Has anyone else noticed that Chinese toymakers are basically putting out the best products in the boutique/high-end toy-space right now?>SexyIce muscled into TEST/Sentinel's space with a more active release schedule and better value.>Hiya muscling into SHMA's space, same as above>JoyToy dominating 1:18 scale and Warhammer franchise>INart and LPZZ dominating the high-end DC comics/live action spaceThose are just the ones I'm most familiar with due to my own collection, but I'm sure there's abunch more I'm not mentioning, there's a ton of 3rd party options in the DBZ and Transformers scenes that rival or surpass the "official" lines.
Yeah couldn't really you the last time I bought a Japanese figure. Even when they look interesting they are always twice as expensive for half as much and then cost an arm and a leg to ship when they do finally release.
>>11655332>WarhammerFag
>>11655332>there's a ton of 3rd party options in the DBZ and Transformers scenes that rival or surpass the "official" lines.None are making Cybertron or Armada
>>11655332China surpassing Japan in toy industry is pretty much the same story of China surpassing Japan in consumer electronic or automobile industry: OEM becoming OBM. COVID and Trump's trade war really accelerated the process because Chinese toy manufacturers had to invest in their own or other local design team when foreign order declined significantly during that period.
>>11655332A shame in most cases they don't do reissues, once you missed the preorder you have to pay rape prices in the aftermarket.
>>11655332Problem is they are much harder to order. Limited places carry them and some sites are shady and force you to deposit without telling you what the full price will be
In the Transformers space the most interesting and boundary pushing shit comes from both official and unofficial 3P. On the flip side, some of the most safe and boring garbage is also present. Still, there's enough hands in the pot that you get inside-out movie formers, all in one combiners, and legends bots that put larger scales to shame. Mainline and MP have waffled back and forth in quality for more than a decade now.>>11655363They were doing Armada and Cybertron before Hastak circled back to them. The best Armada Starscream you can get is the legends scale from Mechanical Skull and they're now making a Demolisher of all characters.
>>11655464Which ones are hard to order? Honestly I haven't had trouble ordering from 5k toys, bombusbee or ShowZ/gundammit.
>>11655332They're just as bad quality as the rest.
>>11655332Forgot to mention:>Snail-shell BTFOing figma when it comes to anime gooning figures>>11655666Not the ones I've put hands on. Way better quality control than SHF, mafex or Revo.
>>11655332>Hiyaonly company that is actual qualityAll the other companies on your list make toys that are brittle, poorly sculpted, poorly constructed, poorly painted, badly engineered and/or in a wonky scale nobody wants.And despite being of poorer quality than Japanese toy companies, they have the nerve to charge just as much as if their products came out of the first world.
China is great. I want to live there and buy kino toys and get them cheaper and faster and I also want a qt Chinese gf
>>11655671>chinks give better quality control and cheaper production cost to their own slop
My fellow Pokemon collectors will probably vouch with me that Blokees has been making really great Pokemon figures. Tons of poseability, some unique picks (Machop, Scyther etc) and for literally pennies on the dollar (The first two i imported were about $3 each, the larger Scyther ran to about $15)
>>11655671Hyper Bodies are designed by a chinese team
XIANG PINK XIOU CHENG DENG POW DUU WOOO TUTEN FO MAO
>>11655332>Hiya muscling into SHMA's space, same as abovelol, no>>11655671that's not a Figma, fucking idiot
>>11655784>that's not figma it's just GSC!!!!Ok whatever, my point still stands, SS is higher quality than Figma.
>>11655804Funny that you chose Grisa to prove your point. SS do a great job when it comes to simplistic designs such as Aileen or Lustia, but Grisa is a mixed bag. Her hair gets in the way of her arms, her hip joints offer a fine range of motion, sure, but they're awkward to pose and due to her butt sculpt you can hardly sit her down normally. While figma can sometimes nail more complicated designs like Falslander line, most recent 2B and Scarlet from Nikke.And yeah, hyperbody is made by GSC Shanghai, not Max Factory. Different line.
>>11655360>shipping This is a big one for me too, shipping from China to Canada is sooooo much cheaper than shipping from Japan. Especially when I order from Aliexpress, shipping is literally free and they never disclose the full value of the package so my shit-eating government does not get their pound of flesh.
>>11655821It's almost like if he's talking shit because he doesn't buy toys
i like my chinese funwhole!
>>11655834I don't? Maybe you are projecting again.
>>11655633Bombusbee don't handle the tariffs for you. Gundamit is refusing to disclose full prices on many items now, and 5k doesn't have inart preorders or hiya for that matter.
