Hello again! Today I would like to do the first of what I expect will be a series of shop reviews covering the best shops to order anime figures and other goods from if you live in the United States. There are a lot of options when it comes to shops to buy from, so I hope this information can be useful to both new and veteran collectors. The first shop I'll be talking about is one that I've been shopping with A LOT over the past two years or so: Tokyo Otaku Mode. My hope is to answer the following question for you: Is Tokyo Otaku Mode a good shop to order anime figures from?
The things that most stand out when going to this store are the frequent TOM point promotions and the at first glance high prices of the items. I know that for a year or two after first seeing the site I would wonder about those two things. What are these TOM points, exactly? Why the heck are the prices on this site so high? Well, it turns out there's good reasons for both of those things and even though the item prices appear bad initially, in practice they're not bad at all.
First and foremost, are the TOM points. Every purchase on TOM will net you some amount of TOM points. Each TOM point is worth $1 that you can apply to further purchases. Honestly I can't remember what the normal accrual rate for TOM points is if you don't have a TOM premium membership, and it's hard to see right now because they're having a promotion but it's pretty bad and comparable to other figure sites lousy premium points (1% or so) in addition to also expiring 6 months after you accrue them. For the purpose of this review, I'm going to assume we're talking about TOM premium which is absolutely worth it if you're going to use this site.
Tom premium is a paid membership that confers certain benefits to people shopping on TOM. The price of TOM premium is $59.99 per year, or you can pay $14.99 per quarter. If you do the yearly membership, they give you $75 in TOM points each time it renews. You also get some TOM points if you're on the quarterly membership, but I think it's somewhat less. I don't recall and again they make this information hard to see if you already have an account with them. The main benefits of the premium membership are that you get more points during the points promotions, a 5% across the board discount on items, reduced shipping costs, and bonus points if you pre-order items within a certain time period of them becoming available on the site (usually 1 to 2 weeks).
Points? Premium memberships? Right now you're probably asking yourself if TOM is some kind of scam. The answer is no, especially if you use the site correctly. If you're planning on just buying one figure a year or so, TOM isn't that great. You're usually better off shopping with Amiami or some other site. If you buy more than a couple of figures a year, TOM can save you a lot of money. I'll explain in more detail below.
In my mind, the way that TOM can really work for you is contingent on the following factors:
1) Points promotions: Right now premium members are getting 30%, or even 40% points on newly listed items because that usual early pre-order 10% bonus stacks with promotions.
2) Free shipping on orders over $150. This is huge. Depending on the items/order this can save you a lot of money. SAL or EMS shipping from a site like Amiami can creep up until the $40-50 range when you have multiple figures. Even one figure will cost anywhere from $15-$30 to ship. It's not cheap!
Lets say that you want to buy this Mamako figure from the current anime, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? You go to Amiami to see how much she is and see that she's roughly $143 plus some amount for shipping down the road, let's say $163 shipped. Now, you know there's a TOM promotion going on so you go to TOM and see that she's $185. Oof, seems expensive. However, you're also getting $55 back as TOM points right now, and free shipping. If you already had your TOM points from the annual membership ($75), you could use $35 of your TOM points to get the price down to $150, still get free shipping, and wind up with $85 of TOM points remaining ($40 left from the membership, and $45 from 30x points on $150).
In the end, your choice is between spending $163 to get her from Amiami, or spending $210 (annual fee + $150 purchase price) to get her and $85 worth of TOM points from TOM. Is it worth spending an extra $47 now to get $85 of store credit for later, basically? In my opinion the answer is a resounding YES.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how figures get priced on TOM. In the above Mamako example, her price seemed very high even for TOM standards when compared to other figure sites. Other times, the price on TOM with free shipping will be basically the same as what you're paying on Amiami for the figure after shipping. TOM will work better for you if the price isn't overly inflated, but you can't control this.
Spent TOM points don't earn TOM points themselves. In general, it's bad to completely blow your TOM points on a purchase. You should always just use TOM points to reduce the cost of a purchase to $150 so that you can also get free shipping and get points, either 10% for pre-orders or 30-40% during points promotions.
