Most of the bandai stuff has been out in Japan for a while, but has only started hitting North America in the last few months. For a long time Revell of Germany had exclusive rights in most of the world, which excluded the retail sale of bandai kits pretty much anywhere outside Japan. Bluefin worked out a deal to distribute the bandai kits in North America (and maybe elsewhere?) last year. Which is good b/c they are VASTLY superior to the Revell products.
In the last two or three months I’ve seen Bandai kits in my local hobby lobby and my local comic shop, both in plentiful quantities. So it looks like bluefin got a pretty liberal distribution deal.
And bandai is still making kits for Japan. They’ve got an epic 1/72 ANH “master grade” Millennium Falcon that just came out. It’s $400 but it’s INSANE. And it comes with a lighting kit.