motley

there's no difference between the red box version and the blue box version, they just switched colors to reflect the new wave (ie RX-78 and glegoog instead of WZC, RX-78, and tallgeese III). i only have the tallgeese III, and while i was initially dissappointed with it (feels hollow), i've really come to like it since, and i'm seriously debating the RX-78. i'd reccomend you give the line a shot, after all its not often we find quality toys like these at US price points.

from what i've heard the special DX toy is the 1/60 model, partially assembled, with the weapons and such included with "some assembly required". the NMM strikes are being released with plastic frames instead of the original diecast, and i've also seen somewhere that the ADMSiA are going to be released sans diecast (all 1 part of it) as well, though the ADMSiA will likely see major modifications, some things ommited and other parts pre-glued, there's no way they could get it past the safety laws otherwise.

they say this now, but they also say that a repaint of the same mold is an RX-7, so i'd take any firm answer on the subject with a grain of salt. its a superdeformed car, could be any number of things. except for a volkwagon beetle, its pretty obviously not one of those.

i vote regult, preferably in tv colors, but either will suffice. the gluag would be almost as good.

no its still up, and fairly regularly updated. but there's something seriously wonky about their server, i got the main page to load yesterday, but couldn't go anywhere after that. keep trying. i find sometimes that if i am trying to load other webpages fantoysia times out, but if its the only thing i'm trying to access it'll work fine.

do you mean http://www.fantoysia.com/? the gundam toy resource site that used to be part of newtype-asylum? they're still around, but their server has always been funky, sometimes i'm able to access the site sometimes i'm not, in the span of a minute or two. right now i'm able to access the site so... good luck.

i would say its less that they've aged well, and more that they've been better taken care of. most of the favorite designs have had their lines updated once or twice. partially due to the various OVAs and partially for the PG, HGUC, and MG model kit lines. as for the Zeta designs, part of the reason they are so odd, is that the designers called in were... lets say more, artistic, than your traditional mecha designers, chalk it up to the 1980's. the other reason they seem a little odd, is that Zeta had, at least, SEVEN different mechanical designers. and in most cases each design was "cleaned up" by a different designer, and in some cases more than once. is it any wonder the designs have aged poorly. i like most of the Zeta designs, but i think they are deserving of a wholesale update, perhaps by a new designer, much like the (former) newcomer Katoki re-worked much of the OYW designs. but i don't want to see katoki doing Zeta reworks, Katoki always seems to want to take his designs over the top (Ex-S gundam anyone?), and the Zeta designs are already pushing that envelope. if the Zeta MS are going to be re-worked, it'd be better to have someone come in and pull them back from the edge.

this is a bit of an old shot, and i've posted it before, but i think its kind of fun.

$40 max. its small, AND its a US produced toy. the only reason we pay as much as we do for our imported stuff, is simply because its imported and we're essentially paying japanese prices, which we all know are considerably higher. even $40 is a bit much for what we're getting considering how small the thing is. that and as a toynami original, we have no idea what the quality will be like. they've been pretty spotty on their high priced knockoffs so far, so its anybody's guess what the quality on their first original toy will be.

The Japanese versions of the Battlemechs I found way overdone for my taste. However, you can still do "Walking Tank" without being too clunky or anime-frilly: Lifted from http://tekki.jp interesting, that steel battalion mech looks an aweful lot like the Gundam: For the Barrel designs.

where have you been submitting your short stories, if i may ask? straight to the publishers? have you tried any of the magazines, like Analog or Azimov's? and also did you send your manuscript to Baen? they seem to be the best choice for what i've seen of your setting. good luck and don't give up.

That thing is identical to the Magellan class warship from Gundam! Well, except for the colors. Pic Link it looks like a designer somewhere in the process is a big gundam fan. the mirage decepticon looks like it borrow's its lower body from a gundam.

yeah, but its still lame. they tried it on one of the post G1, pre beast wars lines. megatron and soundwave as cars, and the whole line a repaint of 4 molds. not cool, especially since your average decepticon colors are not your standard auto colors, unless they've recently started making purple Impreza's.

in that pic it does come off as brown. but in the show the leos were an olive green color, and the space use leos were purple. a lot of the line art to be found online has pretty washed out colors.

the leos in Wing were either green or purple, not brown. but if you expand your theory to include green, then i think you've got something. the cannon fodder types always seem to have more traditional military color schemes, ie greens and browns, where-as the heros tend to use bright primary colors and a lot of white.