>>11655890Yeah I can't speak to the American experience, blame retard-in-chief for that. Why would they take on the tariff expenses for you?Gundammit posts listings before there are really any actual details published, just wait for the full-price to be announced.
>>11655666Not really, Unkval Eliminator is a high quality toy combined with great articulation and rad design, the no reissue policy from Sexyice caused the prices to reach absurd peaks.
>>11655332Aren't all toys chinese or Vietnamese or some other country with lax labor laws? Japan doesnt really make any mass produced toys anymore.
>>11656062You're mixing up manufacturing with designing and producing.
>>11656077China does designing? Or are they just copying and stealing?
>>11656291Yes, China is also designing figgies now. Snail Shell are a good example since they are making characters that they pay the artists to use the design of as well as paying for licenses. There are a few others that are making their own stuff instead of being IP thieves , or doing Chink public domain shit like Journey to the West and RotK.
>>11656291Mix of both. Some, usually independent factories, churn out bootlegs using existing molds or 3D files, or even modify existing files to create somewhat original products. But then you have companies like Blokees, Inart, LPZZ, who get official licenses and design their own products, others like Fury Toys, Sexy Ice that design their own original ideas, and still some like Mety Toyz that design their own products but of existing licenses without the actual licenses.
>>11655332Shame they can't design their own robot figure that isn't just sharp jaggy lines everywhere and covered in greebles like it's some skin disease.
>>11655332They're definitely getting good but I don't think they're better. They're usually 1:10 despite being advertised as 1:12, QC can still be a gamble and most of their stuff is OCs, which isn't a bad thing necessarily but if you're after a particular license then your choices are much reduced.There's definitely some good stuff coming out of China though. Love me some JoyToy.
I'm pretty sure the company who did this Waldo is Chinese. I NEVER buy figures like this, but I saw the accessories and I saw that it comes with cloth clothing and I just had to get it. Grabbed it from Amazon way back. The box has a beautiful Waldo books pattern. Tried to look up info for the company back then and I just assumed it was Chinese because the box info just led to some Facebook page. I have every Waldo book, some are first prints, the soft covers, and the deluxe hardcovers. I just really like the artwork and the fact that it's all hand made. But away, the figure is really good quality and the accessories are all different materials. Would love a new Popeye like this.
>>11656029
Tunshi studios is another Chinese brand no? They made these pretty incredible looking Metal-slug figures. Don't have them myself but I have heard good things.
>>11655332"dominating the high end dc action space" their figures aren't even out yet... LOL
>>11656511shame the girls looks like shitty cosplayers
>rise of chinalol china is failing so horribly they have to pay breadtubers to shill for them.
>>11656599>seething mutt noises
let's see...jap toys are made in chinachink factory worker wages rising is the reason why toy prices went batshit.chinks also keep fucking up QC on jap figures.meanwhile chink toys are great with sharp paint jobs, no breakage, better value and more accessories.it's ALMOST like they are sabotaging the jap toy market for their own gain, imagine the shock.
Exssrion and Earnest Core Craft come to mind, too. The former can be a bit overpriced, but still nice (their Swimsuit Linya especially, I'm surprised there are so few articulated figurines of relatively petite ladies pandering to cute feet enjoyers). ECC's Robot Build series can have some horribly stiff pegs, but Carbe (at least Universal Color, no idea about the Ant variants) is just a phenomenal desk toy if you can get him for the average aftermarket price of 4-5k yen.
>>11655332while the quality is great the scale is awful and they lying about the actually scale
>>11656511Got them all, they have some problems like shitty ankles on most of them, with zero range, fragile wrist pegs that need heating up to change hands, but I still like them. Those are the best figs based on Metal Slug so far. They have a really nice finish to them and present themselves nicely. Quality is there for sure, just few design flaws in first two waves.The best figure in terms of quality and handling I ever had is Sexy Ice Manticora. You really need to feel how those joints move, after this experience other figs feel like trash, and I mean it. I skipped the Mantis because I though it would be just another weird fetish line for gooners, wasn't keeping attention so missed the Eliminators. Now I have regrets. Hope they do reissues someday.
>>11657056
>>11655751I hope they make a Gallade kit next, he's cool and underrated as fuck
>>11655751>>11655751can confirm the blokees line has been peak for pokemon, they dont feel like cheap kits either, they feel pretty surdy and quality, not unpainted plastic. they feel like a very solid figure and have some incredible motion, even on the little figures that usually dont get any articulation, very excited to have some small pokemon that have any articulation.
