David Hingtgen

Probably not---it'll be about 40% dark grey, 60% white. And a lot of stickers and decals to make the coloring. You can't mold "stripes". Part of the issue seems to be (so far) that Bandai hasn't learned what Yamato knows---pure white overall looks bad on a valk (unless its skillfully weathered). You usually want very light grey. Both the 1/72 and 1/60 so far appear to use PURE white for Alto---and that just looks bad, even when painted, much less molded.

Over in the model thread, azrael just instituted a "posts talking about the wrong thing will be immediately deleted, as will responses to those posts" policy. I do like eriku's suggestion of closing the existing threads and starting over again. Would have to clear that with other mods (and Graham) though. (well, I don't HAVE to, it's just that I don't want to mess with multiple important threads like that without a bit of fellow mod-consent)

I am *this* close to imposing a rule about banning people who post images of the 1/60 and 1/72 who can't tell them apart. Literally half the posts in each thread are wrong now, and we get repeats within the thread each day---seriously, someone posts a pic of the 1/72 in the 1/60 thread at 7AM, then everyone says "that's the 1/72"--then 2 hours later that pic gets posted again, people say that's not it---then I log in that afternoon just to find it happened again. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS, DON'T POST IT. New pics are going to be found and posted by people who know what it is. If you don't know what it is, then you are not the first person to find/post that pic--so we don't need to see it again. I can't imagine how cluttered the 1/60 thread will be when the 1/72 is actually released and there's a zillion pics of it finished. Hell, maybe I'll just temporarily close the toy thread that week.

Because it'd be another "giant, yet very simple toy full of lights and sounds that nobody really wants and is just a shelfwarmer". IMHO, most $50 toys Hasbro makes are STILL only slightly better than Supreme Cheetor.

Question: This pic (lower-left) seems to be a physical model, but it says "CG"----and it's PERFECT. Is that actually a rendering, or is it a prototype Bandai made that perfectly matches the CG just to show what it "should" look like but can't be made into an actual transforming toy/model?

Just checked--it was ep 2. I just never saw that as "wanting to eat the lobster".

Just a little FYI, not sure if you've seen it, but a PURE red valk is canon---Basara's VF-19P in M7: Dynamite---even more red than his standard one.

That was either really quick or I don't remember it---when/where was that?

I still constantly shift between do I want Alto's or Ozma's in 1/60... (I lean towards Ozma, but Alto's keeps growing on me---probably because we see it so much more) My plan for a while has been to get one 1/72, and one 1/60. I have Alto's 1/72 on order, thus a 1/60 Ozma. But I may switch that around---I basically have until the first 1/72 kit ships to decide for sure. (and if there is no *full* armor for 1/60, I probably won't buy any)

Shouldn't this go in the Transformers thread, rather than the "YF-21 FAST packs" thread? PS--thanks for the video, I should be getting my YF-21 next week.

All other Yamato Roy valks (1/60 v1 and 1/48) also have "no yellow circle". Right or wrong, that seems to be their intention, and it's not a "mistake" on this release. Checking DYRL, it does seem to be yellow in every scene. Hasegawa says yellow. Bandai/Takatoku don't have it yellow, but they simply don't even have that area molded with canon details it seems--there's no circle at all. Still--Roy's valk clearly is not a PERFECT color-copy of Hikaru/Max/Kakizaki---otherwise, he'd have a yellow heatshield and yellow background for the skull on the boosters. Roy seems to prefer "not quite so much yellow".

I currently rank it only below Plus.

Umm, Encore isn't classic, it's G1. But better than the originals. (Heresy you say? Nope---insignia are printed on instead of stickers)

Wanted to ask a few days ago but the boards were down: Does anyone want to split an Encore Thundercracker/Skywarp pack? I just want Thundercracker.

I'd like to see fighter mode without FAST packs.

Technoviper's coming, and it will rock. That's all I really need.

Two positions for ankle extension? Hmmn, never noticed. (only transformed once to each mode though) I'm guessing it takes so much pressure to get them in or out that it just skips past the middle position usually. The YF-19 has it too, but it definitely "stops" at each position. As for shoulders/arms---yeah, even if you could get replacements, I don't see how you could actually swap parts---the shoulder "rotating bars" are pinned to the back plate, and the shoulders themselves seem very "sealed up". Did you notice the shoulder armor is quite independent of the shoulder itself? Try moving the armor "up and out" in battroid mode. Still haven't figured out why it can do that, and then can rotate. Very much like YF-19 shoulder armor. I miss the detents for the wings too. The others had "mid-way" points that looked nice in fighter mode (I always like VF-1 wings at the mid-way point). Now I just have to visually align them to something (like a panel line) and keep checking them, and keep adjusting them with the missiles to keep them even, etc.

I haven't even seen wave 4 yet...

I don't care HOW it transforms, so long as it looks good in both important modes, if we get valks we'd otherwise have almost no change of getting otherwise---VF-11MAXL, VF-5000, VF-4, etc.

Ack. And I even had one. (they suffered from the problem every other factory-painted Trek ship has had though---way too high of contrast between colors. Every company that makes Trek toys should be required to go to an airshow and see at arm's length how subtle the contrast between real-life camoflage colors is on most "grey" planes---Trek ships are pretty much the same)

I personally think it's "human voice as an instrument" vs "lyrics". I've always had trouble understanding lyrics--even pretty clear ones by native english speakers. Just something about them being sang instead of spoken. I mainly like songs purely because of the simple sound of the voice singing, not what's being said. (thus, I tend to like women singing FAR more). And thus, since I can't really understand any lyrics anyway, I like almost all languages equally when sung. In fact, sometimes when I *do* figure out what a lyric is after hearing it 500 times, I often like the song less. It was better when it was just a "musical sound" versus an actual phrase. That said---if they're translated, they will then SOUND very different, because it's not the words/meaning that matters---it's the sound itself. E.G. "gomen" and "sorry" sound completely different, musically, even if they are identical, linguistically.

Galvatron's one of the few characters that could really be well served by having an Ultra-class toy---he NEEDS lights and sounds! Him and Shockwave.

It's not going to be painted. No Bandai kit has ever come factory-painted AFAIK. (Tamiya makes a few like that, but they cost about 10x as much as the unpainted ones)

Damnit, I hate it when I get names mixed up. I think part of it was that you ranked him, but didn't mention Kinryu at all. Physica was the only Diamond Force name I saw on your list other than Gamlin, and thought "surely he means the bald guy who was awesome".

Heck, he doesn't seem very good at fighter mode either. He seems to be in battroid 98% of the time. The only time he uses fighter is when he needs to go in a straight line for a long distance at high speed.