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FAT CAT released an upscaled Real Grade God Gundam to 1/100 scale, along with some effect parts that are seen in the RG's Expansion Set (sadly, no horse): The original Master Grade needs a 2.0 upgrade, and this may just fit the bill.

I mostly avoided the TFOne toys- to wit the only ones I own are Elita 1, Prime Changers Alpha Trion, Starscream, and Airachnid. Of the four, Airachnid is my favorite. Her alt mode is odd, but I like it. She's a hard design to make into a toy, especially at deluxe scale, and I think Takara did an excellent job, all things considered. Got my copies of SS86 Thundercracker and Windcharger today. I struggled a bit with the leg transformation on TC- I wasn't getting those internal bits to snap into the inner shin in jet mode, and thus the nacelle covers weren't closing fully, and the wings weren't lining up right. I fussed with it for a while, reading and rereading the instructions. Finally, I consulted a random reviewer's transformation vid and I noticed his just clicked nicely into place. So I fussed a bit more with it and finally found the sweet spot. Overall, it's a nice fig. It's still a far cry from the clean F-15 I wish it'd become, but it looks nice and I'm glad they changed up the transformation a little bit from the Classics/WFC figs. I wish they'd been able to rotate his chest bits into that huge hollow area to minimize the jet's side profile, and make the feet snap in flush to the legs instead of having the toes hanging out. I have other niggles as well, but I'll just leave it at that. IMHO, he at least looks marginally better than the latest MP Seeker in jet mode. Windcharger's not the best of the upscaled deluxe minibots, but I'm glad he's finally here. He's still a good-looking figure, but all that roof kibble doesn't tab very securely at all and with my copy's knee joints being very tight, the feet unfurl almost every time I try to change his pose. Too, as others have pointed out, the mostly hollow interior feet cavities are a bit of an eyesore. Again, despite his flaws, I'm glad, after what seems a very long wait, we finally have him.

Same here. I felt kinda dumb when people brought it up 20 or 30 years later.

True. My younger self had no idea about the dark side of that flag and what it symbolized. The show was just stupid goofy fun, typically 80s.

Reminds me of how a lot of us loved the show Dukes of Hazard and then everyone in the next generation points out the flag on the car.

Admittedly, I own a copy of Chariots of the Gods, which I bought many years ago and read only that once. I've watched numerous eps of Ancient Aliens, and my wife and I like to laugh about some of the outlandish stuff they all come up with. However, I never noticed the subtle, or perhaps not so subtle in retrospect, racial demeaning of certain cultures while leaving others out in their alleged necessity for "otherworldly" assistance in creating their monuments. I appreciate your enlightening insights. Suddenly, it all eaves a bad taste in hindsight.

TBS. TVC.

The Simpsons 2.5" Nelson.

