Encore 23 Fort Max

[swoop]

still not up at hlj or amiami , I thought they would of had them up by now

[GoktimusPrime]

That was bound to happen and one of the very reasons why you shouldn't rely on toys as an investment.

+1. And they would be the only people who stand to "lose" anything from a reissue. For those of us who just collect toys purely for the love/enjoyment and not for financial gain -- there's nothing to lose. Those of us who want the reissue are stoked, those who want the original will be happy because the aftermarket price will go down, and those who want neither - okay, they have nothing to gain, but nothing to lose either (it's more like, "Meh" - which is how I feel about most other Encores).

The number of original fort max's on ebay seems to have increased - people trying to get their money back before the price drop! I hope they then reissue this guy as grand too. That might get me excited about it.

I was talking about that to someone earlier this evening, and they speculated that TakTOM would be more likely to do Grand Max in a few years' time -- i.e. after Fort Max has done it's run. And that actually makes some sense. Fortress Maximus is a big f'expensive toy - no doubt's there. If you release Grand Maximus around the same time frame as Fortress Maximus, a lot of people are going to be more likely to choose one mould or the other rather than buying both. Let's say for example they announced that both would be released in 2013 or 2014 -- and say if something came up and I could only save up for one of them. Well, I already have a G1 Fortress Maximus, and as much as I'd like to get a minty reissue, if it came to the crunch I'd choose Grand Max over a Fort Max reissue, simply because I don't have a Grand Maximus. And ya know, I want a Fort Max reissue because my Fort Max is badly yellowed and missing accessories -- if my Fort Max was in better condition, I'd skip the reissue altogether... as I'm sure a lot of other people on this board are doing who already have a Fort Max that's in reasonably good or excellent condition.

Cos that's what I did with Encore Omega Supreme -- my G1 Omega Supreme is in good working condition, so I skipped the reissue. Then eHobby announced they were doing GADEP, a character I don't have, so I got that. And as we know, Encore Omega Supreme was a horrific shelf-warmer... and that's something TakTOM doesn't want. So it would be in their better interest if they just waited a year or a few years for the market to 'absorb' Fort Max stocks -- then do Grand Maximus. That way, the two Maximi won't be cross-competing with each other (as Omega Supreme and GADEP may have), and it would also give collectors who bought Fort Max time to financially recover and be in a better position to purchase Grand Max.

still not up at hlj or amiami , I thought they would of had them up by now

Japanese fans are saying that there's an information embargo in place atm, so companies/retailers shouldn't be leaking this information out. That's why TakaraTOMY told me that they had no plans to reissue Fortress Maximus when I called them yesterday. The operator herself may not have been aware of this or the embargo -- more likely her computer system would just tell her that there's nothing planned (because that's actually what she told me -- I could hear her typing away and she said that the system was showing her that they didn't have any information, so she told me that that TakaraTOMY "has no plans" to reissue Fort Max). It just seems that some retailers have chosing to break the embargo prematurely and even started taking pre-orders. But we can't really blame other retailers for "doing the right thing" by respecting TakTOM's embargo.

[Paulbot]

BBTS lowered their prices by $20 from their initial listings, down to $330 (or $380 for the impatient) (plus postage).