Posted: 02.26.2024
Good Smile Lunar New Year 2024
For the Past Few Years
Good Smile US has been holding a Lunar New Year sale. They offer figma, Nendoroids, POP UP PARADE, & more at steep discounts.
Why the discounts, you ask? Ah, you see, these are 'mystery' figures; you never know what you'll get!
And by mystery, I mean mostly dead stock and undesirables.
I want to show what figures came in the mail this year and talk about how they compare to last year's order. Speaking of, let's take a look at the '23 mystery pulls:
Honestly? I’d call this haul a smashing success!
In 2023, Good Smile offered multipacks, shoving figma, Nendoroid, POP UP PARADE, Nendo pins, coffee mugs (?!), and stickers in one order.
The photo above is 2 orders, each consisting of: 1 x figma, 4 x Nendoroid, 1 x Nendoroid pin, 1 x POP UP PARADE, 1 x coffee cup, 1 x sticker.
Having just watched Priconne in the fall/winter of 2022, the Pecorine figma was a very welcome addition to the family. Additonally, Rushia was a figure I kinda wanted but never bought myself. I was very pleased with both figma choices Good Smile blessed upon me.
The Miku Nendo was also well received, being my first articulated Miku figure. For someone who listens to a lot of Vocaloid music and plays a fair amount of Project DIVA, it's kind of strange that I don't own a ton of Mikus already.
The rest of the figures are kinda garbo (sorry MHA fans). I sold the bulk of them online and more than recouped the overall cost of this order.
The highlights of last year’s mystery box.
2024 LNY Haul
Well. For someone who's not much into Shonen anime... this year was a stinker.
Not pictured are JJK's Yuji Itadori and duplicates of Ryza & Levi.
Pekora I (of course) already own. Ryza I already own (now I have 3, yippee!). Mona I already own. The rest of them, tho? Wow I have a hard time getting excited over any of them.
For the 2024 sale, the multipacks of '23 are no more. This year, you were able to purchase individual mystery figures. When the sale started, there was a limit of 5 per person.
Naturally, I rolled the dice on 5 figures after seeing some folks on the figma subreddit pull some "desirables". 538 Rider, EX-050 Joker, and the Kaguya-sama girls were my main targets.
After getting none of those, I figured I may as well gamble again. As luck would have it, they upped the limit to 10 figures! GS wouldn't let me place the order through my account (only willing to let me buy 5 more, 10 total) but didn't have an issue letting me buy 10 more using a guest account.
Yeah, joke's on me, I guess.
The only figures I'm considering keeping from this year's haul would be:
SP-140 DOOM SLAYER
I've played the newer Doom games and had a damn great time. I would never buy Doom Slayer outright but he's not unwelcome in a mystery order.
572 MEJIRO MCQUEEN
I barely know anything about Umamusume BUT I think this body might make for a good custom. I have some ideas.
Other than those 2, there aren't any I feel are worthy of being added to my very tasteful collection.
2023 was a good year for mystery boxes. 2024 not so much. I guess lightning doesn't strike twice or whatever.