AcroRay

Yes! It's all your fault! Sinner!

Solo shot of the large Regult eraser. Its about 3 inches high: And here's one of the tiny Armored Valkyrie erasers. Look at all the detail! I had to give the Regult a boiling hot bath to get it to return to its original molded shape. It won't stand for long without drooping & falling over, though. So displaying it like that for any real length of time without some sort of prop rod is out of the question.

Humn... I was only counting creative involvement. But otherwise, yes - that would count also.

Very interesting! Thank you for sharing those! (So the "Shadow Chronicles" designs had been in development for some time?) The I-men were very nice. Those Kubrick-style toys seem to be more popular in the US now. At the time these were released, there was a bit of an over-abundance of them, which may have contributed to these being lost in the tide of products. (Sadly, the only one I have is the "Ben Dixon" set.) Had you considered any I-men of characters or mecha that were not heroes?

Whoops! Added them in! (Very bad of me. I don't own one myself because of the price, but I did convert a friend's Bernard edition for him so he could display it in soldier mode!) So that's 32 individual products, almost all of which are complex toys in multiple materials, in a huge range of price price points. Not to shabby a collection of stuff for any Mospeada fan. I wish the I-men had gotten more distro. They were fun little things - more so than the average kubrick thing.

Toynami Mospeada-related Product to date that I'm aware of. Perhaps Genius can confirm/clarify some of this list: Masterpiece Cyclone Scott Bernard Masterpiece Cyclone Rand Masterpiece Alpha Fighter Scott Bernard Masterpiece Alpha Fighter Rook Bartley Masterpiece Alpha Fighter Lancer Masterpiece Alpha Fighter Shadow Fighter Masterpiece Alpha Fighter Meia Sterling (Robotech Shadow Chronicles, so might not be considered Mospeada product.) Masterpiece Beta Fighter "Rand" Masterpiece Beta Fighter "Lunk" Masterpiece Beta Fighter "Annie" Masterpiece Beta Fighter Shadow Fighter (Not yet released?) Super Posable Alpha Battloid Scott Bernard Super Posable Alpha Battloid Scott Bernard - Metallic Edition Super Posable Alpha Battloid Rook Bartley Super Posable Alpha Battloid Rook Bartley - Metallic Edition Super Posable Alpha Battloid Rand Super Posable Alpha Battloid Rand - Metallic Edition Super Posable Alpha Battloid Lancer Super Posable Alpha Battloid Lancer Metallic Edition Super Posable Alpha Battloid Shadow Fighter Super Posable Alpha Battloid Shadow Fighter - Clear Plastic edition I-Men Scott Bernard with VFA-6H Alpha Fighter I-Men Lancer with Cyclone Armor Lancer I-Men Rook Bartley with VFA-6Z Alpha Fighter I-Men Cyclone Armor Rook with VFA-6I Alpha Fighter I-Men Rand with Cyclone Armor Rand Morpher Alpha Scott Bernard Morpher Alpha Rook Bartley Morpher Alpha Lancer Morpher Alpha Shadow Fighter Bookend Rook Alpha vs Invid Scouts Bookend Scott Bernard Alpha vs Invid Enforcer [Edited to add Cyclones and remove Morpher Rand!]

