Vegeta Stressed Out Trying to Pre-Order Figuarts Super Saiyan 4 Goku

Sunday was internationally known as "Goku Day" (at least to those who care about Dragon Ball and anime). Part of the celebration was the announcement of a new movie coming in 2022! Of course, one more extra surprise was the opening of the pre-orders for one of the most sought after versions of Goku, which is his Super Saiyan 4 transformation from the 90s non-canon show Dragon Ball GT. The pre-orders went live 12 midnight in the US (4pm in Japan) and each household or account can only order one piece of this new Goku! You bet lots of Dragon Ball fans went insane upon finding out that this new Goku toy sold out within 20 minutes from most Japanese sites. Although there's going to be US and EU distribution, those are most likely to be siphoned by scalpers who would then sell these new Goku toys for twice or thrice the price (or more!).

Here's my recorded experience trying to secure one of the new Figuarts SSJ4 Goku and little angry Vegeta helped me pre-order it lol!

Haha from what I see you were finally lucky after four minutes of intense stress? How horrible that this also brings business opportunities for scalpers etc.

I remember when I was on vacation trekking with a friend in the middle of nowhere, and he was obsessed with ordering tickets for a concert which was so sold out in minutes. Humanity still hasn't found a fair solution for preordering limited stuff.

Yeah it's hard getting these nowadays! It's weird though. There are two types of releases for Figuarts Dragon Ball toys. This one that I ordered is actually a standard release that's supposed to be widely available at all stores. But this character is extremely popular, so even though it's limited to 1 per customer, it got sold out all over Japan too quickly.

The second type of release is the webshop exclusive where you have to order directly from the company (in this case, Bandai) and everything is made to order. Interestingly, these don't sell out quickly because there's a time frame when you can secure yourself an order, guaranteed. So pre-orders could be open for 1 month and you have all the time to decide on it. Unfortunately, with these webshop exclusives, you have to make a full payment on the spot! So you spend that money, and maybe wait 6 months to maybe more than a year before your toy arrives!

The "standard" or general release gets sold out too fast because people can pre-order them but they aren't required to pay yet. You only pay for these when they're actually in stock. That's why it's a lot easier for people, especially scalpers, to amass as many orders as possible. Then they'll try to re-sell the pre-orders to people who missed out! The scalpers can't do that with the webshop exclusives because of the huge amount of expenses they'll have to deal with and they won't have their money without the toys in stock.

I wonder how tough it is to get a ticket for a concert. As far as I know, scalpers use the same technology to quickly snatch pre-orders away on the internet. They can configure those bots or programs they use on their computer to make the orders. It was sad when the "Sneaker Scalpers" took notice on another brand of toys called NECA (which sells Ninja Turtles stuff) and they started grabbing every pre-order. The company NECA was forced to create their own pre-order system similar to the Figuarts webshop exclusive to fight off the scalpers so that the Ninja Turtle fans themselves can buy them lol!

Good thing you don't collect Macross or some popular SOC that Bandai puts out. This is pure PO madness. No joke. Wake up a few minutes before 3am, load up my go to stores (yes that's right, more than one store). Login to all accounts. Go to product page. Once 3am EST rolls mash that f5 key and hit the add to cart once it's available and checkout FAST. But even with that you can still get cart jacked up the WHAZOO. This is done with all go to stores. Once the dust settles (less than 5 minutes) everything is sold out and I'm out of luck. Did this a few times and said F* Bandai. I'm done. It's pure frustration.