Now that the Victory Two is finished, let’s try out some poses:
Eh … sorry, but I can’t do it. That pose would look fine for just about any other model, but the V2 looks downright naked without its Wings of Light.
Thankfully, I have some we can use:
But first things first. There’s a lot I want to talk about regarding these Wings, and that’s what we’re going to do in this post. If you want to see how they look on the model, you’ll have to wait for the next (and final) post, where I’ll actually get around to taking photos.
I try really hard not to make too many assumptions about my potential reading audience, so I’m going to go over a bunch of stuff that veteran builders probably already know. I feel like it’s important for all of us to be on the same page, so with that in mind, here is everything you need to know about this product - and everything I learned in the process of getting it.
The Wings of Light are a Premium Bandai Product
I know this because, well, here they are on the Premium Bandai website. But I also know this because of the box.
I’m not entirely sure why, but the company insists on shipping their P-Bandai exclusive products in monochrome boxes as a way of differentiating them from their normal retail stock. You still get whatever artwork they came up with - it’s just devoid of color:
Regardless of their reasons for differentiating the packaging, I find it interesting that they chose to make the P-Bandai boxes uglier. It reminds me a bit of Supreme and other brands which intentionally make products that are very expensive, very limited, and exceedingly ugly (though I’m not saying that that’s Bandai’s rationale).
Cost Savings?
As for what Bandai’s rationale is, I’m not certain. I did a bit of research, and the one explanation that came up most often is that it’s a cost thing. P-Bandai items are made in small print runs, and they aren’t supposed to be sold in stores (though more on that later). The argument is that it makes no sense to print full-color boxes for something that’s never going to be on a store shelf, and which is likely to be tossed by the customer once they have it.Is that the explanation? Who knows, but it sounds reasonable.
How P-Bandai Works
In my experience, here is how Bandai manages to sell their premium and exclusive wares:
- Once a month, they drop a new slate of items for sale on their website
- You can usually find out what they’re going to be a day or two ahead of time, and the sale always goes live at the same time of day (9:00 EST for me)
- You scramble to get in your order as fast as possible before the item sells out
- When you buy from P-Bandai, you’re not really buying a product, but rather a preorder for the product. And once you have it, you have to wait at least six months for the preorder to ship. For example, I made my first order direct from P-Bandai in June, and it won’t arrive until December at the earliest.
- I don’t know why there is a six-month lead time, but it is what it is.
Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that. This only works if you live in a territory that P-Bandai sells to. For a while that was limited to only Japan and parts of South East Asia. (the U.S. was added in recent years, and I’m honestly not sure where else they currently sell to).
That means there are a lot of Gunpla fans out there who can’t buy directly from P-Bandai even if they wanted to. Which leads to my next point.
There is a Grey Market for P-Bandai
And I’m not entirely sure of what drives it. I know for sure that there are some independent hobby stores (both online and brick and mortar) whose owners go directly to the P-Bandai website to try and secure products, just like you or I would. They then resell them at a higher price to earn their profit (I know this because I found at least one hobby store owner who discussed this very topic in a youtube video).
However, I’m not convinced that this is the only option. If you look at the product listing for the Wings of Light, you’ll notice that the last time they were sold was in 20170.
However, I bought mine in the winter of 2021 - which is obviously several years later - from a reseller. Which means one of two things:
- They ordered it in 2017 and then sat on the inventory until 2021
- The reseller happened to stumble upon it some time last year while browsing through some other kind of grey market
I seriously doubt they’d sit on merch for multiple years, so I don’t think Option #1 is reasonable. Which means that Option #2 must be true. I just wish I had more details on the “who” and the “where”, and how this other grey market works.
Caveat Emptor
In regards to this practice of reselling, I’m of two minds. There is an argument to be made that it works as a sort of service; if you couldn’t afford an item when it originally went on sale, or you simply didn’t know that it did go on sale, doing business with a reseller may give you an opportunity to buy the item that you wouldn’t otherwise have (albeit at a higher price).On the other hand, one musn't confuse a service with a charity. I’ve seen some resellers that charge a relatively modest premium - say, $20 over the original asking price. But I’ve also seen far more egregious markups. In fact, the Wings of Light are one such example. They originally cost about $22, but I bought them for somewhere near $80. In my “defense”, I used credit card points, so it was essentially free money. But I still felt dirty essentially justifying their scalper's ransom through my purchase.
The bottom line is that, as with any reseller of limited-run pop culture junk, you need to do your homework to understand whether or not you’re getting a deal you’re happy with. Chances are high that you’ll end up paying more than you'd like.
Not a Great Value?
The Wings of Light are arguably a bad deal even at their original $22 MSRP. This is literally all you get in the box:
Two sets of wings, some Action Base Adapters, and a stand. I’ve purchased several High Grade model kits - with more plastic and more detailing - than this. My only conjecture is that perhaps they felt as if they couldn’t justify having a P-Bandai product dip into the sub $20 range, so they used that as a sort of price ceiling.
Either way, you should be aware that buying these Wings means overpaying to improve the aesthetics of one particular model kit (one that arguably should have included these pieces to begin with). You’ll have to ask yourself whether or not that’s worth it.
Not Leaping to Conclusions
Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to imply that all P-Bandai things are a bad value, just this one. I don’t have enough experience with other products to make any kind of general observation.Assembly
Maybe “assembly” is the wrong word. All you have to do to attach the wings is open up the two back thrusters on the model, and plug them in:
It’s a perfect fit, so you won’t have to fiddle with it much at all.
Note that even one wing adds a lot of weight. I don’t recommend using them for any sort of standing pose.
Conclusion
This is not a good value for money at any real-world price. And as I’ve just described, the process of getting something like this is more of a hassle than it should be.
And yet - and I hate saying this - I don’t regret the purchase. I’ll explain why in the next (and final) post.