AcroRay

That's happened once in a while to me with HLJ. I was told that they do billing a couple of times during the month. So the charge might not show up until the end of the calendar month.

xstoys needs to have posters made of that giant, cutaway Storm Attacker hanken cel I sold him a while back!

Yes, that's it! Its an amazing kit, isn't it?

Speed Racer!!! Back when I was in second grade, probably about 1976 or 77 - which had a HUGE impact on me, and is a favorite to this day. Then Ultraman within a year or so later (not anime, but still another major portion of my childhood years). (Godzilla and Gamera were also always there.) Battle of the Planets was another favorite. The melodrama of Gatchaman still shined through the dub. I would have killed for toys back then. (I almost cried when I opened my Uni5 Godphoenix!) That was followed shortly thereafter by Star Blazers. After reading about the origins of Star Blazers and other dubbed anime in Starlog, I recognized anime - and tokusatsu, to a large extent - were among some of the strongest influences in my childhood development and interests, along with Micronauts, Shogun Warriors and many other of my favorite toy lines. Probably around '82 or so I put enough of it together to recognize myself as what would late become known as an "anime fan". Heh heh... I've still got all my old C/FO membership stuff & newsletters!

"Laser Bomb" launcher, according to the Japanese line art notes, according to Roger (Who I would trust with my life! But not with my wife...)

For those of us who want a Gakken-styled "Playable" Legioss (And please note I'm one of those. I love 'em with brute, Takatoku-like playability!) to add to our collections, I'm wondering if the best option would simply be to just save up the cash and buy a minty vintage one - or be satisfied with whatever vintage ones you've already got. They didn't look too bad, I think, and could certainly take a playtime pounding within reason. And considering the modern-day cost of manufacturing something like that for an interest group as limited as the Mospeada/RT:NG, you'd probably be paying as much or more for a newly-manufactures one as you would for a like-new vintage example anyway.

You mean a Legioss & Tread set with the Tread's QC? Because Aoshima's Legioss QC seems to have been pretty d4mn bad. Funny how so many people diss Toynami's QC, but then a Japanese company did far, far worse with exactly the same tooling set. There's certainly some irony there. The rule, I think, is that these super-complex, short-run toys are a potential nightmare for anyone undertaking them.

Regarding the Aoshima editions: Has anyone gotten one that *wasn't* very buggy? Do some tend to be better than others? Are the problems repairable for an experienced mecha toy collector? The reason I ask is that I'd like to pick one up, just for the variation of style. I'd be willing to try my hand at a repair or two if the need arose. (Anyone got a junk one they'd want to part with?)

Totoro242 - You've got Love Live Alive and you haven't made it available for download? How cruel! Seriously, though - I've got one coming from my YahooJP proxy when she sends me my bundle, and I plan on either mastering up a DVD or making an AVI available to share. Its sadly difficult to find. Its good to see you've got ADV's MOSPEADA brick. That thing is a true treasure.

She's seen in Macro form in one of the ENCORE episodes. In fact, she looks big enough to make a good dance partner for Godzilla or Ultraman.

Mine was a copy of a copy. I made my copy from one borrow from another college student back in '87. And his was a copy from some other source. Lots of tape hiss & A-C hum in it. Painful.... I think I still have it, though. Now I'm gonna have to dig it out and try to put it on DVD.

How about "Full Array of Pin-Point Barrier System applications"? Maybe that's stretching it a bit from translation to transliteration.

Now that's fan-service! Thanks!

That's the problem with the cool old stuff - not enough people interested to torrent effectively. I had to give up on things like L-Gaim, original Dirty Pair, etc. DDLs would be more helpful for stuff like this.

I seem to recall seeing this before - that its a custom someone was working on based on the Fewture Steam-punk styled Mazinger. The body seems straight-up Mazinger, with just the head, torso crest and scythe weapon added.

Well, I looked up some pics of Toynami's convention & toy show displays at Flickr and other places, and the improperly collapsed forearms and banana-shaped fighter profile seems to be a common issue in even the company's own handling of the Alphas. So - intentional or not - it looks like an issue in the Toynami design that careful transformation simply won't solve. Short of someone opening the things up and finding out what parts to modify, I don't think there's an answer to the problem.