>>11657131I got Meowscarada on a whim and she's really good. Just ordered Scyther, Squirtle, Bulbasaur and Corphish too.
>>11657056you talk about them being fragile, but have you broken anything?
>>11655360The tariff shit has really destroyed importing figures from Japan.For whatever reason duties fees from Japan rack up hundreds of dollars with just a few items. Chinese shit doesn't despite this whole thing starting as a one-sided pissing match with China in the first place.
>>11657304China companies are able to absorb the cost, because they're a third world country and majority of toy makers made very little money, due to all the [practically] slave labor involved.So collector companies from China's prices were super inflated, so they're able to take any hits and will lie on custom forms when shipping overseas.
>>11657057STUPID SEXY ICE MANTICORA
>>11657305Tariffs
>>11655332Has anyone noticed that chinkoid shills are on every board trying desperately to pretend that China's economy is still booming and worthy of investment to save themselves when aggressive sanctioning and tarriffs have ruined whatever was left of their economy after China first got caught lying about a third of their economy actually existing, and then distributing fake precious metals out of Chinkoid banks and bullion exchanges?Pepperidge Farm remembers.
>>11657353>China knows everything about the toy business from materials to engineering since they have produced every damn toy in the last decades>They start making their own because they have everything in-house-They easily sell worldwide because that's basically what chinese do WTF CHINESE SPIES SHILLING IN MY BOARD
>>11657278Haven't broken them, but I'm extra careful, using hair dryer each time. I know two collectors who broke those wrists. Tunshi actually improved those with their Iori.Only time I broke one was Romankey's Algar, but they included some spares so I'm glad for that.
>>11657353honestly, it feels like the 2010s local electronics store that was as good or better than Best Buy.They used to sell quality brand name TV sets, blu ray drives, speakers. Sony, Klipsch, Panasonic, Polk, Pioneer, JBL, Samsung, etc. They carried computer parts of all kinds. You could buy data drives of all kind. Internal. External. Memory cards. In other sections you'd find cameras, camcorders, DIY tools.Then they slowly started phasing out quality known brands. No more Panasonic, but they did have Shiny Precious Smile TVs. No more PNY products, but they did have Mr Exquisite memory cards. Then DIY section disappeared for a food section. The camera and camcorder section was only stuff from before 2010. The speaker section only has no name LED rainbow bluetooth speakers.Sony and Samsung products are still being sold, but they're no longer center stage like they used to be. Instead, Chinese products are put up into the front.So because they sold only cheapshit, fewer and fewer people started going to your store. And since fewer people started going, they started selling fewer electronics and brought in even more Chinese products, and thus, your local electronic store was forgotten and closed down.This is /toy/ today. The Revoltech thread seems dead, because people are posting a Chinese product that sorta looks like a Revoltech. The DC General has a bunch of Chinese DC brands that no one talks about or owns, because they have odd sculpts and are W Scale instead of 1:10 or 1:12. There board is dominated by Marvel, LEGO, and Transformers, because no one buys or cares about smaller toylines that used to make up a good portion of the board, and each of these topics has its own shills pushing Chinese brands (official, wannabes, and bootlegs). If you look in the catalog, only the first 3 pages has threads that are active. Pages 4-10 has 3 Marvel Generals, 12 DC Generals, 7 Transformers generals, etc.
>>11657430I wouldn't mind a Chink Brands General or smth like that, I would have a place to post brands nobody gives a single fuck about, and purists would stfu.
>>11657430>sbubby opinionYou are a direct reason of that cunt. Go away.
there should be a /csg/ chinkshit general like /g/ or something desu>>11657424>romankey algarthat guy's plastic is so brittle it's unrealhe broke on me 3 times and all of which i had to get replacement joints shipped to me because it wasn't the hands or feet>upper joint for his crotch piece broke from being too tight with the torso>one of his knee joints snapped trying to move it because it was too tight and it's really thin>the tail broke at the baseanyway 'luv sexyice but i had to use shock oil for both eliminator and manticora
>>11657448I'm so fucking stoked to get my Smashers. Manticora wants play mates.
>>11657448>that guy's plastic is so brittle it's unrealYeah, it feels like you could just turn it into a dust with your fingers.
>>11655332I got these premium priced coomodel knights recently and love how they look. Some terrible design choices that make them poor for posing, but still. Also saw this Count Duckula figure online from a Chinese company, I think they spot dead licences where they're unlikely to be sued.
>>11657517Also I just pre-ordered one of the Nottaa Toys horses since they looked cool, so hopefully they pair well. Another Chinese company from what I can tell.
