まんだらけ (MANDARAKE)

In store shopping - always a pleasure to shop at any Mandarake. The staff are very passionate, courteous and knowledgeable. Their products all have detailed labels telling you the condition or nature of the toy, they are quite transparent.

Online shopping - I don't have much experience with this, but so far they've been good.

Communication (telephone) - their phone system has an automated greeting and you enter a number depending on what the nature of your call is. Whenever I've called the Nakano store the staff have been super cool. For some reason I can never get hold of anyone at the Nagoya store though. The Nakano staff did a phone test for me and it worked fine for them... I'm not sure if the Nagoya store has an issue with receiving overseas phone calls.

Communication (email) - EXCELLENT! I sent them an email and they responded in under an hour! :eek: They can also communicate in English in emails too.

Selling - unless your toys is MISB and the box is in great condition, I don't think that it's worth selling toys at Mandarake. I sold a Leader Class Platinum Edition AOE Optimus Prime, loose with no box, and they only paid me 1000JPY for it. It was a freebie from Hasbro and I just wanted to get rid of it because I didn't want to take it back with me to Australia, so I didn't care. And I imagine that a lot of people selling toys to Mandarake are just looking to offload stuff to clear space at home. The upside is that you can BUY toys for really cheap prices if you don't care about them being mint sealed. Even loose mint toys are pretty cheap! Mandarake prizes sealedness above all else, and this is reflected in the higher prices that they charge for sealed toys. And I suspect that you might fetch better prices when selling sealed toys.

I’ve made a good dozen orders through Mandarake over the years and they have all been awesome. I can’t speak or wrote any Japanese but their staff always do a more than commendable job with English that it makes me feel bad for being a failure at their language!

Postage is what it always is, but they could really teach the LEGO group a thing of fifteen about packaging items for long haul travel!

I had my BTA Red Alert ordered from Mandarake but had a friend in Japan post it to me. Worked out to be nearly the same as what Mandarake would've charged for postage anyway. I'm currently waiting for an MP Delta Magnus to arrive - I paid for EMS instead of SAL like I normally do cos I find that with larger boxes the price difference tends to be less (so I might as well pay a bit extra for faster shipping).

I actually emailed them in Japanese but they replied in English! :eek: :p
(they would obviously know that I'm in Australia from the online order that I'd done plus my account details)

Ordered two things and visited a few times and good. Fun fact: they once gave me special magical water which claimed to have many health benefits outside of just being water. I don't know if this is true because the only thing I felt afterwards was hydrated, but sometimes that in itself is magic. Anyway Mandarake good, etc.




(not a joke post srsly this happened)

I have made a few orders through Mandarake now and it's been nothing but positive. Every time they have shipped things out quickly, even on a Sunday. Well packed, etc. I have found some good bargains on older items through them.

I only urge people to check properly if the goods are genuine as I have seen fake SHF figures listed at normal prices. and if you are not careful, you will buy it.
However I have no issues otherwise even in second hand opened goods.
I save about $100

Received Big Convoy Matrix Buster version from Mandarake today, after ordering on March 30th. Not their fault at all for the delay, in fact they have been nothing but class throughout.
After I ordered the item, it became the situation that any postage method aside from DHL will not be able to leave Japan, so my delivery was returned to them.
They then contacted me to offer to resend the item by DHL for FREE, or they would be willing to hold and send via SAL later on. Naturally, I chose the former option.
I got tracking info from them last Friday and exactly a week later I have Big Convoy in hand. Very grateful to Mandarake for taking the extra step of offering a free postage upgrade when they didn't have to. :)