the bound doc is a Makoto Kobayashi design, but you're right that Nagano was one of the mecha designers for Zeta. Zeta ended up having quite a few people doing mecha design (i've counted at least seven so far), generally each design was worked on by two designers, one will be credited for the orignal design, and then another for "cleanup", usually Fujita or Okawara. the Hyaku Shiki is a Nagano design, and is possibly the inspiration for the KOG. Nagano is also credited with the Rick Dias, Galbaldy Beta, Hambrabi, Quebley, and one of the three initial designs for the Gundam MkII. Nagano also designed several of the ships used in the show.

yeah, i asked about it when i was a newbie. 'course there was actually a civil discussion and less whining and posturing.

i watch X-play fairly regularly, but i thought it was better when it was Extended Play, before they brought in ms. Webb. it wasn't quite as silly and the humor was more adult. as for the other one, never heard of it, i'm guessing i don't get that channel.

well, a VF-1 stands a little over 12 meters in battroid mode. and the RX-78 gundam stands at 18 meters, other gundams and the assorted MS ranging from 15 meters to 25 meters depending on which show you're talking about. unfortunately i don't have gundam and macross stuff in the same size, so no pictures, but the basic stats should tell you a lot.

so far for energon/superlink only the autobots/cybertrons do the combining gimmick, and they're always a little deficient when it comes to airpower. the only combining aircraft so far is jetfire (US name, i forget the japanese), but he's more space shuttle than jet. second question, yes two of the same character can link together. there's two sizes of combiners, and any figure in one size range will be able to combine with another in the same size range, the connectors are universal.

actually its going to be more the other way around. bandai's announced that they're scaling back their planned Zeta merchandising in favor of NEW SEED toys (zeta not getting any airtime will presumably make for bad sales). so we'll probably see the Zeta MSiAs already released for the asian markets, as well as the Zeta HGUCs (of which several are brand new), and some SD Zeta gashapon to go with the other SD stuff. the SEED ADMSiA will never pass US saftey tests, so we can expect some regular new MSiA, probably the 1/144 and 1/100 HG kits and SD gashapon too.

nothing wrong with being a UC elitist I'm gonna go with Skippy, here. I mean, sure, I'll admit that it was Wing that got me into Gundam. And I'll admit that Wing isn't bad, per se. But by now, I've seen every Gundam except for V, Turn A, G, and Seed, and Wing was by far my least favorite. It (kinda) has the Gundam themes... but they take away the seriousness of UC Gundam and replace it with a boy band (minus the music). Not to mention that it's pretty irritating when the younger fans refer to Char as a lame ripoff of Zechs, no matter how many times you explain to them that Char came first. pardon me, but i made no comments about about a preference of one show over another. i was picking no sides, wing introduced me to gundam as well. i was simply refering to the behavior i observe at the big gundam sites. there was a reason gundam.com closed, for the last several months the site was up, the only threads that saw any real activity were the ones where two or three people were flaming each other. most of the big sites i've hit are full of "vs" threads and "who's your favorite ___" threads, which don't make for a good community. most of the gundam boards out there either have too much moderation and few members or lots of members and too little moderation, Macross World manages to tread the fine line between these two.

i honestly don't think there is a really good gundam site equivilent to MacrossWorld. i personally frequent Gundam Watch, it has a fairly small population, but there are a goodly number of well informed fans. i've found that most of the boards with big populations are highly remeniscent of RT.com, ie full of juvenile, underinformed fans who like to argue and put each other down, much of the recent US fan base for gundam is too young to put together a good online community. ok, so maybe this is me being a little bitter about the really good gundam sites all closing over the last few years. as yellowlightman said http://aeug.blogspot.com/ is a good site for news. MAHQ is a good spot for information. hope this helps.

i saw alternator smokescreen at a couple targets and a walmart in the Chicago area, along with re-released gundam wing arch-enemies figures in the targets. the TRU i went to had tons of the energon basics and the US re-issues, but that was about it. since i already have the #8 BT smokescreen i'm skipping the alternator version, but i may pick up the alternator sideswipe, though i think its the only one of the BinaTech/alternators figures announced so far that i'll pick the plastic version over the die cast.

she used to buy me toys for x-mas, but not so much anymore, though she mostly got them right. now she mildly disapproves of the habit. oh well, you win some and you lose some.