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Unless things change, the $800 de minimis exemption is set to expire on May 2. I've luckily got in a couple orders that were delivered in the past couple days to beat the deadline. I've cancelled a number of preorders that clearly weren't going to beat that May 2 deadline as the items simply weren't worth the costs anymore.

The first eight Nacelle figures are now available for preorder from BigBadToyStore, for $33 each... ...although once they're released, tariffs will likely double the cost. 🤕

I worked a lot on my Enterprise E kit last night, laying down more decals. The topside decals went down more easily because the surface doesn't have deep concave sections. I've cut out the red and blue warp nacelle parts of the decals to lay them down without interfering with the blue fluorescent paint. I got to the point where I had to stop. Due to the nature of having to handle the kit, I wouldn't want to run the risk of handling it with wet decals lest they come off on my hands, right? I just did one side of one nacelle so far. My plan to just cut out the red and blue parts from the decals worked though, so I'm pleased with that. Oh, and there's one big U-shaped decal that goes along the front. I did not have confidence that it would survive, so I cut it essentially in half (in a blank part of the aztec pattern) and put it down in two sections.

Yikes!!

That's been my understanding as well. Well, it supposedly increased further as of a few hours ago. It's now 245%.

Yeah... not a big fan of Benoist or how they wrote her character.

1/55 project is still alive.

That was usually the case but the latest announcement dropped the de minimis exemption because they're so paranoid of companies working around the tariffs creatively. Of course, none of us know what the final shape of any of this will look like so hopefully things like that exception are brought back swiftly and we can all go about our collecting with a sigh of relief.

I’ve been hearing that if the shipper is sending individual orders for less than $800, then it’s exempt. I don’t know how that works or if it does at all. They’re saying that if you order from a store or warehouse and it’s under that amount, then no tariff, but if someone like an American store that orders in bulk would have to pay. I don’t want to be spreading misinformation, but just that there seems to be some alternate versions of what’s allowed and what isn’t.

From what I've read, it's pretty clear. If the product says Made In China on the box, it gets the China tariff wherever it's being shipped from. What someone else essentially raised was what if a Japanese shipper lies or refuses to declare place of manufacture on the customs label, and whether someone might open a package to check that or not. Well, that's like shipping cocaine through customs. You never know what would prompt someone to randomly pull your package, but last I heard dogs couldn't sniff out Guangdong. If the shipper is caught lying about place of manufacture, I believe they will be penalized, though, and more likely than not a lot of their packages would be pulled going forward.

Yeah I had fun with it as well. The CCA thing may somewhat be touched on for sure here since the mobile suit is still around, but the man is in question.

Yeah, I got it. It's a major improvement in both editing and visual effects, and probably the best version of Alien 3 we're ever gonna get.

If it’s just the characters they already introduced here, that would be rather. . . disappointing. These “civilians” should be involved too. But c’mon, swing for the fences.

I already pre-ordered this. The original Leo was the best of the three I've received so far.

Five years ago? Are they really going to remember they mentioned this?

It's mixed with a bit of Gihren's Greed too. This isn't the first time there's been a Char's custom Gundam or a UC story where Zeon ends up winning the war.

From what I’ve seen, the box difference usually just comes down to release batches or regional packaging, but the parts inside are the same.

I liked the throwback vibe of episode 2. I also like where this is going, concerning questions to the ending of Char's Counter Attack.

That'd depend on which of two contradictory takes you ascribe to. Macross the Ride's explanation is that the New UN Forces were a product of the military reorganization that occurred in the wake of the Second Unification Wars in 2051. Master File presents a different view that the New UN Forces existed from the same point as the New UN Government (2010) and that the areas around Earth simply held onto the old livery until the Second Unification War as a point of pride and a symbol of their Earth-first ideology. There's evidence for both versions, but as usual Macross loves a multiple guess past... but in both cases they supposedly basically went directly from the one to the other. Seven years after Macross 7 would be 2053, well after the NUNS mark was in use in either case Given that Sound Force were irregulars, and this manga basically features "Sound Force II"... well... it's probably just some personal mark or something. Well, they can't all be winners. Macross Ace at least had a lot to compensate for the occasional weak manga installment.

That’s something I wasn’t really sure about. I wasn’t sure if they’re looking for where something is shipped from or where it’s manufactured, I haven’t heard anything really talking about that

Awesome! It’s a big boi that’s for sure. Going to be a lot of fun.