Still doing Studio Series, we've got Deluxe-class Transformers One Airachnid. Aesthetically speaking, with the bulk of her design being gray with bits of gunmetal and silver, you could argue that Airachnid is a tad bland. You could also argue that it looks like the designers (Evan Brooks and Takio Ejima) were working from a photo that someone shrunk on the Y-axis but didn't click the box to keep the proportions. Despite the proportions and because of the bland colors, Airachnid is actually pretty faithful to her CGI model. Thicker armor on her thighs, forearms, and shoulders/biceps, kneepads rising off the rotors in her legs, tiny legs with stiletto heels, and a quartet of spider-limbs on her back. OK, actually it'd be a little more accurate if the heels curled under her "feet," but while that might work for CGI this is still a toy that has to stand. There's also some molded details on her calves that don't entirely belong and I'm not sure if they're actually necessary. Speaking of not belonging, she's got a bit of a kibble backpack, but this is a Deluxe, not all of her alt mode is going to fit in her feminine frame. But hey, the molded and even painted the small purple eyes along the sides of her head. It'd be cool if her head opened up to reveal even more eyes, like the film, but again, Deluxe. Airachnid comes with these two guns. They have a bit of (accurate) paint on the barrels, which is nice. Airachnid's design is a bit unconventional, and as such doesn't seem to lend itself well to articulation. Her head is on a ball joint, but the ball is in her chest instead of her head. She can swivel her head, tilt it sideways a little, and look down a little, but not up. Her shoulders swivel on ball joints, but the shoulder armor limits lateral movement to only about 45 degrees. Her elbows are ball joints, so they have to due double duty as a 90 degree bend and the bicep swivel. No wrist or waist articulation. Her hips (which are more ball joints) can go 90 degrees forward or backward, but they have maybe 30 degrees of lateral spread (and that's if I'm being charitable). Her thighs swivel, and her knees bend 90 degrees. There's another joint below the knee, I suppose a digitigrade ankle, that has a little forward/backward movement. Once again, though, we have a lack of ankle pivot. I don't mind that as much here as on Trion, though... for one, her feet are so small that it's not really noticeable that they're not flat. For two, it's just an easier sin to forgive on a toy that's like $15 dollars less. Her humanoid body might be lacking in articulation, but she also makes up for it some with the spider limbs. The upper limbs are connected to her back on hinged ball joints with four additional hinges along their lengths. The lower limbs are connected via ball joints and have two additional hinges. She wasn't really built to do the spider-walking that Prime Airachnid was prone to, but with some patience you can position her resting on just the spider limbs. As far as her guns go, the instructions show that they can plug into her forearms, which is movie-accurate, but she can also hold them in her hands. What the instructions don't show, exactly, is that you can open her forearm armor and swivel her fists around to reveal more guns! That is, the instructions do show it, as part of her transformation to alt mode, but not as a gimmick for bot mode. But there's no reason you can't do it in bot mode! Speaking of alt modes... flip the fists in, like I just said. Open the front of her torso, and collapse her face down inside. When you close her torso, it'll tab into spots on top of her head. Take her entire backpack and hinge it up and out from her body; the hinges will tab into the back of her head. Fold the tail out of the backpack, fold out and spread the rotor blades, and turn the end of the tail so that the disc with the rotor blades is facing downward. The lower spider limbs will scrunch up tight, then swivel 180 degrees on their ball joints before pegging into each other and resting under the tail. The upper limbs will swivel and fold on their ball joints so that they tab into both the tail and into the lower limbs, with the bulk of the forming a ring around the rotor on the tail. Double hinges will allow her arms to dislocate from her sides to her back. Swivel the forearms so they can tab together. Grab the rotors on her knees, and pull them out so they can hinge down and tab to her toes. Double hinge her thigh armor out and away from her thighs, then use the ball joints to swing her thighs up. Turn her thigh swivels 90 degrees, so that her thighs and the the joints line up with the sides of her torso and plug them in, but then also turn a second swivel you exposed when you moved the rotor so you can tuck them into place as well. Finally, take the thigh armor, swivel it 180 degrees, then use the hinge to stretch it out into the nose of the vehicle. They should line up so that they tab into her forearms. All-in-all, this Deluxe has far more complex engineering than Voyager Alpha Trion. And the alt mode is... well, broad strokes, yes, that's right. And open nose, guns underneath, cockpit area with two small rotor "wings", and a downward-angled tail with a large rotor. It's the details that do her in. The rotor wings should sit tighter to the body, and aside from the guns on the leading edges, don't have an spikes or protrusions. The guns under the nose should stick out past the nose, which itself shouldn't stretch so far out from the cockpit area. The nose, cockpit, and tail should blend and taper more seamlessly, but they toy is covered in exposed hinges and joints. Then there's the rear spider-limbs, which just kind of chill under the tail. They're not on the CGI (I assume they're meant to form the blades of the large rear rotor in the movie rather than the kibble tail on the toy). They seem to exist solely to prop up the rear of the vehicle when you set it down. I think it's fair to say that she's definitely in the ball park, though, and even with the $3 increase in price I'm still inclined to cut her some slack as a Deluxe-class toy in a way that I'm not on a Voyager that costs $8 more than last year. Not much else to say... the big rotor on the back spins, but the small ones in her wings/knees do not. The wings have guns molded onto them, plus her wrist guns on the nose, and her pistols, which do not need to be removed for transformation if you had them plugged into her forearms. Zero partsforming, lets go! Airachnid certainly has her flaws, and no one is going to mistake this for an MPM toy. But with decent screen-accuracy and a transformation that punches above the usual Deluxe I can't be too mad at her. I dare say she's one of the better Transformers One toys in the Studio Series line. If you're a fan of the movie, the character, or simply Transformers toys that hit a bit different, I think Airachnid is worth checking out.

