November 22, 2024

Dragon’s Soldiers of Destruction

Earlier today we were surprised to see that Dragon will be bringing back an old favorite from the diecast graveyard. Marketed under their Cyber Hobby sub brand, DRR63281 is a departure of sorts for this model maker, since it resurrects one of their most popular Dragon Armor subjects that was originally released way back in 2005.

For those of you unfamiliar with this release, it contains a 1:72 scale King Tiger heavy tank that sits atop a circular display plinth which simply says DRAGON across the rim. Additionally, there are seven Fallschirmjager figures in varying poses that can be placed atop the tank to signify that they are being transported into battle. “Yellow 222”, as we’ve come to call it, was a German Sd. Kfz. 182 PzKpfw VI King Tiger Ausf. B Heavy Tank that was attached to schwere Panzerabteilung 501 — an integral part of the “Wacht am Rhein” operation — better known as the Battle of the Bulge Ardennes counteroffensive of December 1944.

For now, we will hold off listing this item on our web site since we aren’t certain if our distributor will be able to obtain this item and in any significant numbers. Moreover, we aren’t able to ascertain its price just yet, considering the vehicles comes bundled with a handsome display base and several pre-painted figures. The original set is listed on our site for $149.99 so its a fair bet this new iteration will retail for quite a bit more.

Finally, we aren’t sure if Dragon plans on re-releasing more previously available dioramas in the near- and long-term and how they will come packaged. Its clear they are trying to differentiate this new set from its predecessor by changing up the base and will more than likely alter the outer packaging to further distinguish the past from the present. Beyond that, we aren’t sure where this line will take us or the hobby down the road and how it will impact the prices of their former releases. As a guess, their next set of releases will involve the King Tiger heavy tank – likely produced in both Ausf. A and B variants — painted in a wide variety of schemes and attached to a great many heavy tank detachments that appeared on both the eastern and western fronts. So, don’t get your hopes dashed if the first few offerings aren’t your cup of tea since there will quite likely a lot scheduled for release on the horizon.

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Tales of Transparency: The Checkout & Pre-Orders

Astute customers may have noticed that our checkout process has changed dramatically over the past couple of weeks thanks in part to an update rolled out by our web hosting solution as well as some follow-up calls from yours truly explaining why the update broke some important features, most notably shipping. In any event, after spending some time on the phone with various technicians, the shipping options are now integrated into one drop down menu and includes all three major carriers we use along with different delivery options.

In hindsight, I’ve learned a long time ago that while technicians are great at performing functions such as rolling out highly technical updates, they need to be reminded of the fact that certain commercially important factors — such as making available differing shipping options — need to be present at checkout, particularly at this time of year when some customers may need to receive their parcels in quicker fashion to avoid holiday-related delays.

Now, on to a separate matter that has mushroomed over the past year or so. We’ve decided that after twenty-five years of doing business in the ether we can no longer accept pre-orders without accepting payment first. In the past, we typically had to contact the customer to obtain their billing information so that we could obtain a new authorization code, which then allowed us to get paid for the transaction. We’ve found that sometimes the customer was unwilling to provide their CC information either by phone or via messaging protocol, so we were, in effect, stuck with laying out money for an item(s) without getting paid. Now, I can understand a customer’s trepidation with giving out their information outside of a secure means of payment but from our vantage point, this issue was becoming problematic and was no longer sustainable from a financial standpoint. So, going forward, customers will be billed at the time their order is being placed not upon the date it is being shipped out. We recognize this could be an issue for some but hope you also understand that we can no longer lay out money for a customer in the hopeful event that we will one day get paid for the transaction. Other dealers may feel differently, so we fully understand if you can no longer place your pre-orders with us.

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