEED and it's discount UC looking designs.
Bro. Everything is up. Literally, every single hobby is pricing people out. Warhammer, tcg's, fishing, cycling, like all of it. Dont take bandai trying to remain profitable as an insult.
@@BlueAmerican26 The percentages these are increasing by are larger than inflation. Nobody is denying the cost of living crisis exists. Hope you voted blue.
Warhammer has always been overpriced trash
@@bushybeardedbearFunny, in my country voting blue would mean voting conservative, although I am guessing you mean the american way.
@@bushybeardedbearshould also consider that the yen has been incredibly devalued for a while now, paired with increases in raw material cost due to the conflicts in East Europe and West Asia. The potential tariffs that are coming into play in the US in January are going to have effects all over the global economy
In parts of the West, like the US/Canada, we're isolated from this, since the US is the largest oil producer (and consumer) in the world
I'm new into the hobby like a year or so. So i don't know what it was like before. There are plenty of things for me to build, but i do feel agrivated about slow reprints. On a more positive note tho. Bandai is a giant in plamo, they have a massive marketshare, and them slowing down new production leaves oppertunity for the new companies to start building some exciting plamo. We can already see some thirdparty entering the ring.
At it's best, I can see maybe a golden age of creative hg custom creations with the price increase. But I'm also upset that the incoming American tariffs stacked on Bandai's price increase.
It was so good when Bandai restock every kit from every grade, scale and year maintaining the price; and you could find kits in every japanese store. At least U.S. is a target market for Bandai. A lot of areas have been totally neglected.
The problem is Japan has no idea what fans want. It’s just like with Nintendo. Bad Japanese business practices. I’ve been in this hobby for over 18 years and I still have kits I want to build. Bandai needs to wake up and realize how many old kits need to be updated. I’m tried of seeing just more HG’s that no one really wants besides new hobbyists. This is still the best past time to have and I will continue this hobby even when I’m old and grey
Nintendo releases a lot of things fans want could you give me an example
It’s just how anti consumer they are. How streamers can’t play their games without being flagged by them.
Hikaru no kyojin a japanese ultraman toys reviewer said bandai apparently bandai stoping china manufacturing factory and move to vietnam because the cost of producing goods in china have been up and make the price to high, that's also why the recent new toys from bandai have many quality control problem
Interesting! This reminds me to check the manufacturing place of my recent figures...
@citrusjuicebox yeah and according to hikaru no kyojin all the small shokugan candy toys already moved to vietnam, i don't know about dx tho because bandai china have theirs own products different from their japanese counterpart
I've been looking for either an MS-06F or J type mass production MG Zaku 2.0 for less than 50 dollars since 2020 and I still haven't found anyone selling them for less than like... $90 on the aftermarket. It's ridiculous. I don't even wanna talk about how long it's been since I've seen Mass Production Gelgoog 2.0 out there. :/
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I definitely agree with some of your observations and criticisms.
The whole price raising thing honestly doesent suprise or bother me too much since with inflation being so high it was bound to happen at some point and prices stayed the same for a long time now.
What bothers me more personally is the general price hike of gunpla. mgs are releasing slower and keep getting more expensive (with even full mechanics kits now costing more than similarly sized mgs used to) and even hgs are starting to creep up to being 30$ as a base line.
Combine all of that with bandais awful distribution outside of japan and everything is getting prohibitively expensive.....
One thing that unexpectedly helped rekindle my interest in the hobby recently has been trying out other model kit lines from china since those keep getting better quality wise at prices that are more reasonable than bandais current output.
Since you're already having to limit which kits you want to get based on what you want to display with limited shelf space those kits might not be very interesting in your case.
Its definitely an odd time for gunpla. I think the quality of releases is better than ever imo but between premium bandai kits and distribution issues and scalping getting kits just feels like a headache now.
Im interested in how things will develop but if bandai keeps gouging prices and make even more kits premium I reckon 3d party companies will just become more and more prevalent.
I'll start by stating that I basically stopped purchasing from WOTC to switch my hobby to Gunpla. With that being said, I'm not happy to hear that this is a concern with Bandai. I'm too fresh into the Gunpla world to feel these affects personally, but id like avoid being in another Consumer vs. Corporation, if you catch my drift.
