UPDATE - December 6, 2001 - 7:15 PM :

Unfortunately, during the extremely high server traffic, some people received an email confirmation for an empty shopping cart ($0.00). If this happened to you and you wish to be added to the waiting list for a Masterpiece Veritech, please send an email WITH YOUR ORDER NUMBER IN THE SUBJECT LINE to WaitingListForMasterpiece@robotech.com. UPDATE: this mailing list has now been retired.

Also, we appear to have instances of multiple preorders coming in from some individuals. Whether this was unintentional or not, we will reduce duplicate orders to a single preorder to honor the 2 item limit and free up some extra Masterpiece Veritechs for fans on the waiting list.

If you would like to cancel your order or eliminate a duplicate preorder for a Masterpiece Veritech, please send an email WITH YOUR ORDER NUMBER IN THE SUBJECT LINE to CancelMasterpiece@robotech.com

UPDATE - December 6, 2001 - 5:55 PM :

Preordering of the Masterpiece Collection VF-1J has been suspended as we need to tally up the thousands of preorders that have flooded into Robotech.com over the past 55 minutes.

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UPDATE - December 5, 2001:

For those of you who are wondering what Pacific Standard Time (PST) is, here's a website that shows the current time in Los Angeles.

Also, many people who successfully received their preorder confirmation were wondering if they're being forced to preorder again. Relax! Your order is still valid.

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December 3, 2001:

We are pleased to announce that the manufacturing run has been revised to 15,000 units to accommodate overwhelming demand from fans and retailers!

Toynami had initially planned to produce 10,000 units of each of the five Masterpiece Collection volumes. In our early discussions, we had agreed that this would be an optimum production run for a premium collectible. Each would contain a limited edition Veritech corresponding to Rick, Ben, Roy, Max and Miriya. We had reserved 1,000 units of Volume 1 (containing Rick’s VF-1J) for sale on Robotech.com with an exclusive limited-edition cel. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

WHAT WERE WE THINKING?

To put it mildly, we had completely underestimated the demand of our fans. When pre-ordering was opened last week, we saw our entire allotment of Veritechs sell out in a matter of hours. We immediately contacted Toynami to see if we could reserve more units. However, their sales staff had already been forced to begin allocating their retailers a fraction of the units that they had ordered. Everyone was facing a severe shortage.

After collecting feedback from retailers and sifting through a deluge of e-mails from anxious fans who pleaded for a second chance to get their hands on this hot item, we had to make a major decision and move fast because the factory is going into production soon. We finally came to this solution: Toynami agreed to extend the manufacturing run of all Masterpiece Collection volumes to 15,000 units to satisfy demand while maintaining collectability. A significant portion of this extended production run would be reserved for Robotech.com members, though without the limited-edition cel. However, ALL Masterpiece Collection Veritechs purchased at the Robotech.com store will include an additional exclusive collectible gift!

We also decided to let Robotech.com members determine when to restart the pre-order process. At the time of the writing of this article, the current status of the polls has directed us to relist the Masterpiece Collection Veritech on Thursday evening at 5pm Pacific Standard Time. Though 43% of poll participants preferred a limit of one item per order and the remaining 57% wanted to order 2 or more, no one group had a true majority. So we decided on a compromise and will impose a limit of 2 Veritechs per order.

Again, the pre-orders will be reopened on THURSDAY at 5PM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME.

So everyone, prepare your web browsers and stay alert! There should be plenty more Veritechs to go around this time, but get your order in early to secure one for yourself!

Good luck!

If you would like to receive updates on the Masterpiece Collection by email, send a single email to MasterpieceInterestList@robotech.com