Dear All: Could anyone confirm this site is legit? My 1/60 Hikaru Yamato shoulder has been broken for some years, now I see the only option for fixing is by printing these parts however I have been reluctant to purchase since I have seen bad reviews regarding this site. Thanks in advance for advice...

Believe it or not, I used hot melt glue on my matchbox 3 3/4 inch Lisa/ Misa, Miria and Minmei figures:

This.

In most cases, those "hows" and "whys" of the ancient constructs in question had already been found out and fairly well documented years if not decades before von Daniken put pen to paper. Von Daniken's books ignore the findings of real archaeologists in favor of fantastical nonsense about alien intervention because they aren't trying to present a serious scientific theory, they're a vehicle for racist ideology. The whole premise underlying the ancient alien intervention hypothesis von Daniken popularized is minimizing or handwaving the achievements of indigenous cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas (but not Europe) by claiming those native civilizations couldn't have built or discovered what they did when they did without a superior civilization's assistance. Looking up who his editor was is enough to make it very clear that that is not accidental.

Hey, @Xigfrid, are you still in business, so to speak?

I suspect they're trying to differentiate, and figuring the niche is filled with those. TakaraTomy, so maybe they're learning that not every new wave of TFs need to have 2 different Bumblebees in it...

Hope everyone had an exceptional holiday! Have enjoyed following the progress happening on everyone’s projects. Had to put time aside for the kids Kitty Rocket. That done, moving on to transforming a 3.99 bargain marvel fig into something more. At the moment it’s Scarlet Johayase. I am a bit apprehensive about the hair and what to sculpt it with 🤷🏼, maybe helmeted but resisting……any advice on sculpting hair would be a godsend (looking at either sculpy or greenstuff?).

Getting closer. Just finishing up some brush painting details and waiting for some gloss, a few decals and onto the next build. The IMS Terror Mirage.

I’m pretty sure it’s the Kotobukiya kit. I think it was more of a continuation of the HLJ complaint subsection of this thread

I kinda blame the changes that the history channel and TLC channels made towards the end of the 90’s. They were far more about education than cheap reality tv. I still remember that the TLC in TLC channel as an acronym for The Learning Channel. Same thing with MTV being Music Television. Too much trashy unrealistic reality shows and not enough focus on what the channels were meant to be.

He posed interesting questions, but rather than allowing credit to go directly or indirectly to aliens, the results of his books and tv offshoots, archeologists should be more fired up than ever to find scientific solutions to the hows and whys of ancient constructs. One thing's for certain, ancient humans were far more capable than we like to think they were. I do enjoy all the globetrotting on "Ancient Aliens" as I've been introduced to far more ancient sites through that show than through traditional historical programs, which is disheartening given the scale and sheer numbers of monuments around the globe, and the spurious nature of AA.

Wash It All Away 2nd episode aired today. I am not sold on this show. It is cute.

S.H. Figuarts Dragon Ball Super Saiyan - God Super Saiyan Vegeta (Unwavering Saiyan Pride) 5" Action Figure X 2

My handle is essentially a stylistically phonetic way of saying my last name with a Scottish pronunciation. My real last name is both spelled and pronounced differently. However, I suspect that it was probably originally McEwan, or something similar and, like many immigrants, my ancestors were likely illiterate, and somebody wrote the name down with its current spelling, or the family itself changed it over time as well as the pronunciation. Regardless, I came up with that particular sobriquet over twenty years ago and have been using it ever since. It's easy to remember, and easier to pronounce than my actual last name so, there you go. My avatar is my LEGO VF-4 that I built between 2010-11. It was my first complex, non-partsforming, fully transformable model, and I chose it as my subject b/c at the time, there were no toys of the lovely VF-4 (until Yamato revealed theirs). Mine still has the distinction of having fully articulated shoulders, an omission on both the Yammie and the HMR that boggles my mind in a combat mecha. At some point, I'd like to redo this thing in the proper FB2012 color scheme, but I'm lazy and just haven't gotten around to it yet.