FansProject comments on recent Henkei Powered Commander release

Posted by Mkall May 13, 2009 at 2:04pm CDT 8,155 views

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FansProject has released a statement on their website regarding the upcoming release of Henkei Commander, that we reported earlier. Please read it below or here.

We, Fansproject, noticed that a discussion regarding the D.I.A Commander (Japanese Version Commander) have been growing rapidly and negatively on various forums. We are deeply sorry if any fans are upset / disappointed when they see the discussion topic. I hope you could spend the next few minutes to read the following and have a better understanding of the situation.

Fansproject is a group of fans who love to play, modify and design our dream toys. We have experienced in designing and manufacturing but not sales and marketing. We love to share our joy and happiness whenever we have some exciting ideas but we could never put these on the hands of general fans at our own power. Therefore, we can never tell if our designs will ever be produced and reach your hands.

We have no intention to keep re-coloring our design, particularly our City Commander. In designer's point of view, we always play around with the colors to see how it looks and therefor always be one or two colors more favorable than the rest. There have been numerous inquires regarding whether the black and the red color scheme of City Commander will be released after people seeing our test shots at last year TFCon. However, we cannot make any promise unless an ordering request is confirmed. We have a mutual agreement, verbally, that there will not be another Powered Commander which is identical to the TFCon Exclusive Version. In order to make this convention item more unique, we have included a briefcase (which is a meaningful accessory explained in the comic) and suggested to have some graphical paint job on the sides of the trailer which, unfortunately, was discarded by TFCon and replaced with a simpler sticker sheet. At the end, there is the Powered Commander trailer with slightly different coloring than our test shots.

We produced this Powered Commander by request. If the supply of this item is running short; price of this item raise to double or more in a day; you are not able to get one for yourself, we are deeply sorry but there isn't much we can do. The best we can do is to hope that there will be a repeat order from the same buyer or there will be a different buyer who is looking for a similar item to relief the high pressure in demand. In this case, an Asia-Pacific wholesaler shows interest on the Powered Commander. We have kept our mutual agreement with TFCon and made the following changes:
- Japanese version will have chrome parts to match with other Japanese products
- Japanese version will have different color scheme or design
We understand all the concern about the coloring of Japanese version. We aim to find a mid tone to match with both US and Japanese version, just in case if a fans wish to use either version armor onto either version op.

We don't release any details of the new color change is because we are still working hard and try to find the best way to shown the difference between TFcon version and Japanese version; especially in truck form which has "Tfcon exclusive" sticker that can be apply on the side of the truck. We wish to give Japan/Asia fans to enjoy a different feel of our D.I.A Commander.
To further avoid any conflict between these two versions, the Japan version will not be available to any North American retailer or wholesaler. If any North American retailer or wholesaler orders through Asia dealer, please kindly understand that's actually something out of our control.

In our designers' point of views, we will be very upset if my D.I.A Commander doesn't come with the briefcase because it will always be "incompleted". We could never imagine fans will be disappointed to own a "completed"version of Powered Commander. Again, we are designers and production coordinators, we do not involve in sales and marketing, and retailers asking price is also beyond our control.

Some fans have questions us about the mold being destroyed. At the first place, we have to deeply apologize for any mis-leading and unclear explanation we made before. So we are very sorry and hope that we can explain this clearly again. "Mold" means the steel injected mold which we use to produce toys, where "Mold" will be modified all the time but won't be destroyed because this is part of the company capital. Some Fans ask about whether we will destroy the mold of Tfcon Powered Commander and we say yes; it's really our fault of getting misunderstanding around this point. What our meaning is actually that we will never produce this Tfcon pc again unless Tfcon request to do so. So, there will never be anymore Tfcon version production to be made after the convention. That was what the misunderstand we made to fans and we really, really feel sorry about this point. Certainly, we all clear about this mutual agreement for this exclusive production's for Tfcon version and we will never, never break the rule. That's why we get the compromise from tfcon for a different version pc before we go ahead for that another version. No matter how, this is still our fault of misleading fans about mold destroying. and we hope this statement is clear enough for everyone.

Sadly, some mold do not held their ground and damage during production. Our very first project CJ upgrade kit; which was using resin-casting mold and cannot be kept for a long period of time, and that's why this project is forever retired.

Based on fans reaction from the forums, we had an important lesson and would like to apologize to anyone who doesn't feel comfortable for owning the TFCon Exclusive Powered Commander. We have to admit that we had a bad coordination this time but some information is just strictly confidential between Fansproject and our buyer that we could never release ahead of time. In the future, we would try to avoid similar request as much as possible; we would have black and white instead of verbal confirmation/agreement; we would have to think more thoroughly from fans point of view before making any confirmation/agreement; we would work harder on our designs; we would work harder to keep up the quality of our products.

You have seen some of our new ideas at this year TFCon and there are plenty more on our desks. We are ready and would love to move on to new items. But, as we have always said, we couldn't tell if these designs will ever become a real product and reach your hands. These are design by fans, and made for fans. If someone believes there are enough support in the market, the design will become a real product. If the supply is running short, then someone has under estimated fans preferences. If we have a promise to keep, we will always do. If majority of fans don't like it, these will remain on paper at our desks.

We have no intention to harm or disappoint anyone and do not wish to start any argument anywhere. We always let our project talk for itself; if a fan like it Thank You, but if you don't please let us know and we will improve. We are only interested for the love of toys and designing toys. If you have any questions or comment, please let us know. This is the best way for us to learn and improve.

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