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Yeah, price is pretty crazy nowadays, but if it makes you feel any better, its actually cheaper here at Amazon.ca with free shipping and no customs $479cdn. I'm still surprised its in stock and available to ship; https://www.amazon.ca/TAMASHII-NATIONS-Macross-Spirits-Chogokin/dp/B0CRK23S71/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=5xoby&content-id=amzn1.sym.0fb3a8d4-ede0-492d-a6c1-c6fb537531e1%3Aamzn1.symc.abfa8731-fff2-4177-9d31-bf48857c2263&pf_rd_p=0fb3a8d4-ede0-492d-a6c1-c6fb537531e1&pf_rd_r=DRBM5YJ0YMJFC6BD0RB5&pd_rd_wg=5kqKa&pd_rd_r=9a9b2645-4591-4bf5-9aae-20f01a6ff69e&ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d Is it worth it is another question - I am like you, I have to have it to complete my YF-19 as a pair. I never got the Yamato version so I can't compare but generally I like these Bandais more than the old Yamato/Arcadia offerings. I haven't transformed mine yet, but its pretty secure and very helfty in the hand. Yes the nose could be a bit longer, but in real life it doesn't bother me as much as all the earlier photos did. Yes there are some inaccuracies but overall it does scream YF-21 to me (as an overview especially if you are looking at it from the top or 3/4) and I don't mind all the tampo printing, I prefer too much over too little and makes the bare plastic of older offerings look naked. The looks fall apart when you look from below or side on, but I rarely see it from that and will be displayed looking down on it. The antenna issues and broken canopies does scare me, but luckily I didn't get either. Anyone know how best I can tighten up the looseness of the head antenna laser, I guess I can apply future or crazy glue to the nubs in hopes of closing the gap. Odd I haven't heard anyone else with this problem, it just flops back now and can't stand up.

Woohoo!!! So happy to have received my YF-21 from Amazon.com (even here in Canada I got it today on Oct 1st) - too bad it was only available much later on Amazon.ca but I had US gift certificates to cash in so I'm a very happy camper. I didn't think I would live to see the day I got a Macross toy from Amazon delivered - its my first - but it was excruciating watching everyone here get theirs for months ahead of time 😛 No bent antenna laser too, so I won the lottery there, but its really loose, it doesn't stay up, it sits down/folded back - maybe that's why it didn't get bent. Has anyone else found their copy to have a really loose floppy antenna laser? I guess I could build up the nub to get a little more friction, I couldn't figure a way of clamping the holding nubs closer together. The canopy is intact too, so overall I'm very happy with it. Haven't transformed it yet though.

What kind of lacquer clear coat gloss that is airbrush-able would everyone recommend?

Unfortunately its somehow damaged the orange sections underneath the clear coat (the orange areas were Tamiya Acrylic) and gave it a very light crackling crazing. I think I can sand down carefully the raised folds/cracks but I don't know if I can do anything about the orange sections that have this fine lighter colour cracking that's below the clear coat surface and I can't strip it back without loosing the decals (which I already had a lot of problems with breaking up and definitely do not have enough spares to redo - or want to). I will see how carefully I can sand down the texture and re-coat, maybe if I can get it smooth again and try to recover and protect, the ink weathering can hide some of the sins? Don't know if I'll have enough patience for that.

Argh DISASTER!!! I guess you can't put Mr. Hobby clear coats over top of Alclad Aqua Gloss. First time using Alclad Aqua Gloss (as everyone told me I was a dinosaur for still using Future) to create a glossy base for the decals then I sealed in the decals. I wanted to try that weathering technique using acrylic inks, but it needed Tamiya X-20A thinner as a base to thin the inks - unfortunately, the X-20A ate past the Aclad Aqua Gloss. So I thought I'd protect it with Mr. Hobby Super Clear - but that's a lacquer and it reacted badly with the Aqua Gloss underneath and ruined the smooth finish. I'm walking away from it for a few days to let the reaction cure and stop, I might try to sand it down with 6000 to 10000 grit sanding sponge to see if I can salvage it. If I can't then its trash as its not worth stripping it back to bare plastic as I can't save the decals. I hate frakking up at such a late stage. Now I know that Alclad Aqua Gloss is useless - being a water based clear coat, it can only be used if its a final coat with nothing to go on top. I guess newer isn't better.

