Following suspiciously swift sell-out of Yoshinoya’s Dragon Quest Slime bowls, new policy means that everyone who wants one can buy one at the regular price.

At the start of the month, beef bowl chain Yoshinoya kicked off a collaboration with the Dragon Quest video game franchise. Part of the promotion were Dragon Quest Slime figures being given out as part of a Dragon Quest Walk Set meal being served at Yoshinoya branches, and we went on a very happy (and tasty) quest to get ours.

In addition to the figures, though, there’s also a special Dragon Quest Yoshinoya bowl with cool illustrations of the mascot monster.

The bowl is only available as part of the Dragon Quest Walk Collaboration Set, sold through Yoshinoya’s online shop and also including two packs of instant gyudon (beef bowl) toppings. Unfortunately, the bowl sets sold out almost immediately after they went on sale July 2, with scalpers snatching them up and swiftly listing them at hugely inflated prices on resale sites.

But similarly to how Dragon Quest is a story about heroes finding a way to defeat evil, Yoshinoya has enacted a plan that will, hopefully, completely eliminate the scalping for the Dragon Quest bowl, announcing that it will now be produced as a made-to-order item.

Yoshinoya made the announcement on July 6, saying “We deeply apologize to our customers who had been looking forward to purchasing [the Dragon Quest bowl] but were unable to. In accordance with that, so that the bowls can be obtained by as many of our customers as possible, we will be producing extra [Dragon Quest bowls] on a presale (made-to-order) basis.”

A major reason scalping of fan items is so hard to prevent is that actual fans often have work, school, or personal matters they have to attend to on collaboration launch days, whereas profit-motivated scalpers can make grabbing the goods their number-one priority, buying up the entire available stock before fans have a chance to get theirs. Once the stock is sold out, scalpers can command higher prices on the resale market, because fans are left with no other option by which to purchase the items.

But by switching to a produced-to-order system for the Dragon Quest bowls, Yoshinoya removes the scarcity that would normally allow scalpers to charge higher prices. After all, if Yoshinoya itself is selling the Dragon Quest Walk Collaboration Set for 3,999 yen (US$25), there’s not much reason to pay a scalper more than that price, especially when secondhand sales don’t have the same quality guarantees that Yoshinoya itself provides for its products.

So why don’t all companies do this for their collaboration and other fan merch items? There are a couple of reasons. First, some sort of availability-limiting factor can help create a sense of timely excitement and buzz around a promotion, or, if you want to take a more negative view of it, leverage the dreaded fear of missing out to motivate customers to place their order quickly. The whole point of the Dragon Quest/Yoshinoya team-up is, after all, to help stimulate interest in the games and sales for the restaurant chain. However, items being available for a limited-time doesn’t mean they have to be available in limited-quantities. Yoshinoya has set the order window for the Dragon Quest bowls from July 7 to 8 p.m. on July 15, so they can still reap the benefits of creating a “Don’t delay!” sort of atmosphere.

Online reactions to Yoshinoya’s decision have been very positive, with comments in Japan including:

“I’m really happy Yoshinoya is doing this. If you have a job, it’s pretty much impossible to order things before the scalpers get to them.”
“Awesome that they’re not just turning a blind eye to this and are actually doing something about it…I hope other companies are taking notes!”
“Got my order in. Thank you! Looking forward to delivery.”
“Please hit those scalpers with a Thwack spell.”

The tradeoff, though, is that a made-to-order system takes longer to put the items in fans’ hands, since Yoshinoya needs to see how many orders are coming in before it starts making the bowls. Because of that, while the cutoff date to order the Dragon Quest bowls is July 15, they aren’t estimated to start shipping until October, and later orders might take even more time to fill.

This, unfortunately, still leaves a little bit of wiggle room for scalpers to charge above-retail prices for the bowls that they have for sale right now. Still, the margin scalpers can command for a three-month head start is going to be much smaller than it would be if Yoshinoya simply weren’t selling the bowls at all anymore, and hopefully fans will be patient and shun the scalpers.

The Dragon Quest Walk Collaboration Set can be ordered through the Yoshinoya online store here.

Source: Yoshinoya, Twitter/@yoshinoyagyudon
Images: Yoshinoya
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