That was good advice, and my Shadow's arms collapsed much more cleanly, and seated properly in the leg tab holes. I still had that banana-shape problem in fighter mode, though. It seems to come from the center torso segment not collapsing properly, or the cockpit area not extending outward enough to allow the side fin surfaces to rest down properly on the chest air intakes, which forces the nose upward.

True, in the case of the drooping arms. But I meant overall it wouldn't help make it a cheaper, overall more effective product. It would probably make it a little more expensive (to make, if not to buy) and make another possible tricky spot, unfortunately.

Why would replacing the diecast parts with plastic help? Or making a 'cheaper' version? You'd have to come up with a whole set of ABS injection tooling to replace the spin diecast tooling. The diecast parts seem to be the least problematic, so why replace them with a materials set that generally proves to be trickier? The Sterling Alpha is really the 'cheaper' version. Looking at the pictures of the Sterling Alpha, I'd say the problem is just a rush job - allowing little time for workers to trim & clean parts, for paint to properly cure, for workers to assemble the things properly or for the glue to even dry. The result is like you've rushed through a model kit just to get it done. That's the mark of "cheaper", really. The more time your product occupies in the factory's assembly line, the more it 'costs' the factory because its backing up the job after your's, and making less time for them to get more jobs in during the course of the year (or whatever). The client and the factory negotiate their price and costs based in part on that most valuable of resources: time. You say "I need this many, but I need it by a certain day." The Factory looks at your product and says "it'll take us this long to make it, and it'll cost you this much per unit at that speed." You say "Too long. Too much." If they don't say 'sorry, can't do it', then they'll figure out how to get it done for you cheaper & quicker, but that usually means fewer people on the line, working faster, taking less time per stage to do a good job. The result is the Sterling Alpha. Too bad. One of two things probably happened. Either their factory vendor totally rooked them, or Toynami's assessment of the product's potential was that demand would be low (the market is swamped with Alphas/Legiosses, perhaps?), and they decided the Sterling Alpha just didn't warrant the investments required to secure a quality production arrangement. If the latter is true, they sure as heck wouldn't invest in any extensive retooling, unfortunately.

Can you say that three times fast?

Shoulders are fine, and hold most poses I keep them in. If I fully extend the Shadow's right arm, it will droop a bit at the shoulder rotation joint, but that's about it. The Rook has no problems. Usually I pose them with their elbows tucked in, with their weapons either level or 'at attention' (I like that look, plus that's all the shelf space they have.), so they serve those positions well. My example is pretty close to optimal as far as the shoulders are concerned, I think (With both my Shadow and Rook). But I do agree that rachects would have worked better than whatever poly-cap sandwhich is doing the job now. Why didn't they do it that way? I suspect the racheting joint assembly would have just taken up too much space. I kind of wonder about the diecast in the forearm as well. Probably just there for some diecast presence, or maybe to stablize the fighter mode.

Good link. Wow, that's really terrible. I wonder if these were bum-rushed out with Aoshima's production run? They look like someone's home-made custom job. The super-glue hazing is much like what I saw on some of the worst Palisades Series 1 Micronaut failures.

I was inspired to do this today! Shot in my cold, wintery back yard and tweaked a bit in Photoshop. "Winter Shadow" The 1980's are alive and well in 2009....

'Cause I thought you were talking about the new Shadow Chronicles variant, at one point. I'm eager to hear opinions about how the Sterling Alpha came out, QC wise. I like the color, and was hoping to pick one up.

Yeah, that lower torso collapse is a real bugger in the design. Make sure the little panel on the thing's butt is pulled outward flush & square. (It pushes inward to accomodate the bulge of the canopy in Battloid/Soldier mode.) If it's not normalled-up for Fighter, it can keep the torso from collapsing properly. A fully extended knee areas should look like the following pictures. Keep in mind the knee joint pulls down from inside the upper leg, and the lower leg pulls down from the knee. So you've got two stages there. Just for the heck of it, I took shots of fully extended bicep/shoulder areas, too. Keep in mind the knee joint pulls down from inside the upper leg, and the lower leg pulls down from the knee. So you've got two stages of extension there. When you say "Shadow Alpha", you're meaning the Shadow Chronicles Sterling Alpha, right? Not the Sue Graham "Shadow Fighter" Alpha, right?