MacrossJunkie

In my specific case, the Hayate version is actually better and Mirage's is worse.

I got mine today and I have to say that they somehow made this worse than Hayate's. While the pegs in the wings seem to fit in the legs they don't stay in. Also the back of the right wing appears to be missing something as it won't stay together and probably needs to be glued. This is especially bad when the wing is pegged in or at least attempting to, as it forces it apart even more. The front chest flap is also so loose that moving the figure back and forth is enough to make the flap well... flap around. Not an ounce of friction keeping it in place. Holding it face down just makes it open like the pic below. Overall, the joints feel looser too. Not very happy with this.

If that wasn't so bad, I'd think it was kind of hilarious that they slapped a big ol' "WE CARE" sticker on your mangled boxes with a meaningless apology. "We hope this incident did not inconvenience you (and if it did, oh well!)" 2nd pic, while zoomed out, I thought the cat's tail was the crowbar they accidentally left behind that they used to bash your boxes in with. 😄

I don't think I ever had a Best around here, but I sure as hell remember Service Merchandise. Used to look for transformers toys in those catalogs.

Yeah, they should re-release the non-PF 0D or at least one without the weathering but keeping the tampo printing, but with all the improvements done to the mold with the PF and using the same color plastics as the PF. My original release 0D is literal trash. It falls to pieces and joints are all loose despite not having really touched it. The PF version was a huge improvement in every way.

Well... one thing is for certain, they're not going to be as cheap now as they were back in the Yamato days. I think I got mine for $70-80.

Pretty sure they're just part of the paint scheme. The 29's simply aren't as adventurous with their paint schemes as even some of its contemporaries.

Gosh, that paint scheme... It's like they had a meeting to try to figure out the ugliest combination of colors they could come up with and bring it into reality and this is what they came up with.

I really wish they'd do a re-issue. I'd like another one to put the armor on.

I used the stickers that came with mine. I initially looked into painting with glow in the dark paint, but it didn't look good to me. They turned out like blobs when trying to paint them with a paint brush and even cutting out little rectangle masks with some tamiya masking table still ended up with paint seeping under the tape when using a paint brush, The stickers were the best way for me to get rectangular windows and I would even cut them into smaller rectangles as needed. Here's my build from years ago for reference. Customized 1/3000 SDF-1 I remember there was a way to embed a flickr album into a post, but I can't remember how to do that.

Working for me. Thanks for doing the pw reset. Was getting tired of seeing that For Sale forum spam coming into my email. Must have been the same person. Most people post all the things they're selling in a single post instead of making individual ones for each item.

You're right about that. Mine are like that too. The outermost hardpoints are fine, but the arm ones do not fit properly because the plastic is thicker around the hole compared to the outer wing hardpoints. Edit: Nevermind, it does fit. The hard points are like this on the previous 31 releases also, where the plastic around the hole is a bit thicker. The part that appears to be making it more difficult to attach things to the hard points seems to be the hole for back rectangular peg. It might be a bit tighter on the 31AX. I just had to push in harder to get it to seat securely. The struts(?) should be able to make contact with the wing.

I got batteries and my digital caliper read 10.63 mm.

I do, but I found that the battery has drained after I took it out and tried to turn it on... I'll have to get new batteries.

I used an Xacto knife to shave down the pegs in the wings some. No left over scratches and looks pretty clean that way. Now it fits in snugly. Fixing that I think also helped other fitment issues or maybe it's because I transformed it to battroid and back again. I don't have to extend the tip of the gunpod anymore to get the peg at the tip to slot into the hole at the underside. Also the arm/bicep covers now no longer really have a gap on either side or at least it's to a degree I find acceptable. It's mostly in how you position the arms. Instead of having the arms pushed up against the underside of the wings, I pulled it down at the elbows as much as I could.

Well, that's just disappointing to hear. Prior to the 31AX, the 31 series was, for the most part, pretty solid in terms of QC and such. They really dropped the ball on this one. Spent the money on that useless Walkure stand instead of paying the QC people.

I finally got mine delivered yesterday. I like the look of it, but I have some issues with it from my brief time messing with it. I'm not sure if this is just a problem with my copy or if the first four I list below are more widespread. I haven't really had a lot of time to keep up to date with things. First issue: The part of the wings that peg into the legs in fighter mode don't really fit in the holes in the leg. Either the pegs are too large or the spacing is not wide enough. It might require some modification to fix. 2nd issue: the peg near the front of the gunpod doesn't go in properly because it seems the gunpod is a little short. I have to extend out the tip some in order for it to fit in properly. 3rd issue: a relatively minor gripe but it bothers me... the forearm cover leaves a large gap between it and the wing and no amount of massaging or repositioning the arms seems to fix that. 4th and most annoying: The friggin' fold up gray clips that keep the top half locked down in battroid mode are extremely weak and don't keep it in place. Any amount of movement makes the top half slip out of the clips. This was never an issue with any of the previous 31's I have. I basically have to keep it in fighter or gerwalk mode because battroid is hopeless as it is right now. 5th: I hate the gunpod design in terms of practicality for the toy. There's just no way for the poseable hands to hold it and I'm forced to swap to the fixed pose hands to hold it. That thick bar where the grip hinge is just gets in the way of everything and it has to be held at an odd angle. Also, it's heavy and, at least for my copy, it causes the arm to sag down from the weight. It can't hold it up at all. Edit: Just read some of the previous comments and it seems some of my issues are not just issues for me.

Obligatory meme

Exactly why I wanted to go with HLJ. They helped me out with the Ivanov that had the two left feet even though it was like a year after I ordered it from them. Thanks! I didn't realize they still had some in stock.

Didn't we used to be able to see an estimate on shipping for HLJ? I can't seem to see it now and it would be nice to have an idea how much it would cost shipped.

Same...

Well, good luck, everyone. I just can't deal with these site shenanigans anymore.

Got as far as getting through paypal, but when it returned to HLJ, it said order stop. They need to reserve the stock if you already get to the point that you've gone through the payment stuff...

Haha, thanks! I wish I had time to do more as I have a backlog of stuff, but ever since a person on my team at work quit over the holidays in December, I've been stuck with like 3 people's worth of work and have had little time to do anything else. Perhaps someday I'll be able to get time to get back to things...

Got mine earlier today. I'm surprised at how many markings it got out of the box. They got all the major ones as far as I can tell and even has the pilot name on the canopy which I think is a first for a non-premium edition release for Arcadia. All that's really missing are the usual No Step, Danger, Beware of Blast, etc. and the nuclear reactor marking on the legs. In any case, a vast improvement over the VF-4G which had almost nothing tampo printed on, to my recollection. Hope someone can post comprehensive pictures of the premium finish version so that I can use it as reference for where to put the markings since the instructions don't even come with any diagram for the markings. Aside from that, the build seems pretty solid. The legs on mine are a bit loose. Arms are very stiff by contrast. Missiles still keep popping off during transformation so that hasn't really changed from the VF-4G either.