Wonderfest Hatsune Miku licensing problems
Wonderfest, the largest garage kit event in Japan which is held twice a year, is slightly different from Comic Market in that you actually have to apply for a one-day license from the copyright holders if you wish to sell a figure of a copyright character.
Wonderfest winter 2008 is just 2 days away now, but according to Japanese blog nekolog, dealers that were planning to sell Hatsune Miku figures had some problems with getting the one-day license for Hatsune Miku, and a number of them were not granted the license.
The conditions for receiving the license are too difficult for amateurs to meet apparently, according to nekolog.
And even for those that were granted the license, they only received confirmation early February, which is pretty late considering that some of them don’t start seriously working on the production of the figures until they have the license.
According to kacchan no gareki heya, during World Hobby Festival Ariake, they would apply for the Hatsune Miku license from Crypton, which gave the license after approximately 33 days after the application. But for Wonderfest Winter 2008, they had to apply to Frontier Works instead, which took more than 2 months to give the license.
Japanese blog EWoE has a list of links to dealers that plan to sell Hatsune Miku figures at Wonderfest, and if you look around their sites, you can find people speaking of having not enough time to make the figures, and a handful of them report having been unable to receive the license.
