SuperSenpai

I think that was the single most tragic scene for me when I first watched the movie as a kid -- even worse then when Optimus Prime dies.

It should be able to snap right back on, but it's one of the pieces of the 1/48 that comes off fairly easily.

Hopefully the monkeys in Congress won't cause the value of the dollar to plummet in relation to the yen by the time you have to pay for your pre-orders!

Could someone just ask Mr. K? He seems to be active with the Twitter thing.

It'll work, just don't expect it to be secure. I have a valk displayed in gerwalk mode with the gun attached to his arm, and it stays on so long as I don't handle it. As soon as I pick it up to move it around, the gun falls right off. I'm sure there more than few shots for these toys that the photographers are only able to pull of by placing everything just so, and holding their breath that the thing doesn't fall over before they can get their shots.

Mine stay on, but barely. Move it around and they'll fall off. I think the gun and mount points on the arm were designed to hold it securely when both arms are closed around the handle like in fighter mode. When you think about it, the length of each arm peg should be about half the depth of the hole in the handle, so you shouldn't expect it to attach all that well in gerwalk or battroid mods.

This. The problem with the MPC Alphas has to do with materials, design, and build quality, not that it's a "collector's piece". According to Anymoon.com, many owners received broken Alphas out of the box. And the excuse that the MPCs are collector's pieces that require delicate handling doesn't fly when you consider all the other "collector's pieces" out there that can withstand much more aggressive handling than the MPCs. Look at the Yamato VFs, Masterpiece Transformers, or even the MPC Cyclones. I'm not saying any one of those can be given to a child to throw and smash around, but they will stand up to FAR more posing and transformation than an MPC Alpha.

Anyone know if Yamato's wings pop off like the Bandai hi-metals do? I'm sure someone out there could design a Shapeways replacement wing with three hard points, plus a mounting piece so that dual reaction pack can be separated an individually mounted.

... and buyer's remorse is already setting in. http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/item_s-1407850.html

I usually use the English site, which lets you enter English into the search box. For Macross valkyries, after some experimentation, I've found that using the model numbers for the particular toy you're looking for gets the best results, since those are usually rendered using English alphabet anyway -- e.g., VF-1J, VF-25F, YF-19, etc.

I think Mandarake is pretty good about pointing out whether there's something damaged. I always run the listing through google translate, which is imperfect of course, but if I see anything that looks like it could indicate damage, I've e-mailed them to ask and they have been pretty responsive. At worst you might have a set of busted shoulders. I think someone else on the forum bought a super/strike bundle set for about that much and the only thing wrong was the shoulders.

If they figured out a way to make the boxes AND internal plastic trays fold flat, your $350 toy would probably cost $600.

I think it should also be considered that this is a new design, with a new mold, so the price is going to be more expensive up front to account for this. They have to recoup the development costs after all. The VF-1, even though it is more expensive than when branded as a Yamato toy, probably has much lower development costs since the design has already been completed. I don't pretend to know all the internals of toy development and manufacturing costs, but I'm assuming what it cost Arcadia to acquire the molds for the VF-1 were probably less than what it cost to originally engineer them.

Well, it's not like the dual reaction missiles are anime accurate anyway right? I think in both the TV show and the movie, the three reaction missiles were each individually mounted. I'm assuming the toy and model convention of using a dual reaction + single reaction is to accommodate the different missile configurations -- the DYRL box missiles and TV cluster missiles were two per wing, whereas the reactions were three per wing. It was probably easier and better looking to use a dual reaction missile pack to "fake" the three missile config, instead of using three hardpoints and leaving one empty when mounting the box and cluster missiles. Also, if you want to do the movie config that uses a box missile and two reaction missiles, you'd have to put the dual reactions on the outer hardpoint.

Jenius, are you planning on doing a standalone review for the Arcadia valk, or will there be an update to the existing v2 review?

For what it's worth, I recently purchased a first edition Hikaru 1J from Mandarake -- tinted canopy, old-style crotch-locking mechanism, flip-top lid, etc. First thing I did was open it up to inspect the shoulders -- and they were in perfect condition. No stress marks or cracks, or anything questionable. I've handled it and transformed it a couple of times and don't see any signs of failure. It's still possible that they may break on me sometime in the future, but it's not like the old days where it was difficult to get replacement parts.

I noticed they also have the same super bundle but with a Hikaru 1S instead of a Roy for 10,000 yen more. I wonder why there's such a big price difference. Ditto -- although they list their stuff as secondhand, everything I've ever bought from them so far has been MIB, stickers unused, all the plastic shipping bits still intact. Thanks for this forum for pointing me to them.

Yes, but if you are taking "canonical" configurations into account, you would really need much less right? Like Hikaru's 1J was never seen with super parts, so you'd only need three for each mode plus one for GBP.

I've noticed Mandarake can have pretty varying prices for the same toy. Case in point: they have another VF-4G in stock that's going for 70,000 yen. They also have two weathered VF-1Js priced at 28,000 yen and 31,000 yen. Since their product is secondhand, I'm assuming that the prices vary according to condition -- though it's been my (limited) experience that everything I've purchased from them has been essentially MIB. I don't know that the Hik 1a is the best indicator of market prices. I remember seeing those pretty heavily discounted before Yamato went under: http://www.hkcollectibles.com/macross-robotech/6767-vf-1a-hikaru-ichijo-1-60.html http://www.hkcollectibles.com/macross-robotech/6766-vf-1a-hikaru-ichijo-with-strike-parts-1-60.html EDIT: I just noticed that the 70,000 yen 4G is an unopened box.

According to the list on Anymoon.com, the 1Ds *are* safe. But I guess some people must still be getting bum ones.

Hey, we were all 0 feedback sellers at one point or another.

Yeah, 0 feedback sellers are always a risk, but sometimes you roll the dice and get lucky. As for the shoulders -- I thought that all the 1Ds were safe. It's hard to keep track of which ones are safe and which are faulty, but by and large the TV valks are all safe -- unless it's an early Hikaru 1J with the tinted canopy. That being said, I recently rolled the dice on a MIB early release Hikaru 1J, and it had perfect shoulders.

Wow, someone got a pretty good deal on a VF-1D: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321205431034?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Isn't that how you normally do it? I've never done any other way.

I didn't know Walmart carried exclusive MP Transformers. I was speaking primarily of Toys R Us, since my experience has been limited to them. But in the two examples I've seen (Optimus Prime and Soundwave), they seem to be incredibly hard to find -- almost never in stock at the website except for short windows of time, having to stalk the delivery trucks at the actual stores, and then as soon as they arrive they get cleaned out. Meanwhile you see them all over eBay getting sold for hefty markups by scalpers. I can't believe that TRU is completely oblivious to all that. Even at my local TRU, when I asked them about MP-10 Optimus last year, the manager gave me this annoyed look and told me "We don't know when they're coming, people have been asking me about that one all week."