Maker still has no trouble selling it, though.

Generally there’s a lighthearted tone to tie-ups between snack food brands and popular anime franchises. You buy a couple of inexpensive boxes of candy, and you get some cool but simple character trinket or piece of memorabilia.

For example, earlier this month, confectioner Meiji started selling special boxes of its Almond Chocolate and Macadamia Chocolate featuring illustrations of Sailor Moon and the other Sailor Senshi. The chocolates usually cost only about 300 yen (US$1.95) per box, and if you buy three, you can get a free Sailor Senshi hand mirror, while supplies last.

▼ Each mirror features two Senshi.

Easy-peasy, and definitely a budget-friendly way for fans to have fun, right? Except that the interest that resellers have in collaboration merchandise is directly proportional to the popularity of the series that’s part of the collaboration, and with Sailor Moon being one of the most popular anime/manga series of all time, scalpers mobilized with lightning speed. Even before the Sailor Moon chocolates officially went on sale on December 10, e-commerce sites were already filling up with boxes that resellers had somehow gotten their hands on, with some asking for as much as 10,000 yen for a box, while stores selling out of their stock left fans with no reasonably priced alternatives.

Thankfully, Meiji itself apparently took notice, and announced that as part of a restock it would be selling a Collaboration Complete Box that gives buyers all of the individual Almond and Macadamia Chocolate Sailor Senshi designs, plus all five hand mirrors, in one convenient bundle. It wasn’t going to be cheap, though, as the complete box was priced at 6,912 yen!

▼ The Collaboration Complete Box

That might sound like a lot for some chocolate that, tasty as it may be, is an inexpensive snack that you can buy at convenience stores, and some quick calculations show that there is indeed a significant markup. Though the Collaboration Complete Box spares buyers the legwork of running around to different stores, it doesn’t give you any sort of break on the amount of boxes you need to buy per mirror. Since the deal ordinarily is one mirror for three boxes of chocolate purchased, the Collaboration Complete Box comes with 15 boxes of chocolate (three boxes each of each of the five designs). With the Collaboration Complete Box costing 6,912 yen, that works out to roughly 461 per box.

That’s more than the 296 yen that 7-Eleven regularly charges for either Meiji Almond or Macadamia Chocolate, and if Meiji followed that pricing for the Sailor Moon Collaboration Complete Box, the bundle would be only 4,400 yen, making the Collaboration Complete Box 55.7 percent more expensive than buying 15 boxes individually would be (if you could find that many of the Sailor Moon ones).

▼ Non-Sailor Moon Almond and Macadamia Chocolate

Pricy or not, though, many fans said they were excited and standing by to put in their orders when the Collaboration Complete Box, available exclusively through Amazon Japan, officially went on sale at 10 a.m. on December 24. Unfortunately, many also said they were unable to connect to the order page linked to in the box’s announcement on Meiji’s official website, and by the time they were able to load the page, the Collaboration Complete Boxes, even with their inflated price, were entirely sold out.

It’s unclear if the failed connections were due to a system error or were simply the result of excessive traffic as many people tried to access the order page at the same time, but it seems like, for those who weren’t able to place an order, their only remaining options are to go without the collab goods or to pay an even higher markup to a scalper, provided they’re not bothered by the prospect of contributing to further expansion of reseller activity. Maybe more companies should take a page from the other Sailor Moon tie-up that’s going on right now, the one with J-pop star Ayumi Hamasaki, in which the producers have said they’ll make as much merch as fans will order, letting them stay away from the resale scene.

Source: Meiji via IT Media, 7-Eleven (1, 2), Twitter/@sailormoon30th_
Top image: Meiji
Insert images: Meiji, 7-Eleven (1, 2)
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