42% price increase. Gotta get some Master Grade before it's too late
its a shame that very few MG stuff is worth your money. unless you are a skilled modeller that paints and customize the kit.
@optiondezzo1513 yeah. I only buy it if i wanna customize the kit. Usually I just buy Hgs for straight build. MGs have such a high price in the West its annoying to get one at a reasonable. I doubt this is gonna make it better
@BlueAmerican26 I literally posted the price list from Bandai and linked the source. Are you illiterate?
@@citrusjuicebox oh no, i was not referring to the price increase in the past. I forgot that the price will be raised from 2% to 42.9% next year. No need to go after my throat like that
@DrunkenSoda My comment wasn't directed at you, sorry
On the gunpla side, yes 100% it sucks not having lots of releases like back in the day. But as someone who loves anything mecha and has also watched a lot of other series, we've been eating good. The Moderoid line from GSC is the gift that keeps on giving. So many IP's that I never would have expected to be made into model kit form actually happened thanks to them. I also appreciate Bandai continuing to put out kits from SRW OG like the most recent Gunleon kit. I'll give em that. I guess now is a better time than ever for people to venture out and to try different plamo kits from different series since gunpla releases are very slow.
never picked up any WfM kits due to the excessive use of C-clips which often easily wears out. Also noticed the price increase for newer kits with the new Seed Freedom kits nearly hitting the cost of a Master Grade while the EG Strike is sold out, the Striker pack price is almost the cost of a full HGUC kit. Just glad to maintain a backlog and will probably just clear them slowly.
To me WfM C-clips seem to be stronger than EGs or 30MM kits. My Schwarzette and Demi Trainer that I've posed as much as one of my 30MM kits are way more solid. Only time will tell for years and years in the future though.
@@Default653 C clips of those WfM kits is an overblown issue imo.
I've yet to see Bandai recall products because the C-Clips massively failed.
@@achaoPSG Companies won't recall products based on user wear and tear.
@@bushybeardedbear That's my point. People acting so outraged at C-Clips you'd think it's a failure on Bandai during the production process.
C-clips were a design choice that works well enough.
@@achaoPSG I guess I can see how you meant that. Wasn't clear but I get you now.
they havent rerun the TR6 series for 4 years, and even if they do, theres no way im competing with all the scalpers.
More food for the bunnies, I guess? You're into Flag of the Titans, ain't cha?
I sure am
Have you read the manga?
@@alexanderchapman6529 Nope.
This 3rd party water is pretty warm, man, come on in!
I feel like Bandais biggest blunder is focusing too much on P-Bandai and universe Bias, we've been getting soooo many Gundam seed and UC kits cause they sell well. Even then Seed has been dominating the market so much, like how the MG F90 was P Bandai but the Eclipse was general release like what?. And all the recent announcements have all been Seed related, hell we got a new Seed movie announcement before Hathaways Flash 2
Instead of spending a boat-load of money on that stupid Metavverse project, why couldn’t Bandai/Sunrise make remastered versions of old Gundam video-games from the 1990s and 2000s, but with better graphics? (One game I often think of is “Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: the Blue Destiny.” 🔵)
is that west lake sammamish?
P-Bandai's biggest issue is that it's pre-order +10USD per month bullshit. They just need to turn it into a normal hobby shop with in-stock items, free shipping thresholds, hobby supplies (which they have, somewhat), and PWs. Though I guess it would hurt the normal hobby shops even more if they made it no longer more expensive and worse to buy from. also, 2025 (especially mid-year) just seems like a lull year for the genre as a whole. High profile stuff is targeting 2026, the next Gundam anime is far more likely to release in 2026 than 2025, etc.
Why 2026? This year and 2025 are the anime and the hobby's 45th anniversary.
So why do you only build one type of model kit? Wave, Kotobukya, HMM, its ok to build other things 😅
As far as model kits, my interest is narrow, and gunpla uniquely delivers the narratives, designs, quality, and value that I enjoy. I'm not particularly interested in plastic model kits or figures in general.
Tbf your concerns are valid and i agree its bad that bandai is kind of neglecting gundams right now.
But imo as a business, the decisions u mentions shud have considered ROIs and such. I also think that the previous pandemic period could have affected what they are doing now.
Im just hoping that these other ventures would mean that they can sustain and result to them being able to create more gundam related products.