That's what I'm saying. Is he genius? I don't know. But I do know geniuses are legendarily different to deal with.

 

You might want to check out the link to Liketoys' Weibo account posted above. He's never said anything about having a team, much less the team being composed of several people who live outside of China, or that he's even willing to sell to people outside of China. But he did work with several Chinese KOLs/influencers to help promote his 3d printing and design service. Those influencers did do several photo ops to promote Liketoys goods and guess what, a great number of their Weibo-watermarked pics consistently ended up on Hutz' FB page with the watermarks being hastily scrubbed off or the pics cropped to avoid showing the watermarks. Some of the pics he posted come from other social media sites like Tieba Baidu etc that are much more difficult for foreigners to navigate through than Weibo, hence it is very likely he does know some dude in China who sends him pics from the local TF community and helps him buy stuff from there and whatnot, but still, that doesn't mean he is part of Liketoys.

Additionally, no Chinese distributor or retailer has ever heard anything concrete about this Metroplex being slated for mass production, but they all featured the Liketoys-designed Jinbao Devastator upgrade kit for sale almost as soon as Jinbao made the announcement while Hutz had basically nothing to say when people in the group asked him about this mass retail version. That alone says a lot.

 

Still makes me chuckle when ppl think this'll cost a grand.....if it ever got mass produced. International shipping costs alone would take a mighty chunk from that.

At this point it'd be easier to sell the files and let the community crack on themselves.

 

Only some comments on his weibo posts saying he hopes to get it to mass production. No price range yet.

 

it's what i've been sayin, gimmie dem filez

 

From what I have gathered so far is that Hutz is a Asian Canadien (he asks for payment in Canadian dollars) who has a connection to Liketoys in China and orders from them for those of us who want these products and marks them up a ton. For instance, I bought the Computron upgrade kit from him. Found the listing he orders from on goofish (which Abbey the Cat from showz confirmed) that it is a used sale site. He charged $333 while the site states approx $150US and shipping cost $34. It was shipped directly to me, so Whoever Liketoys is can ship international but you have to have a connection to purchase.

 

Liketoys doesn't ship overseas directly themselves. The Baohero service you used in the other thread is a proxy shopping service, not any kind of "special connection". Baohero, SuperBuy, ezship etc. are all China-based proxy shopping services and there's a few dozen of these out there, though only a handful are willing to deal with XianYu because it's a 2nd-hand sales platform like you said, with minimal consumer protection. These proxy shopping agents have been around since Taobao's inception (and there's a 500-page thread here dedicated to it) which makes the Hutz character's routine very puzzling.

Anyway to get back on topic, since Liketoys is already in contact with Jinbao, a 3P/KO maker that happens to specialize in huge toys, it's highly probable that this Metroplex will be made by them or some other closely-related 3P manufacturer, and go through the same distribution avenues as regular (but huge) 3P toys. I doubt you'll need to use XianYu or even Taobao.

 

i don't need to click on any links to check. we all pretty much saw the red flags pop up about hutz. whenever he started saying this would not be available for preorder or purchase from any major 3p store. the moment he started talking about paypal and square space the dude outed himself.

but either way liketoyz really made a cool product and i would love to own one if he can find someone willing to put up the quarter mill to start production. or if he was just selling the files to the community i am a buyer.

but don't worry @Thighvastator if you even casually flip the pages of this thread. you will find out very fast how the community is responding to this whole thing.

 

as much as i want that to be true. that is kind of a huge reach there. it is one thing to ko little bots the size of soup cans. or run a small batch of an upgrade kit. we all know that doesn't cost much money in the grand scheme of things.

it is another to mass produce one of largest transforming toys in history of earf. that is quite a feat since this isn't backed by a mega corp. that is no small task we are talking about. the tooling alone will probably be 250 thousands right out the gate. not to mention the small army of assemblers and the logistical nightmare shipping this will end up as.

i and most of the community would be much happier with a smaller version that is the same size as the titan plex we have now or a little bigger if they are looking for a new size.

but either way it is whatever.

 

There's a free one by Solus3d on Cults. I'm printing that   plus r3mixing it with Sam's Forge Microplex

 

i found your thread previously lol. i'll probably undertake a similar project in the future. New printer ordered last night actually.

 

Ayy! Good luck on your endeavor  

 

So this was never happening to begin with

 

i think i had 6 or 7 posts deleted by the mods for suggesting that this was a little scammy lol.

 

Lewin resources is doing it!

 

Maybe it's previously in this thread but there is a few second clip in a YouTube video showing what looks like to be a glorious prototype.

 

There are no prototypes, just a 3D printed metroplex by the guy who makes 3D printed kits.