AcroRay

What's worse is that in all likelihood we'll never see or hear anything from these characters ever again - much like with every other previous Macross iteration. So we'll probably never ultimately know what happens to any of these main characters' lives...

So Aoshima's improvments were tooled up in different steel, and those didn't revert to Toynami with the return of Toynami's tools? Wow. That does sound like an ugly bit of behind-the-scenes. Normally, the licensor would take possession of that sort of thing, or access to it would be in the initial license agreement. Such a shame that relationship didn't work out better. It would have been nice to see the Sterling MPC Alpha be a higher-quality item. Still, how much demand is there for Mospeada products in the world that anyone would roll out even more elaborate Legioss products? Toynami, Aoshima and CMs has to have saturated those markets.

I doubt Kawamori or anyone else involved is in a position to say 'no' to Bandai, simply because Bandai is the only company able to sponsor a show like Macross. If Yamato - or instance - was large enough to underwrite a Macross show, the situation might be different. I'm fine with what I'm seeing from Bandai with the VF-25. All things considered, I think they're comperable to Yamato's Valks after averaging in features, flaws and price. Honestly, though, I think the basic VF-25's Battroid mode - which is my main interest for any Valkyrie style - is just damn fugly and I don't like it much at all - particularly Alto's. Bandai's little inaccuracies are neither here nor there as far as I'm concerened. For my money, I'm waiting on Michel's or Luca's VF-25s, or a super pack for Ozma's. At least to my eye their additional armor and accessories give a bit more mass and interest to what I've felt is a skeletal-looking, uncomfortable design. So - Kudos to Bandai for bringing a mainstream Valk product back to the masses that won't totally bust your bank account.

Different faces for the two editions. Now that's unusual, I think. Wonder what the reasons behind that were?

"I love your show, its one of my all-time favorites... So F|_|cK you." There's an attitude to have.

If so, too bad indeed.

You're not the only one. I feel absolutely the same way on all those points. It took me some wheeling and dealing/trading to get the two Alphas I've got, and I'm pleased to no end that I've got them, and wouldn't mind having a couple more as well as a Beta. (Just one Beta. I don't have room for more!) Out of the legions of mecha toys I've got from the 70s to current, they're among the dozen or so pieces permanently on display in our living room, and regularly taken down & 'toyed' with, if not actually played with.

Good to hear, if true. Not only for an improvement of product, but the partnership indicates really good things for the future, I think.

The latter releases seemed to have more of the bugs worked out. I've got the Shadow and Rook, and they're pretty good overall. Couple of little flaws, but I'm very pleased with 'em.

I got it from Pizza Hut's their website, via some link or another. It was free wallpaper, as I understand it. I used it as the cover for one of my disks.

Get yourself a proxy! I scored this lovely Meltrandi commander last week... (although I probably won't have it in-hand 'till mid-to-late January, because she saves items to ship all at once.) http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b89957099

Yep. There's an intro to Mac7's extra episodes similar to the intros to MacF which feature DYRl scenes. And several Minmei references throught the Strongest Women episode. There are a few cels from Strongest Women on Yahoo JP right now, and a couple are from the DYRL scenes - like Minmei singing & reaching out to the camera. Easy to mistake them. (I won a nice cel of Chlore last week from the assortment, via my proxy. Might be a few weeks 'till I have it stateside, though.)

Yeah - kind'a like the $150 Beta Fighter situation....

Yeah! All we had were CONVERTORS... and models like Axoid and Vexar... and Jetfire's funky colors to complain about! And we LOVED it! Kids these days....!

Aw, man! I want one of those! I'm a sucker for transparent editions. (I'll have to ask my YahooJP proxy about it...)

Wow! Looks big enough to fit in the My Baby Pony walker!

