DD KAITO

I wouldn’t rush out to get GL membership immediately when Kaito hasn’t even been shown yet, let alone had his sales method revealed. Meiko and Rena were only GL membership because their release was ‘special’ - its very rare to have a preorder release for a doll outside the annual preorder project. GL is an annual fee that also allows you to accumulate points per order, and gives you the option to add a free copy of the current jp volks news magazine. It also allows you to buy some special limited GL only items (usually wigs and hand parts). 

GL is basically the international answer to Volks VS membership, which most fans in Japan are part of. Unfortunately, due to geography (VS gives a LOT of perks only possible in Japan, like same-day volks news delivery to your door and access to events) the GL membership is a pretty poor and somewhat lame substitute for VS and I personally wouldn’t buy it unless it was absolutely necessary for an upcoming purchase. (After mine expired I haven’t renewed it and won’t until it’s necessary again) They’ll definitely say if it’s needed well in advance - it’s not actually that common for a doll to require it - but the good news is all it’s going to do is increase his price by 838 yen or so. Getting the GL membership is as easy as adding the GL membership item to cart and checking out with it - the only tricky part is it can take a few days to clear, but they definitely give you enough time to sign up before a release if it’s necessary.  And if you’re in the US and want to go via USA you won’t need it whatsoever.

I’m personally not holding my breath on him getting the same release method as Meiko anyway (unlimited preorder) seeing as she was apparently so unpopular they were able to ship her 6 months earlier than planned, but we’ll see. It would be nice and stress-free if he was.

Edited December 28, 2021 by Monty

Do you think we’ll get to see pictures of Kaito in the next edition of Volks News? (#95 I think?)

If so, does anyone know around when we should expect that to come out?

9 hours ago, Damiensdolls said:

Do you think we’ll get to see pictures of Kaito in the next edition of Volks News? (#95 I think?)

If so, does anyone know around when we should expect that to come out?

If he is the release for April like Meiko was, then definitely! Apparently the next issue is our ‘late February’. It comes out on a Monday, so that would likely be the 28th (21st if we’re lucky). Volks also have often revealed/announced the upcoming DD/s on their DD twitter the Friday before the Volks news ships, although for whatever reason they didn’t for Meiko and Rena.

Because the magazine is reasonably close to his birthday (14/17th) I wondered if there was any chance of him getting shown early, although I’m not counting on that just because none of the others have (it would be nice though lol). 

If he’s not the April release he will probably be the August release, and shown in June.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Monty

Has there been any news about Kaito?

41 minutes ago, Riesz said:

Has there been any news about Kaito?

Not yet.  End of June is likely when we'll get to see him, if he really is the August release like Monty estimates, in the Summer Volks News volume.

Volks is never gonna let us see this boy... Volks News 96 confirmed to not be the KAITO volume. 🥺

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by OccultBeast
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thank goodness. more time to safe money. 🥹❤️ 

4 hours ago, OccultBeast said:

Volks is never gonna let us see this boy... Volks News 96 confirmed to not be the KAITO volume. 🥺

 

Does this mean it's safe to assume we also won't be seeing the new Vocaloid outfits any time soon?

1 hour ago, DreamDollDesign said:

Does this mean it's safe to assume we also won't be seeing the new Vocaloid outfits any time soon?

Volks will be in Magical Mirai, news at Vol 96

https://twitter.com/volks_dd/status/1537268499063918592?t=xudMCMahcWEJxu9hcbGx7A&s=19

Watch him be in Volks News 100

Could they have cancelled Kaito? I've seen it mentioned on the confession blog on Tumblr a few times now.
Is there a precedent for that sort of thing? Did Volks ever cancel an announced doll before?

3 minutes ago, RetroKanojo said:

Did Volks ever cancel an announced doll before?

They canceled a release after finding out that the artist who designed the outfit may have taken the design from another designer's work. The doll was eventually released with a different outfit. 

I doubt Kaito is canceled.

38 minutes ago, RetroKanojo said:

I've seen it mentioned on the confession blog on Tumblr a few times now.

Don't trust things you read on those.  Literally the most unreliable source for news.

The delay we're seeing for KAITO from his announcement to reveal isn't unusual in post-covid times.  I'm the first person to be out here shouting at Volks to give me news about The Boy™, but jumping to 'did they cancel him?' is too extreme.  We'll see him at Magical Mirai, most likely.

I absolutely agree, it makes too much sense for Volks to announce and maybe even display him at Magical Mirai--basically lets them blast him direct at the target audience. 