Honestly, this episode just leaves me thinking "Why couldn't you just use this art style for the main series and not the excessively twee style we got?" By the end of it... I'm just bored. This was supposed to be impactful backstory that shapes the entire setting and worldview of the series we're watching. Instead, it just feels like an afterthought... or maybe a bad fanfic by a Zeon fanboy. The whole episode can be summed up as "Zeon is invincible because Char got a Gundam". Did Anno forget that Zeon was already at the breaking point in September UC 0079 before the Federation ever got the Gundam? It's not like one of the major events of the war was General Revil escaping and giving a speech about it.

You guys might have heard that there's another Devastator War going on. I myself have reviewed, in the last two months, the entire set of Mecha Invasion Constructicons as well as Dream Star Toys' Scrapper and Hook. While those guys represent some cool and stylized takes on the Constructicons I expect that there are quite a few people thinking, "yeah, that's nice and all, but I was kind of hoping for something with a bit more cartoon-accurate and with more modern engineering to replace Constructor." Well, we're getting a few of those, too! But which one is the right one? With the way things are going I don't think I can realistically buy all six members from every set out there. I can probably manage to buy Scrapper from every set, though (although 01-Studio and MMC's aren't out yet). So the first one up will be X-Transbots' Ground Bite. Out of the box, Ground Bite is making a strong first impression. The colors seem spot on. The proportions are good; he's not too wide, and he doesn't have the extra chunky limbs that ToyWorld's does. He's got the tiered thighs and rib vents of the animation model, with silver, gray and red details on his chest and the stripes on his hip skirts that match the cartoon. The round bits are present on his shins, and his head is on-point with a metallic red paint over translucent eyes. With his shovel you'd expect him to have a bit of a backpack, and he definitely does. However, it's pretty tightly compacted. I mean, you kind of want the bucket to stand out, as I feel it's a part of the character's design, but everything else is pretty unobtrusive and you won't see it from a lot of angles. Ground Bite comes with a lot of accessories. There's his gun, which is maybe on the small side but otherwise cartoon accurate. There's a pair of trumpets- one is for Ground Bite himself, the other is for Big Load, XTB's Long Haul who did come with one. There's a chunk of partsforming Devastator thigh... I find it interesting that it's only the knee and thigh, and none of the hip/pelvis. There's Devastator's chest plate. There's a pair of green circular bits. There's a sword that, if I'm not mistaken, Scrapper used to cut a car in half in the episode where they were making the Stunticons. There's a plastic base piece, some stickers you can put on the base to make it looked like cracked concrete. Ground Bite's articluation is pretty good. His head is on a hinged swivel, which means no sideways tilt but he can look down a bit and up about 45 degrees. His shoulders rotate and move laterally about 90 degrees, both on ratchets, and if you untab them from his torso you can even get a bit of forward butterfly. His biceps swivel. His elbows bend maybe 60 degrees or so. His wrists swivel, and they're hinged so he can bend his hands back. His thumbs have one hinge for folding them down over his palm, plus two hinged knuckles. All of his fingers are hinged at the base with a second middle knuckle; the index finger is a separate piece, while the other three are molded together. It strikes me as an atypical design for XTB, who usually do fully articulated hands with lots of ball joints, but if I'm being honest I prefer Ground Bite's. Unlike earlier articulated XTB hands, these ones don't feel like they're going to fly apart on me. Moving on, his waist has a ratcheted swivel, and he's got a little ab crunch. His hip skirts move so his hips can go 90 degrees forward and one click short of 90 backward on a ratchet, and over 90 degrees laterally on a friction joint. His thighs swivel, and his double-jointed knees (both ratcheted) can get a full 180 degrees of bend. No upward tilt on his feet, but the toes can fold down 90 degrees. They also swivel, which gives him a sort of unlimited ankle pivot. If you're worried about it being like a fake ankle pivot, his heels also swivel so the bottom of his foot can remain flat, but they swivel independently of the front of his feet. He can hold his gun or his sword the same way in either hand. Tabs on either side of the handle plug into slots on his palms, then you wrap the fingers around it. Aside from holding them, he doesn't seem to have any accessory storage in bot mode. The trumpet works similarly. There are tabs that fit into his palms, but you need to leave his hand mostly open so that the fingers can sit over the keys. You can kind of wrap the fingers around the bottom loop of the trumpet, but the result isn't quite cartoon-accurate, not quite how a real person would hold a real trumpet, but somewhere in between. One gimmick that doesn't require any accessories- there's a panel on Ground Bite's left arm that you can lift up to find molded computer details under. It's a small shame they're not painted to help them stand out, but the entire