TOM orders need to be paid up-front. This isn't a site like Amiami or Nippon-Yasan where you can pre-order an item and then forget about it until the payment is due. You need to be sure you want the figure because you're paying for it up-front. This has benefits and drawbacks from a psychological standpoint, but I think it's objectively worse than being able to pre-order and pay later. At least you get the TOM points right away.
TOM shipments are delayed about 2 months. For some reason that I suspect has to do with how they are able to offer free and discounted shipping, you can expect to get pre-orders from TOM about 2 months after they ship direct from Japan. This sucks, there's no way about it.
The benefits of TOM and the TOM premium membership start to disintegrate if you buy things outside of promotions or the occasional coupon TOM does around anime expo and other times of year. In practice, I find it's best to pre-order items on Amiami and wait for promotions on TOM. If the item is still available on TOM when a promotion comes around, order it on TOM and request cancellation from Amiami. In principle, Amiami doesn't accept cancellations but in practice I've canceled probably half of all the orders I've placed without issue (update 8-23-19, seems I spoke too soon and they actually sent me a warning about this today, so yes this system does work but not forever. Use it at your own peril.).
If and when you can order from TOM on promotion, don't waste all your TOM points. Just use enough to get the order down to $150 so you can get the free shipping and still get a respectable quantity of points back for future purchases.
Prices aren't always the best at first glance, but when it works it works as you can see above. FEELS GOOD, MAN. I'd recommend the site and premium membership to anyone that buys more than a couple of figures a year. The only other thing is that you won't find all figures of the more lewd variety that you might find on Amiami and other sites, from lines like Skytube or Dragon Toy, but sometimes these makers do show up on TOM still.
If you're interested in supporting my hobby and buying some figures, please use my referral link when signing up for TOM premium or making your first purchase. You'll get a 5% discount coupon and it'll help me out a lot! There's a great points promotion going on right now until August 22nd 2019 so it's a perfect time to buy some figures. Thanks!
*UPDATE MAY 2020*
Some things have changed in the past few months which has affected my rating of TOM.
1) Maximum points spend per order are now capped at 50% of the subtotal. This is just awful. It means that if you have tons of points you can't just spend them out. Just spending them out isn't the optimal use of points, but not having the option to do it means that you'll likely always have points dragging you back to TOM unless you make a order greater than double the total value of your points.
2) Because of shipping issues from Japan now, unless a figure ships from their US warehouse you're not going to get free shipping for orders of $150. What you do get, is $25 EMS shipping with a $25 points bonus, which is OK but because points are somewhat worse now it still stings. Now to get a decent deal on a figure you're paying $175 out of pocket to get your figure and $25 worth of points, which is just objectively worse than $150 out of pocket for just the figure.
3) The promotions have been bad lately. Maybe it's just me but 20x points for Golden Week is pretty bad. TOM spoiled me for years with 30x promotions which could go to 40x on new figures, and that was pretty great, but just getting 30x on a new figure may not be enough to justify the generally higher prices.
So, all that said, I did still order this figure from TOM just yesterday to catch the end of their golden week promotion and I did still pay less than what I would have paid on Amiami after EMS shipping, along with receiving a net gain in points. However, I'm in a position now where if I want to spend out all my points and cancel my premium membership I'll need to basically order two figures at once so that I can still reduce the subtotal to just $150 while spending all of my points, since very few single figures will allow me to spend out that many points. Maybe there'll be a nice B-Style 1/4 scale I could get...
In conclusion: TOM can still be good but these changes have made the full benefits of being trapped in their ecosystem much more difficult to reap.
*UPDATE MARCH 2021*
The things that most stand out when going to this store are the frequent TOM point promotions and the at first glance high prices of the items. I know that for a year or two after first seeing the site I would wonder about those two things. What are these TOM points, exactly? Why the heck are the prices on this site so high? Well, it turns out there's good reasons for both of those things and even though the item prices appear bad initially, in practice they're not bad at all.
TOM points.