I just wished Hasegawa (with their expertise in aircraft) does the entire line in 1/72 as injection styrene models. I'd love to get that FFR-31, but at $240 for a lump of resin, is hard to swallow!

More decals, I'd say about 40% were somewhat damaged in some way (due to age or reacted badly to MicroSOL by curling up), but I was able to re-piece together the broken bits on the model mostly, I think I only lost about 10-20% of the total amount of decals. I supplemented with some other sci-fi decals where appropriate and I added the bottom thrusters in the forward fuselage by piecing together scraps of other decals (I was going to drill them out, but forgot and started painting, if the other decals weren't such a pain I probably would have, but now I just want to get the damn thing finished!). Some of the decals required layering of the white underneath which ended up making a thick sandwich layers and I had to try to cut them around the panel lines so it looks painted on instead of lying over top. The "607" had to have the white underside slightly offset like a shadow underneath the black numbers and really did a trick on my old tired eyes! Hmm, I see Hasegawa went with 607 but I couldn't find any reference to that number in the anime, it was blank, and Bandai went with 102 (but isn't 102 the VF-1D at the beginning rescuing Minmay during the zero gravity which is a different Valkyrie 2 seater without stadium seating rear seats?)

Hey @pengbuzz, sorry to hear that man. It happens, it happens to me all the time, It happens to my VT-1 that I just posted, did some assemblies in the wrong order, have to crack things open to paint, and then glue back together, putty and sand and refinish because I didn't think ahead enough. Some tough spots to try and spray into and then only to see some overspray that I had to clean up after I removed the masking - I just didn't take pictures of those 😛 The decals from this 20+ year old kit is breaking up on me in some areas and is reacting to the MicroSOL by curling up small thin sections, but I'm trying to make do with what I got. You learn from it, hey worst case, you've got some good greebling for your next scratch build. I know it sucks, but give it some time and step away, it won't look so bad with a little distance.

@Urashiman ooh!!! an actual flying model too! Very cool vintage kit. @electric indigo wow, always sooooo smooth and too scale! Man! I'm so rusty at this, its been such a long while since I've built a Hasegawa Valkyrie and somehow I've forgotten a lot of "out-of-step" order of construction that would have made my painting a lot easier later on. I'm just stuck in masking hell, without much progress to report on (I have a week left before I start work again and after I dropped off my daughter off at Uni). I forget how much masking there is in VT-1 that the plain white VF-1s don't have 😛 Sorry so dusty! This is just so I can finally showcase @arbit amazing figure sculpts as I've always wanted Minmay with her helmet off for this scene. Added a little fencing to block from seeing the internals. I should have been a present wrapper! I had to glue the forward fuselage to the body to work out the seam from the forward half and the rear main section as it wasn't very clean and needed some putty and sanding - unfortunately this meant I had to spray the orange sections underneath in a very tight spot between the intakes. Ideally you want to mask and spray the forward fuselage by itself before assembling it to the rear, but that would leave an ugly gap so its just lots of masking now. Then masking all the Alclad metals (and I forgot to glue the antenna fins while they were bare plastic to bare plastic which is a stronger bond than after its been painted - argh!) It's finally starting to look like something... (I glue two magnets inside the arms so I could attach them to the stand without a visible hole)

I just caught up with your amazing builds @tekering - they look absolutely awesome!!! Love your mods too, congrats on a beautiful collection.

I'm in your camp, love the original designs but won't display/buy any of the newer figures coming out unfortunately. Same problem with the YamatoGirls, they are just too suggestive and it was never like that in the anime. So you're not alone, but we are probably the old farts. 🤣

Is this region protected and can only play in Asian Blu-Ray players? or does it say anything about "All-Regions"?

