AcroRay

This simple tutorial could be helpful to those of us who are planning on using an LED for the light-up feature in the Bandai reissue of the classic Imai 1/72 Regult kit. http://gamerabaenre.com/LEDinstall.htm Note that I haven't done it yet, but I thought it would be a useful point of reference.

Make sure your wallet is fully loaded before you embark on the hunt for a Cordoba kit!

I believe it qualifies as a toy. They're essentially marketing a limited run of unassembled prototypes of a toy that's apparently not going into mass production. It's probably more similar to uncolored, unassembled 1/60 VF-1S Yamato offers, or the crazy huge MACROSS.

Wonder if they'll treat the rendering as well as they do their girlie figures?

My Regult and Destroid Monster arrived yesterday - Whoo Hoo! Pretty close to being exact duplicates of the original Imai releases. The boxes are thicker, glossier paper & printing, and there are none of the neat little illustrated spacers that the 1980s kits had, and no flyer featuring other kits. The inner surfaces of some parts seem to show some tooling cavity damage on the Monster that I don't recall from the 1980s, but overall the exposed surfaces, fine details and plastic seem to be Bandai's usual high-quality of manufacturing. Proof will be in how well the parts fit together, but the package feels much better than the manufacturing on the Revell Robotech editions of Imai and Takara's kits, by way of comparison. No shirking evident here. Even all the box text and fonts is painstakingly re-done, with only some minor grain in the kits' paintings and the color Macross logo. Opening these on a snowy December day was a serious flashback to the Christmas in 1985 when my grandma let me get about $100 worth of Macross, Mospeada and Orguss kits from Galactic Trade Commission as my Christmas present... *sniff* For the approximately $18 each one cost me, plus about $11 SAL shipping, these are an absolute steal.

Nice quick buildup! Didn't you consider lighting the eye? You can see how it was the model for the Matchbox Battle Pod toy.... Mine arrived yesterday. I haven't broken out the parts yet, but my impression is that it's close in size to the Toynami 1/100 Regults. I'll see if I can shoot some comparisons tomorrow during my day off.

Anyone's kits show up yet? Mine are traveling SAL, so I it could be a couple of weeks before I see them first-hand...

The box for the Monster kit is gorgeous. Might even frame mine... I think I still have the box from my 1980s one, but the background is green/blue, iirc.

Hobby Search has some detailed scans of the Regult's instructions. Some seriously nice articulation on the legs and cannons. The chin guns are not articulated, but it wouldn't be impossible to do so. Nice! Can't wait for mine, or for the opportunity to build it someday... http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10129343z/70/1

I can say I'm looking forward to building the one I've got stored away, after seeing a couple of Japanese sites with excellent buildups. It's a nice machine, for all the bad rap MacII seems to get. I've got a fair population of 1/100 Macross plamo from the 80s, and Toynami's 1/100 Valk and Regult toys. So this fits nicely in the fleet. And the Ishtar poster is worth a few bucks alone...

Or "Caliban"?

Hobby Search says the first quartet of kits is in, and they're sending out invoices.

Very telling that a video game has become a mode of comparison here. Videogames have absolutely become as powerful and absorbing a storytelling medium as film or print.

I'm hoping the shots with Urban was just a stereography test, or a shot blocking test. Honestly, the design of the whole earlier Stallone Dredd film was fine by me. What bugged me were the liberties taken with key characters like Dredd, Fergie and Hershey. Diane Lane is nice and hot & all, but she not Hershey on any day. And no smoochies for Dredd and Hershey. No way.

Industry friend...

IQ9/Analyzer looks amazing, too. And kicks some ass...

JUDGE MINTY... Fans can make something that looks like the Dredd we know & love, why can't the big studios? judgeminty.com

Thanks for the link! Just put in my preorder!

The "Armored Space Suit" figure is actually pretty close to John Moscato's Kamjin resin kit in size.

The Graphics build has some modifications to the leg articulation, and they've made the shoulder missile launchers loaded, with opening hatches. The stock kit has the shoulder launchers sealed and molded into the shoulder halves.

In short: Due out next month. Limited Bandai reissue of 1980's kit by Imai. Nice detail, some accuracy issues. 2000 Yen SRP. Vintage kit could accommodate lighting elements for the monoeye.

Nope! It is by the owner of a website who is a MUV LUV fan, but also a fan of the classics. He did a Q-Rau girl http://jilpoong17.egloos.com/3699157 featured in one of the threads a long way back, as part of his "Robot Girl Sayaka" series http://jilpoong17.egloos.com/category/GIRL%20ROBOT-SAYAKA . For every one of the ML girls' birthdays he does a picture http://jilpoong17.egloos.com/category/MUV-LUV%20FAN%20ART . Michiru is the 'sempai' of the "Isumi Valkyries" unit from MUV LUV ALTERNATIVE, so the Macross/Roy image suits her. The Isumi Valkyries' motto: Do not dispair even unto your last breath. Fight with all your strength. Do not die in vain.

I'll have to keep that on file for my old Imai kits as well. I've got some sprue left over from them, but have lost a couple of antennae over the years. Thanks, John!

I'll note that according to a friend of mine who built and still owns a vintage Imai 1/72 Regult kit the eye is made to accept a grain-of-wheat bulb so it can light up, and the back hatch opens to allow access for a battery and electronics! No electronic elements were included with the kit, but the structural elements are there, and there's no detail inside of the pod's hull for the hatch to reveal. Apparently lighting wasn't noted in the instructions as he recalls, but there's a light pipe in the inside portion of the red plastic eye that fits a bulb (similar to Bandai's light-up SPACE CRUISER YAMATO EDF Andromeda kit). The effect is that the eye seems to follow you as you walk around it. So, I hope this feature is still part of Bandai's re-issue of the kit, and that they might expand on the directions for the feature, or even included some parts.

The Takatoku/Matchbox/Playmates 1/144 Destroids are rather small, but the detail is nice and you could just rescale them for inclusion with 1/100 pieces. Of the larger plastic Robotech/Exo-Squad Destroids, only the Phalanx is at all nice, with the Spartan also kind-of OK. Again, you'd have to rescale them, or shoot with some forced perspective. Yamato's 1/100 Konig Monster is nice, though...