SuperSenpai

I'm wondering if this something that's a lot better in theory than in reality. If it's transformable and articulated, that means all of the joints and hinges are going to be more stressed due to more weight needing to be supported. Everything better be ratcheted joints, otherwise you'll see lots of floppy limbs and problems holding poses. They'll need to use more metal too. But besides that, I just see problems with handling. At that scale, it's almost twice the size of a Yamarcadia VF-1. That's going to be unwieldy.

Oh man, I forgot about that. I remember when the YF-19 was in pre-order phase, they offered a pretty good discount for it on the Black Friday sale. I suppose one could always place another pre-order to lock in a black Friday sale price and then cancel any non-discounted pre-orders.

I didn't think you could get results like that just using Gundam markers. That looks great.

How does the gunpod clip on the to valk?

My gut tells me this is going to be a straight up re-release of the old mold, nothing new or improved, intended to capitalize on the high demand from the limited prior run, and provide a quick, easy influx of cash for Arcadia to put towards R&D of their next project. By all accounts, the last one was a pretty stellar product quality-wise. They just released the Macross Zero valks earlier this year which were redesigns, and by their release history so far they are staggering new molds with old ones. It also makes much more sense for them to release a Skull-themed VF-4 after reissuing the old one to encourage double dipping. Personally, I'm looking forward to this release. Missed out on the first one, and while I think the design is really nice, there's no way I'm paying $400-$500 and up for one.

The great thing about these dull gray paint jobs is that they look especially great stickered up and weathered.

I don't think it was ever sold out. I ordered one last week.

I just realized that I need to take this back -- not because I plan to buy one, but because I just realized that my last three valk purchases were all toys that I said I wasn't going to get but I ended up getting anyway after seeing people post pictures on the forum. In the past, I wasn't a fan of the YF-19 and didn't initially pre-order the Arcadia one. But their redesign slowly grew on me and I ended up pre-ordering. When the 0D was announced, I said "eh, I'll pass on that one". But after a while, I thought it was a unique look while retaining a lot of the classic valk elements that I like, and I ended up ordering one off of NY after it was released. With the 0A, I said to myself "I wasn't that big a fan of Macross Zero, so one Zero valk is enough. Besides, they are all basically just slight tweaks of the VF-1 design anyway". I passed on the preorders, but then I ended up ordering one the other day from HLJ to ship with my Hi-Metal R.

I'm going to pass on the 0S. I don't have any more room for large valks. I just ordered a 0A last night from HLJ to ship with my Hi-Metal R GBP in private warehouse, and coupled with my 0D, I think two Macross Zero valks is enough for me. I have plenty of other valks with the Skull leader markings, and I like the minimalist paint scheme that mimics the metallic gray tones of a real fighter plane.

I'm not a model builder, and as a result haven't participated in funding any of these kits. But as someone who always enjoyed seeing all the WIP posts and and appreciates the passion and skill that goes into making these things, I am disappointed to hear that these projects are coming to an end. That said, I understand life happens and we gotta do what we gotta do.

Not surprised by the color -- I called it as looking slightly gray in a earlier post. Not really a deal breaker for me... as others have mentioned, it's not like this is the first gray VF-1 toy ever released, all the old chunkies were pretty gray. In fact, gray was the normal color, and bright white was the exception. The gray is probably less prone to yellowing.

11 VF-1 variants of some kind, but that's spread across Yamato V2, Bandai 1/55, and Hi-Metals. After that, 3 VF-25s. I have one each of the Arcadia YF-19, VF-0D, Isamu YF-29, Yamato Defender, and Tomahawk. Small collection.

With respect to transformations, I think and argument can be made that MP/KO/3P Transformers are more complicated because each mold requires a new transformation that designers have to figure out and collectors have to learn (since the alt-modes are all fairly unique). Whereas with valks, they are all fighter planes that follow pretty similar recipes, with a few variations. The intake/thrusters are folded down to form the legs, the arms swing out from between the legs, the head is buried somewhere in the middle, etc. Maybe some variations for VF-1 or VF-0 styled transformation where the chest and nosecone stay intact vs. the VF/YF-19 or VF-25 style toys where the nosecone folds and tucks into the chest. But after a while, they are all pretty similar, so from a design perspective there's got to be a lot of opportunity for re-use (thus simplifying the process), and it isn't all that hard for collectors to figure out how to transform these once you've handled a few. Also, with the valks, the broad strokes of the transformation are already figured out for the toy designers by Kawamori, as you can pretty much see where every major piece goes in all the various modes. The toy designers just need to figure out how to mechanically make everything work. Whereas with MP/KO/3P toys, they generally start with being faithful to a robot mode that looks something like the cartoon, and working backwards to a realistic alt mode. This is a lot harder IMO because the robot modes from the cartoon were huge cheats, with tons of anime-magic and hiding of components. This requires the toy designers to completely redesign the transformation. MP-10 is a great example -- they had to introduce a fake grill just to make the robot mode right, something I doubt you'd see happening on a valk.

