Vital Hero- General English Release of Vital Bracelet in July, New Dims, Colors, & More!

[Tetsuya Suoh]

... Hrrrm. So it's amusing that the word 'Digimon' only appears in the copyright jargon. Wouldn't you want that on the box if you wanted fans to recognize it in the store? Even the extended 'Digital Monster' has been shoved into a corner on the front.

Everything about this feels oddly marketed specifically outside of the core fanbase. Seems like Bandai is hoping to draw in older fans who recognize the art and casual non-fans looking to try something new and who might otherwise dismiss it if 'Digimon' were on the box. They know the people who care most about the franchise are already aware of the VB/Digivice V. The tweet might state this is for Digimon fans, but it really just feels like it isn't.

And if this is V1... I mean... let's pray they at least had the brains to at least fix the sensor to work with more than one skin tone.

I agree, the removal of "digimon" is odd.

And it's a V1 Vital Bracelet. On the dim packaging you can see that the dims can only connect with one Vital Hero. Whereas in the case of the Digivice V dims could connect to 3 individual devices.

But remember that when the V2 came out, there were 4 separate version of the VB, V1, V2, the Kamen Rider one and the Ultraman one. Neither the Kamen Rider nor Ultraman versions have English releases, and if this is the V2, than neither does the V1, so it makes sense they wouldn't be mentioned

 

[mentalperson]

Weird localization changing "Bracelet" to "Hero", but I guess that's the US for you.
More importantly, are we joking on the price? About 20 $ for a set of Dim I could have expected, but 64 $ for a toy that cost (and value) the equivalent of about 30-35 $??? Are they nuts? With a price like that, it's not different than importing from Japan.
I also cannot imagine a parent forking out so much for what, in the end, is a toy version of a fitness tracker.

Price is no different from what is on NA pbandai, if anything its cheaper. Although it is potentially cheaper to buy it on third party sites, after shipping cost there really is not much difference. $60ish is pretty much the NA market price from what i can tell

Well, if you're okay with paying things almost two times their real price, good for you. And for Bandai, I guess.
While I've never condoned their way of selling children toys at sky-high prices with the excuse of being "premium", NA Premium Bandai is basically a way to import exclusive merchandise from Japan, so I can see why the price would be a little higher than the one for Japanese customers. But this is a general distribution, meaning I'm expecting to see them in American stores. And even if it were only on Amazon, it's still an english (localization and) release, so the price shouldn't be comparable to the importing from a premium service (with limited stock and pre-order selling, I must add). It isn't a valid comparison.

For reference, the Vital Bracelet V (that is, the new version) costed about 40 $ (full price) right nowthis morning (EU time) on Amazon JP.

EDIT: I was curious, so I checked US Premium Bandai and they indeed have a White VB at 65 $ right now.... With a closed pre-order for the same item from only 3 months before costing about 40 $!!! How can they justify it? It's just shameful.

Edit2: made some wording clearer for those unable to read and rectified when I saw the price for the VB V. It seems like it changed in the meanwhile, now it costs as much as 6500 yen, which it is still only 50 $.

$40 is black friday/ cyber monday promo. 6500yen is about 50usd at current exchange rate because for whatever reason the yen plunge the past 2 months, for most of the year, 6500yen is closer to 60usd, not to mention fees when converting currency.

 

[Nagatem]

I just ordered a Digivice V from Amazon Japan yesterday, lol

Oh well

Oh same, except it was 5 bucks cheaper then the English version and has the cool ghost game logo so yay