Aoshima licensed (rented) Toynami's Legioss tooling from Toynami to make their own Mospeada versions, with brighter anime-style colors, a couple of small mechanical improvements, and a couple of new accessories: little missile racks you can clip under the mechs' chests, and a shoulder-mounted missile box. But they're essentially exactly the same toys. As I recall from an interview with Tommy Yune, Aoshima rushed the initial production of their Toynami Legiosses (Legossi?) and QC suffered horribly with at least the first batch of them. So they have a bad reputation, and Aoshima pretty much shot themselves in the foot on Mospeada products. "Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick any two." The tooling - with Aoshima's tweaks - was returned to Toynami a bit late, resulting in a delay on the Shadow Chronicles editions. So if you really want a blue "Scott" one and can pick up an Aoshima edition cheap, it might be worth your while. You might also find an arm broken off in the packaging. But Toynami's run of the "Scott" had a lot of bugs, too. (Many of which were fixed in later character editions, IMO.) Speaking of Shadow Chronicles: I stopped by my local BIG LOTS to check their video section for the latest shipment of cheap anime, and found about 4 copies of the special 2-disk Shadow Chronicles DVD set for $3 a copy. I bought one for my daughter, who inherited my Robotech DVDs and VHS.

Too true. I like the anime look of the CMs renditions, but I have a preference for the more 'Real Type' look of the Toynami editions. They work nicely with my Takatoku Orguss & Dorvack toys, which are really my favorite 80s lines (apart from Macross, of course).

With great power comes great responsibility!

"I like jam." Vince - er - AcroRay

Darn. Ah, well.... Looking forward to your review! Think you'll have it up in the next couple of days? Hot topic! I'd heard 10K was the edition for the blue one. Do you mean 40K for the blue run, or for the 'complete set' of each in 4 styles? My overall impression of Toynami is that the economics of their situation push their MSRPs up a bit higher than companies like CMs, even if Toynami's results aren't quite as shiny, as it were. I wonder where the larger potential number of sales are for any given Mospeada product? Japan, or the US? Its cetrainly something of a cult interest in either market.

While I'm thinking about it.... Jenius - Any update on that individual or company that was considering making similarly-scaled toys of Mospeada Inbits you'd mentioned at Anymoon? (Personally, I want to see sofubi or vinyl kit Inbits.)

While it might have been $80* when announced some time ago, I still can't disagree with $150 now. During the time Toynami's Beta has been in production, there has been quite a flux in the cost of production in China. (Which spiked a short while ago - probably while these were in production - and has now dropped to bargain basement. Too bad for Toynami the Beta wasn't delayed another quarter or so.) While the Beta is relatively simple in comparison to other transforming toys in the genre, it is still a very complex toy, with a significant number of parts. Its large size also requires significantly sized cavities for parts, equaling more steel, larger tooling. $$$$ Compared with other similar products in my collection, with varying complexities and sizes, I still feel the price is right considering the current economics. Jenius, I respect your experiences with a huge range of similar products, but I don't agree with your assessment in this instance because of the differing economics of production and the companies involved. I also suspect these are flying out of retailers' doors (no pun intended, really!) cheaply because they want to move product during a slow period and are willing to lowball on something that they may have actually lost preorders for during the Beta's - ahem - extensive development period. Additionally, how many of these will Toynami sell, to diffuse the cost of development and production and lower the price over the whole run? Not as many as what they got out of their Alpha/Legioss tooling, I expect. That's probably the key factor in my estimation. And a 10,000 unit production run? That's a minimum quantity for most of the sort of vendors that manufacture these sorts of toys. Toynami isn't getting any huge price break for this. Similar small-scale toymakers would probably think Toynami is nuts for even bothering, with the economy the way it is. And I think we might find the other editions canceled, or released in similar minimal quantities if they're already on the production line. I will admit, however, that I do not own one yet, nor do I own one of Yamato's Destroids (not yet, anyway... sigh...) or larger-scale Valks for comparison. * I can understand that error. I've seen it happen with a couple of other small toy companies. Their overwhelmed graphics or book-keeping department uses a previous product as the template for a new product, and entries get transferred over inaccurately. It sounds as though the MSRP for an "Alpha" found its way into a solicitation for the "Beta", and a couple of retailers got the error before it was corrected. Common sense should have told anyone familiar with the TLEAD/Beta design that the big toy would have been more expensive than the Legioss/Alpha. Retailers aren't always that familiar with all the products they're offering.

You gotta be kidding. So you seriously think $150 is artificially high for a product that large and complex, requiring extensive unique steel tooling sets, diecast tooling, that many different materials elements, time on the assembly line, produced in such a limited quantity, for such a limited, esoteric interest (not even considering the R & D involved)? Really. I expected the thing to be at least $200. Especially with the current depressed collectors market and the fact that there isn't expected to be a Japanese release.

That line goes so well with your lovely avatar!