You can't just say "Hey! No one has released an Armored Valkyrie yet here in the states! Lets do it!". Its a little more complicated than that. I'd say all the product they've developed is exactly capitalizing on the Macross and Mospeada interest market here in the west. They did prototype a Macross Storm Attacker modular toy, with the intent of selling it in sections with their very inexpensive line of Super-Posable Macross figures. When re-orders didn't support an expansion of that line, that product died with it. So there's a precise example of what you're asking for, with an indication of how it proved unworkable. Also, the MPC Ben Dixon didn't sell well. (H3ll, it's the peg-warmer of the whole series. You can pick it up for less than its original SRP.) Max's largely identical-looking 1A most likely wouldn't have done any better. Why throw money in on a losing idea? (Like Matchbox's poor retail results with their original and imported Macross toys.) I don't get your "make the GBP-1S armor back in the day". What day? ("Back in the day" means the 1980s to 40 year old guy like me! ) They haven't been around that long, and they have developed a GBP set for their 1/100 line. If there was retailer interest and the company had the resources to release it, they most certainly would have. Really, some ideas aren't necessarily worth pursuing simply because they haven't been done or because there's some potential market. You need to attract enough retailer interest to justify all the R & D and manufacturing costs to take advantage of it. Robotech and its associated Macross & Mospeada identities in the west (the only market area Toynami really has the license to create and sell product for) has only a very limited - if consistent - potential interest market which most retailers would likely tell you has been tapped as well as it can be within the legal restrictions inherent with each of those properties. And chances are most retailers would simply respond "Robotek what? Is that from Lego?" Its like extracting the gold dissolved in the world's sea water. No one's taken it yet! It's there, but every one has come to terms with the fact that it really isn't worth all the effort to get it. And they have release a huge number of Mospeada products in all price ranges and interest ranges - from posable action figures, to super-deform toys to high-end pieces and even sculpture pieces (some of which feature enemy mecha). YOu certainly can't say they haven't capitalized on that market when they've released somewhere in the range of 30 individual products. Most, however met retailer disinterest and far too many to lackluster sales at best. I for one wish very much it were otherwise, but that's the situation they're working under. I'm pleasantly amazed we have what we do from them, and am delighted with every new piece they turn out. Hopefully Invid mecha will join their vinyl collection, but based on what they showed off at this week's TFI, it probably won't be in 2010.

<i>Toynami </i>is following up their vinyl<b> 1/100 Tactical Pod</b> with a <i><b>Heavy Missile Launcher Type</b> </i>under their Robotech product banner, as revealed at the Toy Fair International trade show this week. No other new Macross-related product from Toynami this year, although their Macross edition 1/100 Valkyries toys with FAST Packs combined sets were on display. Images available at FIGURES.COM coverage right here: <a href="http://toyfair2010.figures.com/showphoto.php/photo/1991" target="_blank">http://toyfair2010.figures.com/showphoto.php/photo/1991</a> http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=32529&view=findpost&p=838264

Wow - You guys have a couple of thing I need to catch up on!

Yep. Now you know some things about toymaking you didn't know before. Information is a grand thing.

It's not the MOLD, it's the assembly. Jeeze. It looks 'rough-around-the-edges' because the parts aren't cut from the sprues properly, the painting is messy, and it's not assembled properly. Like a master-grade Gundam kit assembled by someone with very little skill at assembling and painting complex models. And even if that weren't the case, if the plastics aren't injected and demolded properly - like being run too quickly, and not monitored or sampled regularly, as is typical with short-run productions - then no matter how good the tooling is, the plastic product won't be consistent or meet QC needs. Sorry. It's just really started to bug me lately when people in toy forums start throwing around terms that they don't really know much about, and then use them to make judgements on results. Still, shabby is the word for this poor thing. It has issues I don't see in my earlier Toynami MPC Alphas. I'm amazed at the rough cut points and messy assembly. There probably weren't many made of these, and that's an absolute quality killer for products with a huge amount of complex parts in multiple materials, with lots of paint apps and difficult working mechanisms. The smaller the overall quantity, the shorter the time the job occupies a given assembly line. If it were a product with a larger quantity run, you could monitor the assembly and toss out or repair examples like this, and the line workers would have a longer run to train themselves on all the tricks needed to build them properly or strip and rebuild samples that aren't going together properly. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole run of these replacements weren't all assembled in a day or so. That doesn't leave you much - if any - opportunity for errors, retraining or tweaks on the run.

Then recast it!

It makes Macross more accessible to a wider group of potential fans - particularly those with little tolerance or acceptance of subs, and its free. Win-win. I'm amazed anyone would see anything worth kvetching about in this situation. (The dub performances are pretty true to typical early 80s anime Japanese line delivery- painful as that may be to some folks' modern ears.)