>>11655898>Why would they take on the tariff expenses for you?Gundamit and 5k Toys do.>Gundammit posts listings before there are really any actual details published, just wait for the full-price to be announced.Not anymore. There's several figures like AY Juri or Kaiyodo anime Harley Quinn that are almost out and they are still sitting there saying the full price is unknown even though other sites list what price they will be charging. Gundamit don't update their listings well at all.
>>11657436We don't need a catch all. Who cares if people want to bring up that Chong Fong Delicatessen's Wolverine figures are coming out next month in the MArvel General, because it's still related to Marvel. IT belongs in the Marvel General.If someone wants to talk about Zhao Toy's Monkey Magic figures, then it should get its own thread. This is how /toy/ used to work, instead of just shovign everything into random generals.The problem is that it doesn't feel natural.Nobody cares about 99% of the Chinese figures, because we see that there's nobody ever posting those figures here. Almost never, anyway, since sometimes something does seem cool and some people get it.So, like in the Revoltech thread, people are posting shit in there that isn't even a Revoltech. Shills like posting random shit where it doesn't belong, because even when the chinese figure got its own thread, it petered out without any interest. So they shove it into popular threads./toy/ shouldn't feel like amazon's or google's algorithm where they need to push sponsored results ahead of what you actually want. /toy/ should be what you're actually buying
>>11657625Meds!
>>11657625There could be a Misc. general for anything that does not already have a gen. Like there used to be a McFarlane gen but it collapsed. Plenty of smaller manufacturers and brands don't really get attention here.Some smaller brands are really pretty good but are niche by their appeal.
>>11657278Not me, but Unkval Eliminator had a QC problem of having brittle shoulders, it didn't always happen but it seemed to be quite common.
>>11656511>>11657056these look terrible. it’s like they saw the character select in one of the bootleg metal slugs (ie anything after 3) and thought those were the right proportions, despite nothing in the game looking like that beyond those portraits. and that amount of soft goods on something that isn’t sixth? blech.the chaoer (also chinkshit) dio figures from 15 years ago did a better job of capturing the aesthetic of metal slug, but still aren’t perfect. turns out it’s a hard thing to replicate in plastic even though it looks made for it.
>>11657866Cuz those Tunshi ones are based on Metal Slug XX artwork. Figs are really accurate to the source material.But I agree that the ultimate Metal Slug line would be sprite accurate, 1/18 or even smaller, to accommodate the bread and butter of this series - vehicles. Yolopark is trying that, but their sculpts suck so far, it's not easy to do, the transition from stylized cartoony 2D into full 3D.
>>11657869I want to do this myself actually, but I need to learn a lot when it comes for 3D printing and such. I know how to draw and 3D model hard surface objects, I'm really picky so would try my best to capture the sprites as close as possible. I'm still not sure if this can be done "in house". My first project I'm gonna start with, is that tall tank Sarubia I did post it in display thread, should start printing first parts in a week or two.
I just got yolopark amkpro tf1 megatron, loving it
>>11656348Very nice toy and wholesome post, anon
>>11656348I loved Where's Wally (or Waldo for Amerifrens) as a kid. I'm not sure if I'd buy that but he does look really good.
>>11657876Not ChineseThe producers will go into autistic detail about how Hong Kong isn't China.>>11657632terrible idea. we don't need a general for everything. 4chan isn't a 1999 message board.>>11657444>you're a chinese shillI've been here since day 1 of /toy/, so if the board is turning into an electronics store no one visits anymore because it only carries nobrand chinkshit, it would have fallen apart way back in the day. I think most of the problems with the community nowadays is that a lot of people here don't even own toys from the threads they post in. And i bet you're one.
>>11658005>I've been here since day 1 of /toy/We know, you stopped us getting a sticky.
>>11656721Joytoy 40k line is the best example of this. The line is absolutely fantastic, on the more premium stuff (pic not related), you get full shading, edge highlights, better than what most scale modellers can push.Scale is absolutely fucked, pic related. Everyone is unhappy. Big marines lovers are poor but they're true 1/18 scale, maybe even a bit small. Wealthy small marine owners have 5-100+ marines that have scale crept across 4 versions, so their manlets look terrible next to the newer stuff.Their final decision is to randomly produce stuff in manlet forms and big marine, so everyone is unhappy in the end. 90% of posts on new releases is just people doing height predictions from pictures.
>>11657056hi anon did you get the camel yet?
