REVIEW OF YAMATO'S
VF-19A
INTRODUCTION
I've just
bought some of the new Yamato Macross VF-X2 game color version
VF-19A toys. Now there's some good news and some bad news.
DESIGN
IMPROVEMENTS
First, the
good news. As earlier reported in my exclusive of 22nd June 2001 (
http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/toys/vf19_final_proto/_vf19_final_proto.htm )
Yamato have redesigned the toy's knees to eliminate the ugly gap present
on the Macross Plus YF-19. As well as improving the appearance, this
redesign also serves to greatly strengthen the knees, which have always
been a weak point on the earlier YF-19 and prone to breakage if excessive
or repeated sideways force is applied when disconnecting the forearm
tabs from the lower legs during transformation from fighter to battroid
mode. The new knee design on the VF-19A will definitely prevent
all knee breakage. The only downside to this redesign is that the
knees cannot bend as far forward for GERWALK mode as could the YF-19
thus giving the VF-19A a 'nose-up' appearance in GERWALK.
The other
design change on the VF-19A is that the shield position has been slightly
revised to reduce some of the gap between the end of the shield and
the body in fighter mode.
BOX
The VF-19A
toy comes in Yamato's standard size Macross box. Box art is fairly
simple as you can see from the pictures. As others have already pointed
out the pictures of the toy shown on the rear of the box are actually
of an earlier mock-up with the old type knees.
A red card
insert is used inside the box as a background to the toy instead of
the sky and desert scenes used in the Macross Plus toys series inner
box liners .
As
a first for Yamato, the toy is secured in the box with twist-ties
around the back, groin, wings and lower legs. While this doesn't
affect the toy at all, twist-ties have always been a personal hate
of mine.When I get a toy I want to take it out of the box at
once. With the VF-19A the twist-ties were so securely twisted that
I gave up trying to untie them by hand and ended up going in search
of a pair of scissors just to free the toy.
TRANSFORMATION
Anyway, once
out of the box the toy transforms very easily. In fact although transformation
is identical to the YF-19, I somehow found it to be much smoother.
Perhaps this is just because I am just very familiar with the toy
though.
I'm not going to say anything else
about the transformation as most readers here already YF-19 toys
and the subject has been done to death anyway If you don't know
how to transform one of these toys ,then please refer to the
scanned pictures of the instruction sheet.
STICKERS
The Toy comes
with two die-cut sticker sheets. The smaller sheet is the UN SPACY
circle-kite emblems for placement on the nose and wing of the toy.
The larger
sticker sheet is nearly the same as the one supplied with the
YF-21 and VF-11B, except that the stickers showing the names
of the Macross Plus pilots have been replaced by stickers with the
names of the characters from the VF-X2 game.
PAINT
JOB
Moving along,
the paint job on the toy is also very good. with a nice matt finish
to the black and blue parts. As others have already reported, the
metal tabs on the chest and wings are bare metal which makes sense
as paint would just come off these areas during transformation anyway.
Some people have complained that they don't like the light blue color
scheme, but that is the color the VF-19A is in the Playstation VF-X2
game, so if you don't like it then don't buy it ;-)
One negative
thing about this toy is that in some areas the paint will scratch
off fairly easily, especially around the feet. Unlike the YF-19, where
the feet, upper arms and hands are moulded in blue plastic, the VF-19A's
feet, upper arms and hands are actually made of white ABS plastic
which has been painted a silverish-gray. In fact all the plastic parts
on this toy are made of white ABS plastic which is then painted over
in either blue, black or silver-gray. In my experience so far the
silver paint seems to scratch much more easily than the blue and black
painted parts.
THE
BAD NEWS
Now for the
bad news. Unfortunately, the toys are not without problems. Firstly,
I have found that on 2 out of the 6 toys half the casting is missing
from the metal ring located internally in the right lower ankle. (please
see attached
pictures). The purpose of this metal ring is to hold the plastic ankle
ratchet in place, and because the casting is incomplete it means that
the internal two piece plastic ankle ratchet is not locked in place
and rotates freely so that the ankle joint cannot lock and thus toy
tends to topple over very easily in battroid mode . The fact that
the only 2 out of 6 toys had this problem leads me to suspect that
it occurred partway through the production run.
Also, another
problem is that on 4 out of my 6 VF-19A toys the moveable pin on the
lower-front of the gunpod that is used to connect the gunpod to fighter
mode is very undersized and is much too small for the hole in the
back of the toy. Basically this means that on 4 out of my 6 toys I
cannot attach the gunpod in fighter mode.
Of cause,
it is always possible that I may have gotten the only fluke toys with
these problems, but at the moment we won't know until more start showing
up with Macross World forum members so that we can get more feedback.
CONCLUSION
The VF-19A is a nice toy,
but if at all possible I would check the toy before you buy (which
unfortunately you can only do by removing it from the box). Otherwise
if the problems with the right ankle and gunpod are likely to bother
you, then you may want to consider delaying purchase until the factory
has solved the above-mentioned problems.
***Update 08/24/01***
If you happen to have an affected Yamato VF-19 with either right
ankle casting problem, or a gun too small, please email graham@macrossworld.com
Its been 2 weeks after the initial release, and the number of affected
toys appears to have been very,very low.
Graham