Someone in my office got the TOS and its quite impressive (my only complaints were the weathering was overdone and the stand too clunky) but when its lit up its pretty nice and most of the complaints were overblown when you see the actual ship. The size is quite impressive. I don't think I could ever afford the Factory Entertainment Enterprise; https://factoryent.com/products/star-trek-u-s-s-enterprise-ncc-1701 It's only really two Bandai YF-21s! (no broken antenna too!)

Nice @MacrossJunkie - it does add a bit of depth and pick out the edges and details more...

Yeah, I have absolutely no place for it at all as well. I'm just going to say "oh my honey, I didn't realize this was going to be this big?!?! Well at least you get some value for the money right honey?" 🤣 That's a problem to deal with more than a year away! Yep, I have the 1/1000 kit too, perfect size but can't imagine cramming all the lighting and electronics into that one (although I have seen some people do it) but I've had it along with the Reliant for years and haven't cracked it. I have the Bandai version but the lighting isn't right and the stand got broken over the years so it doesn't light up anymore unless I look into fixing the stand and I have my 1/1400 resin which I built more than 20yrs ago when I had time 😛

I hear ya @Chronocidal - I would have much rather had it in plastic too for the same reasons, I don't really care about the metal or heft. However I just don't see having anytime to put into building one of these anytime in the near future, plus I know Polar Lights is just a crappy manufacturer so its a lot of sanding and modifying to get it to fit properly and after pricing out all the aftermarket parts, iridescent paints, paint masks, electronics and LEDs plus the kit itself not including my time would be close to $2K. This seems like a good interm solution for my all time favourite starship design. Maybe someday if I ever retire I can get to building my own model, by then maybe there would be a better kit out and better electronics but then again, I might have arthritis and can't build anymore - you just don't know!

No, that's the TOS (The Original Series) Enterprise from the 60s and it's over now. This if for the TMP (The Motion Picture) Enterprise from 1979 and it's just starting up today and accepting orders through to Sep 15.

Hi all, just wanted to let you guys know about this offer from TOMY Plus (I don't work for them, I only ordered one - but thinking this is a place where people have a little extra cash and is passionate about toys :P) Their TOS Enterprise did well (although there were some shortcomings IMHO) and is selling for 2-3x the MSRP now on eBay. The company seems legit (I normally hate backing these things since I was conned out of almost $2K for backing that HAL9000 and will never back any crowdfunding campaign again) and has already delivered a previous replica. This seems like a good replica for the price (its not the $15K QMX or Master Replica or Factory Entertainment replicas!). It's $699USD + $50USD shipping to US & Canada only. Delivery October 31, 2025. https://tomyplus.tomy.com/startrek2024 https://www.facebook.com/groups/tomyplusinsidersclub?_kx=ASsd1kix0NbkHmlXjdrZOJrhExkHP7cqi-c03lKBWuQ.W2DwWC

Have you tried using a hairdryer to heat it up to remove the white stress mark (I haven't tried it myself) I've read on here earlier that someone found that successful.

I guess I have a long way to wait for mine from Amazon.com... sorry to miss out on all the "fun" with antenna gate

I wonder when Amazon.com will deliver their orders - on June 29th or a few months afterwards?

Wow!!! @nightmareB4macross those are some tiny hinges - amazing work! Can't wait to see it all painted up.

Ooooh, that would be good!

Yay! I finally got my 80's Anime red bikes collection together as I had wanted!!! Special thanks to @MKT for helping me track down the Metallic Motoslave, it's fantastically beautiful in the painted metallic scheme. When I first saw the toy back in 2008 in bare red plastic, I wasn't interested at all, then missed the Metallic re-paint, but this version makes all the difference. I just did a quick black wash to pick out the details and it just really pops. It's so much fun to play around with, its incredibly fiddly like a swiss watch, but you can get it into all the great poses. Does anyone have the instructions manual scanned that I could have, mine is still sealed in its bag and the CollectionDX transformation video was incredibly helpful, but I'd like a PDF of the instructions to keep on the computer.

Oh, the cockpit bubble and windows are not clear so you can see inside? They're painted silver?