Part of me wants him to look good. . . Another part says no, no no, wallet cannot take it, lol

I am pretty sure the ‘kaito is cancelled’ thing only started because Kaito fans are used to his merch being quietly cancelled all the time (there are at least two scale figures that are announced years and years ago that literally did not happen, and another one announced recently i don’t expect to ever see), and may not know that unlike many figure companies, volks doesn’t tend to cancel releases after announcing them. (Even knowing this, being a Kaito fan has given me trust issues so for me the DD doesn’t exist until the order page does lol)

That aside, any rando can say pretty much anything they want on the tumblr confession blogs and people will believe it, and it can be baffling to watch snowball.

1 minute ago, Poofiemus said:

Part of me wants him to look good. . . Another part says no, no no, wallet cannot take it, lol

Oh my god same.  There's a small part of me that's maybe hoping he'll be ugly and I'll just make my own DD boy 😂

...But I really, really want him to get the beautiful doll he deserves!  Please don't make our boy look like a Smart Doll...

Thank you all for your input/reassurances!

I definitely didn't mean to spread baseless rumors, but the fact that we haven't heard anything about Kaito for so long had me somewhat concerned >< That's why I asked whether Volks ever cancelled a doll before, but apparently that's not the case! I'm still very new to all of this and I certainly hope everyone who wants Kaito, gets their boy.

Although, I guess for my wallet's sake, maybe it's better he takes a little longer to arrive to us 😂

2 hours ago, RetroKanojo said:

but the fact that we haven't heard anything about Kaito for so long had me somewhat concerned

This is pretty typical actually. Volks teases the dolls about a year ahead of the release, and we won't hear any more details until the doll is ready for sale. The big exception to that was Frozen. 

We won't be at the one year mark until Oct 22, so figure we won't hear anything until around the time of Magical Mirai 2022. 

2 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

This is pretty typical actually. Volks teases the dolls about a year ahead of the release, and we won't hear any more details until the doll is ready for sale. The big exception to that was Frozen. 

We won't be at the one year mark until Oct 22, so figure we won't hear anything until around the time of Magical Mirai 2022. 

Oh, I wasn't aware of this! Thanks for pointing it out 😄 I guess there really is no need to worry then! And I guess we all have a little more time to save up as well :d

Fingers crossed that 

Quote

The latest information on "Dollfie Dream"! !!

There may be the latest information that I can't tell you yet ...!
Please check the details at the booth ♪

on the Magical Mirai 10th Anniversary exhibition (August 12th) page actually refers to Kaito this time, as it has been hypothesized before in this thread.

17 minutes ago, Collie said:

Fingers crossed that 

on the Magical Mirai 10th Anniversary exhibition (August 12th) page actually refers to Kaito this time, as it has been hypothesized before in this thread.

If he's going to be a Dolpa release I'd expect we will hear about it sometime between Magical Mirai and the next release of Volks News.

11 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

If he's going to be a Dolpa release I'd expect we will hear about it sometime between Magical Mirai and the next release of Volks News.

But the next Dolpa isn’t until December, so if he’s a Dolpa release he wont be in the next issue. The September issue will be about the PO project, and the December Dolpa issue comes out in November.

But whatever he ends up being it’s possible that he gets that info revealed well in advance thanks to MagiMirai. (assuming they have him there and not just the placard again lol)

7 minutes ago, Monty said:

The September issue will be about the PO project, and the December Dolpa issue comes out in November.

I forgot about the pre-order, so yeah, unless he's the pre-order it could be a few more months.

I was thinking before he could be an irregular release too, similar to how Yuriko Nanao was. She wasn’t attached to any Dolpa or the PO project, she just had a regular sale at a seemingly random date on the online store (I think it might have been the day of DDFes at DollPoint though, so not entirely random, but still very different to any other DD release I can think of). At this point, it seems useless to compare him to past releases in this character series as he has already proven different lol

(being the first one to still not be released before the next years MagiMirai rolls around, I mean. That fact in itself makes me hope the info will be revealed there - whether it’s ‘surprise! This is your september PO project’ or ‘hold on until December but this is what he looks like, btw’ or something else entirely)

Edited July 22, 2022 by Monty

2 hours ago, Monty said:

But the next Dolpa isn’t until December, so if he’s a Dolpa release he wont be in the next issue. The September issue will be about the PO project, and the December Dolpa issue comes out in November.

The next Dolpa is on July 31 in Kyoto.