>>11658186My understanding is they're walking back the scale creep from the SM2 stuff due to feedback and are going to be doing everything at the "2.0 body" size going forwards. I think they made the SM2 stuff so big because the Marine models in the game are much larger compared to regular humans than previous depictions, and MUCH larger than how they scale on the tabletop (what JT was going by before) but most people hated it.The other big instance of scale creep was when the released the Terminators based on the older models first, then a few months later the bigger Termie models (which were obnoxiously large even compared to other Marines) were released and JT made bigger toys based on those.It is infuriating, though I will say scale in 40K full stop has been absolutely fucked since time immemorial and I think part of the scale flip-flopping is down to trying to please everyone- some people love Marines being fuckhueg whereas other people prefer them as big but not THAT big; I think they were originally supposed to be 7ft on average in universe. Myself I prefer the original releases sizewise, and I'm glad they backtracked on the scale creep. That said, it's been limited to Marines; the non-Marine releases have stayed consistently sized.Also as a (slight) cope Marins are not supposed to be all the same size in universe either. Some are gigantic even by their standards (Abaddon was noted as being HUGE even before the Heresy broke out) whilst others are abnormally short; I seem to recall there's at least one character in one of the novels who could pass as an extremely swole mortal.
>>11658248They kept the v4 SM2 body going for alpha legion, zephon and a few others till the complaints got loud enough and they backtracked. Then they got counter complaints and in their recent Livestream, they said they'll release some unspecified in the SM2 size. So now everyone is unhappy.Issue with size is things like tanks, bikes and their ATV doesn't fit the v4. Weapons on the v4 are undersized other than the collector's edition. Also, zephon has small head syndrome due to the larger v4 size.But yes, the rot started from GW not joytoy to be fair with their firstborn scale constantly creeping, but they should have learnt from GW
>>11658197Yeah, it's on that photo actually. If you are the anon from Gundamit, I need to thank you for the warning me about the miniguns, they require a good amount of force to move, so I held those rectangular bases to articulate them safely. Nothing fell off.
1000toys on notice now too.
>>11659317I wonder if Sexy Ice will someday do actual human faces and how they are gonna look like. Realistic? Anime? This Chinese anime-like South Korean plastic surgery samey faces? I'm curious.Still waiting for those attack dogs price. I like when there is a height and form difference in action-figure lines.
>>11658005>The producers will go into autistic detail about how Hong Kong isn't China.and rightfully so. As much as the mainline has clamped down on HK since, it is still different from mainland cities.Even just comparing the regions and companies, Hong Kong is a different area than the north. They have different companies and those companies have been doing toys for western markets longer than the mainland ones. The mainland ones seem to be copying HK.
>>11658186>JoytoyOh damn. I thought they were Hong Kong. Their headquarters is Beijing.
>>11656348I bought the regular version on clearance at a local comic shop.
>>11660949I was at the Yolopark booth the other year and saw all their action figures pretending to be model kits.So I asked the guy at the front of the table if they were a Chinese company. All the other reps in the booth turned their heads around and looked at me as if i asked them if all they ate was dog and little boy piss eggs.And i wonder if Hiya is originally from China. They've been around since maybe 2010, many years before the other chinese collector companies were allowed to produce shit in the west. The quality was also great even in the beginning and the engineering for their toys was better than western figures. If I hadn't been at Hiya's booth decades ago, i'd have thought they were Japanese.Until recently, all the chinese companies were pretty shit at everything and almsot all of them still ahve issues. So it's hard to believe that Hiya came from China. I know that they started off as some other company originally, so maybe the founder is from some other country and moved to China to make shit easier.
>>11659317Honestly I rather they continue VERMIN but if this is a precursor and explains what events lead up to biological monsters roaming around Neo Hong Kong then I'll patiently wait for it to play out.
i mean look at this fucking lubu, i really want this but sadly only 1 face?
>>11661038Those guys are gonna do Heroes of Might & Magic 3 action figures.
xesray studio is next on the elemination list
>>11661095
>>11659338Anon...they announced a witch with a human face a while back.
>>11661095>Discolored arm vs torso>Not fully paintedI disagree
>>11656024Every time I see another one of these damn overpriced bastards being shilled to high heaven I pray the Three Gorges damn finally caves in on those fuckers, especially upon that one weibo fuerdai dogbreath who bought all those Unkvals to army build>>11658186Scale is fucked to shit, I just want a 1/12 scale Marine that ain't one of Bandai's out-of-prints or the crap MacFarlane makes. Any of them Joytoys that look big enough to stand up to the average 1/12?
>>11667593>overpricedThey weren't when you could buy one retail :^)
