NEWS General Updates

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep - Shipping Tonight from Japan Japanese distributors were not allowed to release the game last night but they'll begin shipping the game and PSP bundles tonight. Due to the delay, NCS does not expect our shipments to arrive until Saturday in the U.S. Barring no transport delays, we'll be able to ship Express Mail packages on Saturday for delivery on Monday. UPS packages will ship on Monday.

Japan Holiday - Next Monday "Coming of Age Day" or Seijin no Hi will be celebrated next Monday in Japan. It's a national holiday and all of our vendors will be on hiatus. When men and women reach 20 years of age in Japan, they "come of age" and are considered adults who are legally able to vote, drink vodka, and smoke cigarettes.

"Is the Nico Robin figure real?" At first, we didn't understand the question captioned in the email that arrived. A One Piece Nico Robin was summoned from storage and we looked at it. Yeah, it was real since it wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination and no one had started drinking yet. Operative word: "yet." The reply to the email went something like, "Yes, Nico Robin is a real object that exists on this planet. If she ceases to exist, we'll alert you." The emailer then clarified his intent. "Is Nico Robin authentic and not a cheap Hong Kong knockoff?" The first inclination was to be insulted but amusement took over. Didn't counterfeiters had better things to copy than toys? Why weren't they counterfeiting something simple or even better, working at the local food mart as door greeters? Fabricating a toy figure, even if it is a counterfeit, is more capital intensive than making DVD copies of the latest slasher flick. It didn't make much sense until we looked into the Asian market for counterfeit toys which happens to be a large and thriving industry. One rationale for the success of bootleg toys is that most consumers are unable to compare a real toy figure against a fake. No one buys the same figure twice (unless they're crazy.... about toys) and if someone gets a counterfeit, he'll assume it's authentic. Even if it cost $12 on Ebay compared to $80 for the real thing. In any case, our Nico is real and authentic and from Japan. With the little gold Toei sticker that counterfeiters don't seem to have the wherewithal to duplicate and paste onto their knockoff toys.