First and foremost, are the TOM points. Every purchase on TOM will net you some amount of TOM points. Each TOM point is worth $1 that you can apply to further purchases. Honestly I can't remember what the normal accrual rate for TOM points is if you don't have a TOM premium membership, and it's hard to see right now because they're having a promotion but it's pretty bad and comparable to other figure sites lousy premium points (1% or so) in addition to also expiring 6 months after you accrue them. For the purpose of this review, I'm going to assume we're talking about TOM premium which is absolutely worth it if you're going to use this site.
TOM Premium
Tom premium is a paid membership that confers certain benefits to people shopping on TOM. The price of TOM premium is $59.99 per year, or you can pay $14.99 per quarter. If you do the yearly membership, they give you $75 in TOM points each time it renews. You also get some TOM points if you're on the quarterly membership, but I think it's somewhat less. I don't recall and again they make this information hard to see if you already have an account with them. The main benefits of the premium membership are that you get more points during the points promotions, a 5% across the board discount on items, reduced shipping costs, and bonus points if you pre-order items within a certain time period of them becoming available on the site (usually 1 to 2 weeks).
Is TOM a scam?
Points? Premium memberships? Right now you're probably asking yourself if TOM is some kind of scam. The answer is no, especially if you use the site correctly. If you're planning on just buying one figure a year or so, TOM isn't that great. You're usually better off shopping with Amiami or some other site. If you buy more than a couple of figures a year, TOM can save you a lot of money. I'll explain in more detail below.
How TOM can work for you.
In my mind, the way that TOM can really work for you is contingent on the following factors:
1) Points promotions: Right now premium members are getting 30%, or even 40% points on newly listed items because that usual early pre-order 10% bonus stacks with promotions.
2) Free shipping on orders over $150. This is huge. Depending on the items/order this can save you a lot of money. SAL or EMS shipping from a site like Amiami can creep up until the $40-50 range when you have multiple figures. Even one figure will cost anywhere from $15-$30 to ship. It's not cheap!
A Practical Example
Lets say that you want to buy this Mamako figure from the current anime, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? You go to Amiami to see how much she is and see that she's roughly $143 plus some amount for shipping down the road, let's say $163 shipped. Now, you know there's a TOM promotion going on so you go to TOM and see that she's $185. Oof, seems expensive. However, you're also getting $55 back as TOM points right now, and free shipping. If you already had your TOM points from the annual membership ($75), you could use $35 of your TOM points to get the price down to $150, still get free shipping, and wind up with $85 of TOM points remaining ($40 left from the membership, and $45 from 30x points on $150).
In the end, your choice is between spending $163 to get her from Amiami, or spending $210 (annual fee + $150 purchase price) to get her and $85 worth of TOM points from TOM. Is it worth spending an extra $47 now to get $85 of store credit for later, basically? In my opinion the answer is a resounding YES.
Some Considerations
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how figures get priced on TOM. In the above Mamako example, her price seemed very high even for TOM standards when compared to other figure sites. Other times, the price on TOM with free shipping will be basically the same as what you're paying on Amiami for the figure after shipping. TOM will work better for you if the price isn't overly inflated, but you can't control this.
Spent TOM points don't earn TOM points themselves. In general, it's bad to completely blow your TOM points on a purchase. You should always just use TOM points to reduce the cost of a purchase to $150 so that you can also get free shipping and get points, either 10% for pre-orders or 30-40% during points promotions.
TOM orders need to be paid up-front. This isn't a site like Amiami or Nippon-Yasan where you can pre-order an item and then forget about it until the payment is due. You need to be sure you want the figure because you're paying for it up-front. This has benefits and drawbacks from a psychological standpoint, but I think it's objectively worse than being able to pre-order and pay later. At least you get the TOM points right away.
TOM shipments are delayed about 2 months. For some reason that I suspect has to do with how they are able to offer free and discounted shipping, you can expect to get pre-orders from TOM about 2 months after they ship direct from Japan. This sucks, there's no way about it.
