The seller on amazon is listed as amazon.com, potentially meaning the actual seller is anonymous.
I’m a little confused what you mean by this or what the significance of this is. I assume you’re looking at the “ships from” and “sold by” labels underneath the “Secure Transaction” button on the Amazon page? If so, I’d say that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything regarding the authenticity of the seller. I did some checking, and it seems that
all Odyssey albums on Amazon list the seller as “amazon.com”. The pages for
Album 72,
Album 64,
Album 18, for a few examples, all say “Sold by Amazon.com” underneath the “Secure Transaction” button. This is not an unusual listing, as it appears on every Odyssey album. If
28 Hours was the only album to list the seller as “Amazon.com”, then that would cause my suspicions to rise. However, seeing that this seems to be consistent across all the AIO album pages I’ve looked at on Amazon, I don’t think this is a large concern. After all, the album is technically being sold by Amazon.
My second reason to doubt it from the description is that it mentions war could break out and potential global consequences. While speculating about future wars is relevant today considering the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it seems unlikely FotF would introduce the discussion topic in a series for 8-12 year olds.
This is definitely a valid point. However, I would argue that each Odyssey album is usually recorded months in advance before a summary for the album is released on Amazon. Also, the planning stages of each album is usually done at least a year in advance. It is more than likely that the AIO Team planned out and recorded this album many months (or even years) before the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine started. I do agree with you that speculating about future wars does seem to be a deep topic for Odyssey and its target audience, but over the years we've seen them address all sorts of different issues in their episodes and have done very well with them, so I wouldn't put it past AIO to do an impactful 6-part series about war and its dangers.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
it's not off the table, but still a little strange for odyssey to have a long multipart episode with global consequences.
The entire Novacom saga, specifically all of Album 38: Battle Lines, focuses on a major worldwide consequences for the entire human race. Also, Album 53: The Green Ring Conspiracy focused on the overthrowing of a plot to destroy America by distributing counterfeit money throughout the country. I wouldn’t say that it’s unusual for Odyssey to have multipart episodes about worldwide consequences, it’s just very rare and not very often when it does happen.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
Of course, considering a recent interview with Phil Lollar about Odyssey's new 2+2=? mode of introducing a moral concept, anything's possible storywise.
Well, there you go; it’s definitely possible.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
I don't know how common it it for pre-orders to be listed on amazon without images, but you'd think any official source would wait for artwork to be completed before listing it.
Actually, it isn’t unusual for Odyssey to release the title and summary for upcoming albums on Amazon without the artwork. When I found the title and summary of
Album 71 and
Album 72 last year, neither one of the pages on Amazon had their artwork. These were eventually updated, with each album’s artwork appearing on its album page at a later date. So, missing artwork is not uncommon.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
So the listing is possibly A: A Marketing Mess Up, B: A leak from someone with inside info at FotF who believes they can sell pre-orders and make a profit, C: An Odyssey Fan with too much time on their hands, or D: A nefarious scammer (maybe with real info, maybe fake) with a decent grasp on Odyssey history attempting to sell pre-orders without ever planning to ship the product(also unlikely with something as niche as AiO). Another possible but incredibly unlikely reason is an intentional leak. These are more common with big companies like Disney and it would be bizarre for FotF to try that(methinks someone was listening to Morrie too much).
I'm not sure if I agree with any of these possibilities. If anything, I would personally put my money on option A. From the way the summary is written, I think that this is an unintentional release of information about the album. Which isn't too far-fetched; after all, we did just have Album 72: The Long Road Home
accidentally get fully released on Amazon before it was available on the AIO Club.
While Amazon is not an official source, it has been accurate in the past when revealing upcoming albums, usually before being officially revealed on the official site. I usually make sure of this before announcing it on our site.
Now, on to the things that I agree with you on.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
My first warning sign to the validity of the leak is that the description calls the antique store by it's outdated name, J&J antiques, instead of it's more recent name change to Triple J Antiques. Unless, heaven forbid, it has been renamed back to J&J antiques for the reason of Jason actually considering Jillian to be a worthy business (or worse, romantic!) partner. Quadruple J antiques would be funnier name assuming it wants to honor Jack and Joanne.
I agree with you about this point. The summary for Album 68: Out of the Blue first used the term “Triple J Antiques”, making it the official new name for the store. And now all of a sudden, this Album 73 switches back to "J and J Antiques". I as well am suspicious of this.
Also, regarding the summary, I notice that the summary on Amazon doesn’t explicitly say “In
28 Hours, album #73 of the series…”, which is unusual, because the summaries or Album 71 and Album 72 when they were first released on Amazon did explicitly state that they were the next album in the series. This "28 Hours" randomly breaks this consistency by not doing that.
This is one point which I agree with you on and definitely think it is certainly grounds for suspicions.
Patterson wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:06 pm
Reason #3 It sounds too good to be true (except for the inclusion of Jillian, who I hope either dies heroically{preferably quickly
} or turns out to be a foreign agent). It's been a while since odyssey has done a crowd pleasing Jason spy thriller.
Yep, I agree with this. As “Fair-Weather Fans” teaches us, if something is too good to be true, it probably is.
But then again, it is possible for the Odyssey Team to decide to please their fans by creating a Jason spy-thriller six-part album, right?
As you can see, I myself am torn as to whether believe this information or to be suspicious of it.
I’d say that the best we can do is wait until we hear some official word from the AIO Team.