gimmick is more "nice to have" than necessity, so I'm not going to ding him for it. As for the green bits, you'll find that the wheels on Ground Bite's shoulders are basically tabbed on. You can remove them (be careful doing so, the tabs are kind of thin), then replace them with the green bits. This is mean to give him a truly Sunbow look, where Scrapper's wheels turned into round green lumps in the cartoon, if you're a hardcore cartoon purist. It's something you might want to do if you plan on leaving him in robot mode or leg mode, but again those tabs are kind of thin and must be removed and swapped back to the real wheels every time you want to go to alt mode. Speaking of alt mode... the transformation's actually pretty good! I mean, XTB is still going to be XTB, so there are a few sliders and a few parts and panels that are a bit thinner than I'd like, but the engineering itself is pretty straightforward. I think the most confusing part in the instructions are his legs, but once you've done it once or twice it's honestly pretty intuitive. I think the end result is pretty good. Yes, you've got some cartoon elements like the arms chilling on the sides and a bit of his silver thighs peeking out at you, but you've got realistic details like the exhaust and air cleaner over the engine, the bumper, grill, and taillights on the back, an open cab roof of the sort you might find on a actual wheel loader, and detailed, realistic arms connected to the bucket. There's even a seat in the cabin, with a steering wheel and little levers for operating the shovel. The tires are rubber, and the shovel can lift about this far. If you turn him upside down, you'll find space between these green flaps, flaps that have tabs on them. Collapse the barrel into the gun, and you can slot the tabs on the flaps into the sides of the gun to store it under the alt mode. In a nod to the G1 toy, you can put the chest shield on Ground Bite's back. However, doing so does require that you attach Devastator thigh, as the shield connects to it and not Ground Bite himself. Speaking of, normally I don't like to cover the combined mode until I do my review on the entire combined mode, but since Ground Bite has to stand as a proxy for all of the XTB Constructicons, we have to take the leg mode into consideration now. It's pretty typical Scrapper fare, with the shovel becoming the toes and his arms becoming the heels while the back end requires minimal transformation at all (basically just folding the air cleaner and exhaust back in and the cartoon round bits back out). The steering wheel gets stowed away and the seat folds down, and the cabin kind of tucks in. Some extra struts help hold the shovel in place, and panels fold out from the shovel to swap the realistic alt mode teeth with the two-toed look of the animation model. However, I suppose a downside of the more realistic alt mode details is that the leg mode isn't particularly similar to the goofy animation model in the first place. Of a more practical concern, while the thigh fits on tightly enough and does a lot of the heavy lifting in the leg articulation department, Ground Bite's waist does extend to give the leg mode an ankle pivot. However, the extended joint is kind of small, and seems to have trouble supporting the weight of the leg above it. The result is that the entire leg wants to lean backward. Now, it's not enough to to cause him to tip over, and it's entirely possible that the weight of the rest of Devastator on it (and shifting said weight forward a bit) might make this a non issue. It's clear, though, that it was on XTB's mind, because this is where the stand comes in. You'll find a hole under each arm, and four across the front of the shovel. These holes plug into pegs on the stand base. Unfortunately, it's unclear at this time whether the base will be a helpful display piece of an unfortunately necessary one. Given X-Transbot's reputation for spotty QC, I'm happy to report that Ground Bite is an excellent G1 Scrapper. He's solidly built and well painted. The robot mode has well-proportioned, strong sculpt that walks a line that leaves him very Sunbow accurate without being overly blocky and devoid of details. He's also well-articulated and comes with plenty of accessories. The transformation is pretty straightforward once you know what you're doing, and while the alt mode strays a bit from the simplistic animation model it adds a ton of realistic details while remaining broadly accurate. If you want a Masterpiece Scrapper for your shelf Ground Bite is a figure I can easily recommend. However, I think a lot of people are more interested in a Masterpiece Devastator than a Masterpiece Scrapper, and that's where things are a bit more questionable. The relatively small joint in Ground Bite's waist that essentially becomes the gestalt ankle seems like it could be a weak point. Time will tell if it's actually a problem, but a lot of collectors might feel like they have to make a decision now before figures start selling out. Paired with a leg mode that's definitely toy-accurate but doesn't quite match the Sunbow design and I suspect there are (or will be) better options of Devastator.

@Papa Ratthank you! I will say that the Tomahawk was on the lower end of the three for pricing when I was looking (with the defender being the highest for some reason). Relatively cheaper doesn’t necessarily mean cheap though, so fingers crossed you can find a good price!