Mommar

Trust me, one way or another you're going to hear about the 30 from me.

Originally I PO'd two because I liked the look in all three modes and was going pose them in two of the three for display (and was holding out hope they would make another color scheme or two so I could have at least one in each mode later) but after finding out I need some dumb clip to hold it all together I'm just PO'd.

The Ankles on my first 19, the one with the broken wing, were nice ans stiff. The second replacement one couldn't stand in Battroid right out of the box. It's a crap shoot. Bottom line, if you buy an Arcadia VF-1, barring manufacturing issues, it WILL be rock solid. If you buy an Arcadia 19 your mileage may vary... even if it is the best YF-19 on the market.

It's going to get complicated fast. Arcadia has only released three VF-1s. The 30th Anniversary 1J scheme, the Roy DYRL 1S which is in what people are calling "pink-white" and Hikaru DYRL 1S also in "pink-white." The two 1S are bright white, not an off shade. There are also no Arcadia Fast packs available, so if you want to deck out these Valks you have to find an old Yamato version in order to do so. Some people would disagree with me but I believe the White Roy or Hikaru 1S are both a good buy, plus you get a stand to display them on. However, they were made to order. You'd likely have to find them second hand at this point, minus the 30th Anniversary paint scheme. If you want to get into the Yamato back-catalog things... it gets complicated fast. Primarily the only real issue are knurled pins on the earliest Yamato releases which caused the shoulder hinge to crack. You could lose an arm, but it was fixed. Jenius has a pretty thorough list of what is a "good" and bad toy. He has a rundown of all of them but you're pretty much relegated to secondary market for everything at this point. http://anymoon.com/blog/?p=4599 The Arcadia YF-19 is the fourth Valk they've released ever. It's the best YF-19 available, period. The only other thing you would find online are some very old Yamato YF-19's and they are honestly terrible. A thing to note, the ankles are poorly designed. They can come out of the box super loose and Battroid may not stand. You can fix it but for $300+... yeah. The other thing is the addition of metal wing hinges for high speed mode, they left out any way to lock the wings in place, so they aren't very stable and can be a bit loose as well. Even still, it's better than the old one by a wide mile (If you ask me to compare it to the Yamato VF-19, the 19S is still for sale and relatively cheap, I'll tell you a different tale.) Right now HKCollectibles has all of the Arcadia stuff available still. I've used them before and haven't been disappointed. Prices can be a bit higher on a few things, but they have sale items as well. The Roy 1S right now, for instance. https://www.hkcollectibles.com/10-macross-robotech-1-60?orderby=quantity&orderway=desc

This doesn't affect me one way or the other. Though I've always been curious why people feel the need to just take an existing character and Swap their gender. Maybe they have a good idea? I don't know. I do know they already have a huge stable of established ladies who could use their own fleshing out... or just more of in some cases. The Valkyrie look is cool. Or maybe I just want another Dazzler comic, her time is ripe again what with EDM and all...

The price is fine, it's the availability that kills it for me.

What are the odds they're trying to gauge interest in whether or not people will buy another 19 and these parts?

I've put my 25A packs on my 19 just to see how they would look. You can actually attach them to the wing glove just like the TREX parts but you have to open the wings up so the packs fit over the metal swing bars. No matter how you slice it the Bandai Packs really don't look nearly as good as the official, made for packs. They look alright on their own, but I'd rather have the TREX parts.

First of all, don't post/advertise/etc... a single thing from it until you're completely done and can get it torrented everywhere or else you'll receive a Cease & Desist notice from Harmony Gold and nobody will get to experience the fruits of your labor.

And I am going to pray that this grand, ambitious idea comes true because I want one SO BAD.

Wouldn't the larger legs make an already rather thick fighter mode even more fat?

I've never owned a 1/48 nor have I seen a Milia 1/48 in person so I couldn't comment on the color. Various pictures/videos make it look like lots of different colors online.

I absolutely do not see that color in this photo at all.

And while I'm on the subject of tracks from Batman Forever, I was reminded of this bizarre Fluke remix of The End Is The Beginning Is The End that sounds more like a mash-up of Smashing Pumpkins with their own Atom Bomb track.

This "pop"ped into my head today for some reason so I thought I'd post it. Yeah, yeah, Batman Forever sucked. The soundtrack was actually pretty damn wicked though. I don't much care for Bono's voice in this recording but the guitars have some MASSIVE balls.

Those 25A parts are not scaled/colored/etc... for the Arcadia 19 at all. No comparison, the TREX parts looks heads and tails better.

I am certainly curious what sort of mechanism you would come up with for attaching the boosters to the wing glove.

I personally think that blue looks great.

There's absolutely no reason for them to issue a V3 25.

I don't know, a V3 would have to be pretty radically different to top the V2s. At best the differences will be minor. If Arcadia whips out some fancy new things for the VF-0, and if those things can be shrunken down to work on a VF-1, we might see a newer VF-1 mold but I highly doubt they could make something so radically better that the V2s they would be completely obsolete like the V1s were.

It is a difficult thing to figure out when it comes to the transformation with that fin what exactly we're going to get, isn't it? Given the people who set these up and take the photos can't be bothered to get ANYTHING correct. It's as if they aren't familiar with, or just don't care about, the product they're hocking. Given how the backpack pegs into the other 171's something either has to be different or just doesn't work the same on the RVF version.

Yeah, you're right about that. While it may not be a great design they have going here there's plenty of other, better reasons to dislike them other than the designs they might have nicked for this particular craft considering how many other things, everywhere are derivative designs of each other.

I'm still wondering if there's any particular type of glue that works best with the Bandai plastics? The small back half of the base the left tail fin attaches to still isn't glued down and I don't want to mess up the plastic using the wrong kind of glue to hold it.

Holy! That thing was going to be LONG. Though not quite as tall as I'd like mine (I have high ceilings) as I wanted at least five levels but they would have been closer to 30cm each. Actually, just re-measuring now, I would have to assemble the thing myself as it would be too tall for the doorways. It's too bad you never had it made, that would have been a sight to see. For that size and the fact it was supposed to be 100% dust proof plus delivery and assembly it's possibly a really good deal. I'm looking at some online that aren't nearly as wide, maybe a bit taller with similar depth that aren't 100% dust proof and they're hitting $2500 or $2600. Maybe $5000 is worth it? Was this place you were looking into local? I looked into some places online and found a British company that advertises custom cabinets but I live in the US and was frightened of just shipping costs, to say nothing of what the actual estimate would be. If you live someplace that is remotely humid you'll always have mold. It also depends on the kind of pads you use. Typically the synthetic blue pads will last all summer here. I like the straw pads, personally, as I can double them up and get better cooling. However, I have to switch them out every month and a half to two months or else they will start to mold.

The point about them selling at Gen Con before some people get them is actually breaking one of the initial Kickstarter promises. That backers would receive their stuff early as part of the benefit of backing. Now, backers just paid to get it "eventually." Delays didn't bother as I knew who we were dealing with but I do feel this is absolutely wrong.