I think there was an earlier version which took Minox cassettes. Don't know if it's still around. I'm sure both will eventually be a collectors item, especially as I doubt if many will be/were made.
It's cute and whimsical, as one might expect from Minox, which I believe built it. They also make a Leica M3, along with Minox film versions of Leica I,III, and M3, a Hasselblad SWC, and a Contax I. As one might expect from Minox, they are taking the idea of camera as fashion statement seriously. And given the limitations of the 8x11 (mm not inches for you ULF types) format, they can't even think about avoiding digital.
No, the real blasphemy is that in the Rollei version, because it has an LCD display, not a real mirror box+GG, you see the image on the screen NON-REVERSED! That, my friend, is unholy desecration of the most fundamental principles of TLR faith. Nobody will take seriously the intense cognitive training that TLR shooters had to go through in order to perform their craft, and nobody will ever feel the elating power of supervening upon one's perception when using only the mind's eye to find the One True Way of pointing the camera to follow a moving subject.
May they all suffer for eternity in the searing lake of boiling liquid crystals and plasma that shall be their doom!
No, the real blasphemy is that ... you see the image on the screen NON-REVERSED! That, my friend, is unholy desecration of the most fundamental principles of TLR faith. !
Ah, but the prism finder is covered by a joint article shared between the TLR and SLR faith. However, waist level finder worship is strictly controlled by the TLR deuteronomy. Although, some apocryphal texts point to the existence of WLF on SLRs...
Nope. MINOX built NONE of these... all of the so-called "MINOX Classic Collection"--- those taking MINOX 8x11 film cartridges--- were made in Japan through Asanuma for the Megahouse Toy company as Sharan: http://www.sha-ran.co.jp/
The digital cameras I think had also input from other parts of BANDAI toy company. The film version of the Rolleiflex was very nice. It was only available in Japan as elsewhere Rollei had an exclusive agreeement and so none could move in the MINOX distribution. Asanuma Camera and Mechanical Laboratory (ACMEL) had been distributing cameras for MINOX film for some time. ACMEL and MINOX GmbH are not related, only united in a tradition of 8x11 film. The cameras are made in very tiny numbers in Japan and found a fit in the program of MINOX GmbH and Megahouse. There is a very modest minimum order number to get them to make a series. This is how, for instance, I think the Robot-I miniature was born--- and probably the Rolleiflex. The digital cameras, I think, are made in PR China.
The cameras, inclusive of the digital take, are very cute and nice, albeit expensive, toys. Performance does not come to levels that one might currently expect from a camera--- film or digital--- but photography are hardly their raison d'être. That said one can get some good photographs from the film camera with a bit of thought.. the triplet on them is not bad at all and film has sufficient lattitude to get away with the 1/250th fixed shutter in the "right conditions"..