Using TOM Correctly
The benefits of TOM and the TOM premium membership start to disintegrate if you buy things outside of promotions or the occasional coupon TOM does around anime expo and other times of year. In practice, I find it's best to pre-order items on Amiami and wait for promotions on TOM. If the item is still available on TOM when a promotion comes around, order it on TOM and request cancellation from Amiami. In principle, Amiami doesn't accept cancellations but in practice I've canceled probably half of all the orders I've placed without issue (update 8-23-19, seems I spoke too soon and they actually sent me a warning about this today, so yes this system does work but not forever. Use it at your own peril.).
If and when you can order from TOM on promotion, don't waste all your TOM points. Just use enough to get the order down to $150 so you can get the free shipping and still get a respectable quantity of points back for future purchases.
Final Thoughts
So, how do I like TOM overall? In spite of the additional complication of points and memberships and shipping delays and having to pay up-front I've been really happy with TOM. Overall I've "saved" money on anime figures (hahahah, oh god I spent so much) relative to ordering the same figures on Amiami or other sites, but it has required me to jump through some hoops to get there. Waiting a little longer to get figures is OK and I don't mind paying up front, but I can see where these things might be a problem for some people.Prices aren't always the best at first glance, but when it works it works as you can see above. FEELS GOOD, MAN. I'd recommend the site and premium membership to anyone that buys more than a couple of figures a year. The only other thing is that you won't find all figures of the more lewd variety that you might find on Amiami and other sites, from lines like Skytube or Dragon Toy, but sometimes these makers do show up on TOM still.
If you're interested in supporting my hobby and buying some figures, please use my referral link when signing up for TOM premium or making your first purchase. You'll get a 5% discount coupon and it'll help me out a lot! There's a great points promotion going on right now until August 22nd 2019 so it's a perfect time to buy some figures. Thanks!
*UPDATE MAY 2020*
Some things have changed in the past few months which has affected my rating of TOM.
1) Maximum points spend per order are now capped at 50% of the subtotal. This is just awful. It means that if you have tons of points you can't just spend them out. Just spending them out isn't the optimal use of points, but not having the option to do it means that you'll likely always have points dragging you back to TOM unless you make a order greater than double the total value of your points.
2) Because of shipping issues from Japan now, unless a figure ships from their US warehouse you're not going to get free shipping for orders of $150. What you do get, is $25 EMS shipping with a $25 points bonus, which is OK but because points are somewhat worse now it still stings. Now to get a decent deal on a figure you're paying $175 out of pocket to get your figure and $25 worth of points, which is just objectively worse than $150 out of pocket for just the figure.
3) The promotions have been bad lately. Maybe it's just me but 20x points for Golden Week is pretty bad. TOM spoiled me for years with 30x promotions which could go to 40x on new figures, and that was pretty great, but just getting 30x on a new figure may not be enough to justify the generally higher prices.
So, all that said, I did still order this figure from TOM just yesterday to catch the end of their golden week promotion and I did still pay less than what I would have paid on Amiami after EMS shipping, along with receiving a net gain in points. However, I'm in a position now where if I want to spend out all my points and cancel my premium membership I'll need to basically order two figures at once so that I can still reduce the subtotal to just $150 while spending all of my points, since very few single figures will allow me to spend out that many points. Maybe there'll be a nice B-Style 1/4 scale I could get...
In conclusion: TOM can still be good but these changes have made the full benefits of being trapped in their ecosystem much more difficult to reap.
*UPDATE MARCH 2021*
Things continue to get worse for TOM. Recent changes have made it such that you can only get free shipping if the total shipment (which I think is compiled monthly) is greater than $150, not the total order value. In practice with figure prices being as high as they are, this doesn't change much, however now it makes pre-ordering individual figures less than $150 kind of a bad deal because you cannot simply pad the order up with small items to get the free shipping. As of this update, I've canceled my TOM premium membership and spent out my points, however not before getting pretty good deals on two figures. The value is still there on occasion, but it's getting harder and harder to find. I might renew my premium membership sometime if it becomes worthwhile to do so, but for now I've turned off the auto-renewal and will likely be moving most of my buying over to AmiAmi.
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