I take it you don't have the search-light's LED set up to be fully internal? I'm curious if anyone has developed anything that can be isolated into the search-light housing. Most of the inexpensive dollar-store toys I can find usually require 3 batteries and a resistor or two, which is a bit much to pack in there.

I was really looking forward to some of those space-suited deck crew guys...

That was really a nice review. I think I'm inspired to see if my contact in Japan can get me one on the cheap. She scored the CMs Mospeada Dark 21 edition for me at about $15 last year - a request motivated in large part by your review. - Ray

Nah, not really! I just think you're going to miss out on a lot of great (and less expensive) stuff if you dismiss soft vinyl ("sofubi") as a toy medium. Very little of the modern sofubi media is the kitchzy, 'art toy' segment of the hobby you're most familiar with. I think the Inbit/Invid would lend themselves very well to vinyl, both in terms of design and manufacturing-cost/retail-response. Toynami has 3 products in their vinyl line which are generating a lot of positive sales, reviews and expectations - their Go-Lion Voltron, the Battle Pod, and an upcoming Dairugger Voltron. If the Regult does well, an Invid would be a high-probability item. On a related note, Yamato has announced a 1/60 TV-style Macross Breetai figure as a natural companion to their existing mecha toys - which is exactly the same sort of thing we're talking about here with regard to Mospeada.

Couple of pictures - sorry if I'm stepping on Genius' routine! Ray figure with my only CMs Ried Armor example. Perspective's a little off due to my lense and the fact that the Ride Armor is standing just a little behind Ray. The top of Ray's head comes up to about even with the bottom of the sighting mechanism on the Ride Armor's chest. Note that Ray is looking downward, which means the figure really needs to be eye-level or above you to have a nice perspective of him. Here's the Ride Armor holding the Gallant rifle that comes with Ray. Honestly, there's not enough articulation in the wrist to allow the armored figure to hold the gun. I had to pull the arm off, push the hand on several times and squeeze it to the ball joint, put the arm back on, and then find just the right sweet spot to pose the arm so the hand didn't pop back off under the strain of the rifle against the forearm. Took me about 10 minutes to manage that for the photo. Then I took it off and normaled up the figure with the small handgun it comes supplied with. The rifle is also too large to sling over Ray's shoulder. I can't tell if its out of scale, or just bigger and heavier a device as befitting an armored soldier. Either way, it means there's not much to do with the rifle. So, I was rather disappointed with the whole deal. I think the SRP on the figure is too high (although I got mine very cheaply thanks to a member here), and even worse if you're paying a lot of secondary market fees. Taking a perspective typical of CMs little Mospeada toys, it isn't really unusual to find that the rifle is as ungainly as the rest of the Ride Armor figure and as over-priced. But, if you're resigned to that as being par for the course with CMs Mospeada products, you won't be surprised.

Glad you picked it up! Its a really fun little toy, and is actually the size of your average Revoltech. Even the box deserves its own display space. I did in the areas on the wings & some sprue-clip pionts & whatnot that should be painted red with Testors Model Masters "Guard Red". It was a good match. A little Gundam panel pen around the eyes and in some of the vents & such in the head and torso brought out some character in it as well.

A couple of the guys here were selling extras. Be patient, I believe a couple more guys need to sort their extras. Keep an eye on the FS/T forum. I got a Ray from a recent sale.

Dude, what outworld colony have you been living on? Seriously? Eva http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN950848 Tachikoma http://www.hlj.com/product/FEW96103 Tachikoma http://www.hlj.com/product/FEW96112 And of course, Bandai Creation USA's massive, mecha-mashing Mechagodzilla... http://www.collectiondx.com/node/2426 And this doesn't even scratch the surface. I LOVE that someone's doing vinyl mecha, and doesn't cost $50-$85 even. Especially glad that TOYNAMI is doing it, since that means a much better chance of Invid/Inbit toys.

Glad you found one. Wonderful little toy, especially for $1.

I expect they'd erase something if you needed to! I'm not going to try with mine, though....

Very nice, and very inspiring! So, how many X-acto blades have you use up on this so far?

[Double post]