HLJ has the 0S and 0A listed at the same retail price, just with different discounts applied. So technically not a price increase. I would guess that the 0A sales paid for most of the development and initial tooling for the molds, so the cost to make the 0S is likely cheaper.

I thought the GBP was supposed to be released around this time? Any news?

It's impossible to have perfection on mass produced items. You're going to have some failures. The issue is whether the failure rate is high enough (and consistent in character) to warrant a corrective action for the manufacturing process. I think we won't really know the level of QC unless we have actual statistics regarding failure rates, and the criteria that the QC process is intended to measure. Otherwise it's all just anecdotal evidence and conjecture. The person who got the valk with a broken joint thinks Arcadia's QC is crap, whereas the one who got one that works fine will disagree. Also, I think it's important to keep in mind that the word "quality" can mean a few different things. From a manufacturing process perspective, quality is referring to a product that is made consistently from batch to batch without variation, that meets specs for performance and/or functionality, and to an acceptably low rate of failure. This what what QC is checking. It doesn't necessarily mean that it will meet an individual customer's perception of quality.

Pilot is not removable in the Hi-Metal, so you're stuck with it. Unless of course you want to mess with forcibly removing the pilot figure and re-gluing it into the other toy, but I don't know that I'd want to try that with such a small piece.

And this is where the tension between so-called "anime accuracy" and mechanically feasible perfect transformation comes into play. Anime (or line art) accuracy is all well and good as far as basic proportions and aesthetic details are concerned, but I don't think it's something that should constrain the design of a mechanically feasible PT toy as far as the transformation process. Animators and mecha designers are generally artists, not engineers. They make things that look cool, not things that actually work. Guys like Kawamori do a good job of making sure that the transformation works in broad strokes, but they don't bother with the detailed nuances of exactly how each piece moves and fits into the others using exact measurements. Thus they are free to invoke "electromagnetic actuators" or whatever other magical in-universe explanation as to why this part suddenly shows up over there with nothing attached to it. In order for a CG model to translate exactly into a PT toy design, you'd have to design the CG model to be mechanically feasible in the first place -- meaning, with all the connections, hinges, and joints to make PT work. You'd also have to animate such that all the parts move as they would in the physical object. But at that point, you'd essentially be making a animated 3D CAD model for the toy. I suspect that the reason why this is not done is because actually designing all the mechanical elements would probably take too much time and expense for the animators, and besides isn't that what the toy designers are paid to do?

Basing the toys off of CG models will ensure that proportions stay the same from one mode to another, but it won't ensure that the transformation itself is mechanically feasible. You can still cheat the transformation process using CG by having parts move from one point in 3D space to another with no apparent mechanism for doing so.

Well, as a counterpoint I'd say that the things are overengineered because collectors want cool features and gimmicks. Over at the Hi-Metal thread, people have been talking about how they want integrated landing gears and integrated heat shield.... on a 1/100 scale toy! I'm sure it's possible to pull such a thing off, but good luck doing it in a manner that is not prone failures. The more moving parts there are, the more points of failure. It's an inevitable trade-off. I'm not saying that I don't wish Arcadia products didn't fail or break as much as they currently do. I just question how realistic it is to expect better given the complexity.

I honestly wonder whether it's even possible or reasonable to expect fewer failures than we're seeing in Arcadia products. These toys are pretty complex mechanical designs when you think about it. I can't think of too many other products that would have near the same amount of complexity as far as moving parts. And even the ones that do usually don't have to account for how the parts will fit in multiple configurations the way a PT valkyrie toy does. Slight changes to even a single part have to factor in what it's going to affect as far as articulation and appearance in all three modes. It's not a like an action figure where, if I decide to make the legs slightly longer, it's mostly an aesthetic determination that won't affect functionality. There's also the fact that consequences for failing components are low in a valk compared to a lot of other mechanically complex products. If a joint fails in a valk, sure you'll be pissed but little harm is done. A component fails in a car and someone could die, so you know they will make damn well sure that the probability of failure is extremely low.

It looks like the paint on the new Hi-Metal is a darker shade compared to the previous toy. The "white" looks to have a grayish tint, and the red likewise has a darker tone. I've always thought it curious the way Bandai renders the chest stripes on the VF-1J. Even going back to the 1/55 chunky, they always rendered the chest stripes as a slanting line connected to a horizontal line, like this: rather than two slightly angles lines like this. What's curious is that Bandai renders the VF-1S chest stripes in the latter manner, which is closer to the line art.

The running gag among Asians is that it happens much later, but all at once.

It's been well covered over in this thread: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=39587 Some people have reported issues, others have not. Seems to be highly variable, possibly due to the particular batch of stands involved or environmental factors specific to an individual.

From Anymoon.com: http://anymoon.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Gakken-135-Legioss-10.jpg And here's a pretty nice custom someone made using the Gakken as a base: