I found out the reason. You're not gonna like it.

Basically, due to scalping Bandai has now put restrictions on most every hobby retailer they give stock of their model kits too -- including that they are not allowed to sell to other countries anymore. HLJ is holding out for now but who knows how long that'll last; and I'm not sure how it'll effect pre-orders. Also worth noting that this is just for shops Bandai sells stock directly to, so naturally resellers like Mandarake will continue as normal (though you can probably assume higher demand, obviously).

Love archaic business practises!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...azXoAA8qN-.png

Geez, it was going good for the first paragraph, and then it just falls apart.
On paper it seems like a good idea, but that'll just make looking for P-Bandai stuff a lot more difficult, nay, just model kits in general. I haven't tried buying kits on, say, Amiami, but it'd be difficult looking for older P-Bandai kits now with this.

Gunpla supply out here locally is pretty scarce too unless you travel to well-developed places.

Probably not my place to say this too, since we already have an official P-Bandai store, but that place is pretty scarce too since they don't stock all the P-Bandai releases they put out. For one they didn't put in orders for the HG Qubeleys.

Just putting this out there, but there's a wonderful third party middleman service called wakuwakumono for those who are interested in buying stuff directly from Japan. I bought some stuff through them for a pretty reasonable price.

Thanks for letting us know, I’ll look into them myself.

Yeah, I saw, and it's stupid.

Yea, uuuuuuuuuh here's the Twitter thread, and a handful of people in the thread are basically saying, 'You're misconstruing that memo.'

https://twitter.com/AcePilotGunpla/s...51435110490113

What you're saying also misconstrues what's being said. Bandai is still placing restrictions on model kits being sold internationally and it is the reason why AmiAmi and 1999 are no longer listing FRS kits for international customers; the bit that the original poster got wrong is that the actual limitation is on shops that did not have a limit of 1 pre-order per customer (which is why HLJ is still fine). It's definitely not as bad as it seemed at first, but it's certainly knocked out a lot of options for purchasing

Fair enough. Will hope that we'll be getting easier ways to purchase Bandai products, but it'll probably still be difficult. Big ol' RIP either way.

Looks like Nin Nin Game has the newest models up for sale. Thankfully looks like we'll still be able to buy kits somehow.
https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/kame...-spirits-.html

Strange how low the prices are. Either way HLJ is still available