Is anyone else concerned about the Ft-19 price at Bombusbee/Heattoy? It seems to be $50 deposit + $200 balance + $25 shipping = $275. That's seriously higher than any other store including US retail. They discount for their Whatsapp fangroup... but I'm not sure how much.

What was your experience @Moos Crew? I think you ordered with the for Apache?

Kinda makes me concerned about some of my other POs with Bombusbee/Heattoy but I suppose I won't ring any alarm bells yet...

 

^That is why I don't pre-order stuff on sites that require a large deposit like that up front.

 

If you preordered you’ll get a code that reduces the final balance payment by $60, but they still tack on the shipping. My total altogether was $210.99, which is still more expensive than if I’d just waited and bought it from somewhere else when it was in stock.

According to the tracker, mine should hopefully arrive today.

 

I think the deposit:expected-price ratio is what matters in terms of guaranteeing a good price with a PO. This was basically a 30% deposit so they kinda have everyone by the balls, lol. You can't walk away from that 30%. I think I'm going to make a 10% expected deposit my max tbh. That way I'll never pay more than 10% over the best price unless there's an actual shortage of bots lol.

 

Got my ship notice from ShowZ early this morning so he's on his way! I am soooooo happy with their recent changes in shipping! Even though I got notice this morning, tracking shows it went out yesterday and has already been picked up by the courier, gone through a hub, and handed off to the airline!

 

That's certainly an improvement! Their shipping has never been terrible imo, but that, like, week notice between shipping and actual tracking was a bit sucky.

 

A3U shipped

 

I've heard and witnessed them have great shipping procedures but within the last 6 months I've had multiple packages/orders take almost 2 weeks before getting a ship notice and then having a stupid ridiculous time frame with SAL so things got bad all around. I'm still waiting for my Zeta Superitron to get returned and reshipped since they shipped it SAL right before making changes. I wish they would have held onto it for a couple days and shipped with the new company because I'd have it already instead of waiting for them to still get it back.

 

SAL Brutality strikes again.

Saltality?

What does SAL stand for anyways?

Slow Airline Lading?

Seriously Annoyed Loaders?

Slow And Lingering?

Spend And Lose?

Spare Airline freeLoaders?

 

The price was $199 with $50 deposit. When they requested the final payoff they offered a $60 discount coupon to cover the deposit plus $10 more bringing the final price to $189.99. Then they slapped that bullshit $25 shipping fee on that was never supposed to be a part of the deal. So the final price was ~$215 ($189.99 + $25), not $275. Seeing this on sale at ShowZ and Baba is pissing me off though because it was supposed to have free shipping from the day it was listed there.

This pretty much forced me to diversify my PO locations because if I get burned like this again I'll stop ordering there.

Edit: Here's what my order page says but don't be fooled by that "Grand Total" price. The coupon savings included the $50 deposit + the $10 extra discount. So the Grand total was $189.99 + $25.10 shipping. Hope that clears anything up if it didn't make sense.

 

Yeah I've had some packages in the first part of the year take a while to arrive. I chalked it up to pandemic hangover/shipping issues, so I'm very glad to see things improving again. I will say I remain quite pleased with how they package things- the plastic corner protectors are great (I use em when I sell stuff on now so always handy) and fairly dense bubble wrap.
Which is just as well; our Royal Mail depots seem to love drop kicking boxes around. Fingers crossed for you man, hope it gets to you soon! Awesome set of figures.

 

 

Unpopular opinion. Got Apache today and other than briefly seeing a friends this is my first time actually dealing with it in person. Paint wise it is great and pretty spot on to Springer, but for now I’m standing by my personal opinion. Allen looks better for toon accuracy other than the yellow toes.

 

Options are great because people see things in different ways. Personally I'm not a fan of a lot of Unique Toys offerings and Allen is one of them. To me he looks far from toon accurate and has some super chunky proportions. I will agree with Apache I see some things that Fans Toys missed with the aesthetic that takes away from toon accuracy. With Springer, one of the better looking figures (aside from head sculpt) is the $60 Open and Play Big Spring. I'm still amazed how a company does an over sized KO of Titans Return Galvatron to start then makes their own mold of a figure making him look that good. If he had some paint, revised head sculpt, and the tab fixed on the torso, he'd be like a whole different/better of a figure.

 

If only UT Allen was colored like the cartoon, it would have been my Springer.

The helicopter mode on this one though is hard to beat.

 

Mine arrived today and has similar marks, although nowhere near as obvious. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed them out.

 

Personally I gotta agree. Not the biggest fan of Allen either. If I had to point out really one problem I had with the design, that face is just.... not for me, haha.

Big Spring for what it is, I have to agree definitely gets closer. And for what was IIRC $60, it isn't the greatest, but a good effort either way.

Though with Apache i'm more of a fan of, it's not the absolute perfect Springer in general (Saltus beats it out in articulation, for example), but I really like the look of it more than most of if not all the competition.

 

In stock @tcp
Fans Toys FT19 Apache (Springer)

 

Does anyone have loose shoulders or ankles on their Apache? Another group I'm in is complaining quite a bit :/

 

Mine just shipped from my stash yesterday. It took a couple days longer than usual to get it sent out. But I'll keep an eye on mine and post anything i see