I will never understand the utter contempt Bandai has for the rest of the world.

Reviews are in for the new SHF "Goku" Effect Set. And uh, if you were planning to get it to use with other figures, be very careful. Alot of the effect parts are very fragile and prone to snapping if you don't soften or oil them up first.

That sucks, saw some pictures and they looked good on Riders.

Oh wow that sucks to hear

I really appreciate having a direct buying option for Rider but I have beef with P-Ban's tax and shipping that ends up costing more than importing it directly myself

Yea, the shipping and handling from PB US is kind of absurd.

That and their pricing is already inflated to probably accommodate the import fees which is why their pricing doesn't match up to other regions' P-Bandai website prices or even middle-men sites.

Not trying to sound bitter or complaining but P-Ban US total pricing doesn't stand out from other US middleman sites like Tokullectibles.

BBTS is in their own category with their prices lol

I have the effect set and it's been fine for me. The breakage is most likely from how the connection pieces attach to the effect parts, via ball and socket joint that needs some pressure to pop into. It comes down to how you plug things in, so if you don't adjust or apply pressure in the right way, it's easy to see how they can break.

I have not done extensive research on what the JPN pbandai prices are, but my understanding is if something costs 9,000 yen on jpn pbandai, they will make it cost $90.00 on US pbandai. An exchange rate of 100 yen per dollar, whereas in real life it?s been 140-130 yen per dollar.

So, if they are doing that, then it?s definitely gonna be a big increase in cost.

Also an absolute shame for all the countries that don?t have their own pbandai.

I am only speculating that they Pbandai US set the exchange rate at 1:100 because they don't want to constantly adjust the price if there is a currency fluctuation. More $ margin to them and it looks better pricing something in the incremental of $5 (ie $80, $85, $90 etc) instead of $67.79 on the webpage.

I am happy that there's pbandai in US, but I'll still shop through hobby genki/kuramatoys/ninningame/okiniland before buying it through pbandai US as a last resort. I am based in nyc too so it's 9% tax on top of figure plus $10 shipping so most of the time middleman sites are the best to buy from.

Tokullectibles/BBTS for pbandai items are even crazier so only if it's sold old everywhere.