by Bumblevivisector » Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:41 pm
These galleries honor the sacrifice of KOTOYS.com, a business which literally died to bring you these cassettes. Whether or not you feel they deserved the crackdown that befell them (and I'd be interested to meet a lawyer that says they didn't), these 4 are an impressive legacy.
True, they should have altered the packaging in some way to prevent secondary market fraud, but so far every one I've seen on the auction block has fessed up to it being a knock off.
Another handy metric: If the lot is a pair, mint in pristine boxes with no visible wear, it's the KO. If it's just one, loose with the stickers all curled at the edges and missing one or both guns, and generally looking like your personal holy grail degraded into a piece of slag as part of some sick cosmic joke, then it's the real deal. These 4 are traded so infrequently that Takara should have reissued these guys a LONG time ago to meet demand from cassette completists and avoided this whole polarizing issue. If they haven't done so because the molds are missing/damaged, and Takara won't reverse mold because it's too expensive, then I'd like to think that the reverse molds made to produce this set will somehow fall into official hands.
I for one got both pair, and proudly show them off...to friends who've never heard of them, don't understand their grail-status, and can't get over how lame their combined modes look, especially Decibel, who can barely stand straight up (is that a defect unique to the KOs?) Kind of like how Heavy Metal was out of print for so long that by the time of the big release in the late '90s, enough good anime was commercially available that it didn't seem all that mind-blowing anymore.
Glad to finally have these guys, even if they're not the real deal. KOTOYS always had QC problems, overshadowed by their communication problems, and I haven't received all of my last 2 orders yet. Yet based on some horror stories I'm hearing about the Soundblaster/Twincast reissues, apparently collecting any toy you have to order from overseas is something of a crap shoot anymore. I hope this rambling doesn't get another KOTOYS thread locked, and thanks for the gallery.
Last edited by
Bumblevivisector on Mon Mar 12, 2012 7:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.