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EVENT: Bluefin Open House
New Southern California Headquarters For Import Giant...
New York Toy Fair was a hotspot of activity for the toy and collectibles industries, but it wasn’t the only event happening in the country last week. There was also a fairly exclusive Open House shindig at the new offices/warehouse of Bluefin in Souther California. Bluefin, as you well know, is the U.S. importer of Bandai Tamashii Nations (S.H. FiguArts, MonsterArts, etc.) plus a litany of other cool companies and products from all over the world. We covered the huge Bluefin presence at Toy Fair (see that HERE), and then just two days later I was walking into a sleek lobby flanked by a 6 foot tall Gundam robot and a life-size Hulkbuster Iron Man armor from Avengers: Age of Ultron! After check in the attendees got to have a look at the facility which included an upstairs showroom, offices, and a sprawling warehouse space.
If you’ve been to a major toy show or a convention in Southern California (Anime Expo, SDCC, etc.) you know that Bluefin always brings it’s “A game” with extensive display cases filled with well-lit figures, expertly assembled, painted, and posed model kits, statues, and more. Now, while there’s a very nice showroom at the new Bluefin facility it wasn’t quite filled during the Open House, but that’s only because so much product was in transit back from Toy Fair! And even so, what was on hand was super cool and covered a ton of different properties including:
-Beast Kingdom: Egg Attack Star Wars and Marvel featuring Iron Man and the Hulkbuster/Hulk duo from Age of Ultron
-Comicave Studios: Iron Man 75% die-cast metal Igor, Shades, & Shotgun armors
-Dragonball Z: Tamashii Buddies (and a jumbo version of Goku!) plus a couple display cases of FiguArts figures
-Gundam: TONS of models and figures
-Herocross: Hybrid Metal Figuration DC Comics and Batman ’66 figures
-Tamashii Nations Star Wars Movie Realization display
-SEN-TI-NEL toys
-S.H. FiguArts Sailor Moon display
-S.H. MonsterArts Godzilla diorama
-Storm Collectibles: Mike Tyson Olympics Special Edition and Dennis Rodman Bad Boy Limited Edition 1/6th scale figures
-Studio Ghibli display featuring shirts, plushes, homewares, and more
-Truforce Collectibles: Mega Man
-X-Plus: large scale Dragonball Z and Mega Man figures, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Nautilus
The Gundam displays in particular were truly impressive, with models built and painted by Bluefin employees and others. There were even a couple totally unique items like the custom painted blue Bluefin-themed large scale Gundam model and black and red variant Super Saiyan 3 Goku statue, both gifts to the company from their partners. Next door to the showroom area were cubicles and offices, all of which were naturally decorated with cool artwork and tons of toys. There was even a very sophisticated-looking wall display of interconnected boxes holding a myriad of figures and statues from Bandai, Tamashii Nations, and more.
Downstairs from all that fun stuff is a massive warehouse with dedicated areas for receiving and shipping, all vastly larger than previous Bluefin facilities. We saw rows upon rows of product stacked nearly to the ceiling, and being a former Operations Manager for a small warehouse I got to geek out on inventory systems and picking slips with the lovely people who worked there. Everything was really clean and efficient, and Bluefin seems entirely ready as it ramps up its shipping and sales. The evening was capped by a couple speeches by the company’s CEO and President, and attendees learned about the history of Bluefin and how it has grown tremendously over the years into the international success it is today with no signs of slowing down. The company has new partners like Storm Collectibles plus it’s debuting its own line of products here in the U.S. so the future looks bright for Bluefin indeed, and that’s a good thing for collectors like me who enjoy getting access to great products from around the world.
-Photos and words by Scott Rubin
A special thanks to Bluefin for the invite.
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Re: EVENT: Bluefin Open House
That Godzilla display is so cool!
