jenius

Meh, he's probably just one of those morons who likes toys with functional shoulders. I actually still hear a lot of good things from 1/48 fans about that line. People like the air brake, wing flaps, longer nose in fighter, heft/size, etc. It all depends on what appeals to you... the 1/60 V2 is a great toy but it's certainly not SO great as to leave no room for others to prefer the 1/48s. The 1/60V2 GBP sure is nice, the only gimmick I don't like is the whole folding leg fins... it seems unnecessary and one more thing that could break. In the show the leg fins retract into the leg a little bit, if Yamato was going to insist on doing something with them I would have preferred they go that route (although I'm sure that would have been more troublesome). Otherwise, leaving them solid and making the leg armors a bit thicker in that area would have been fine by me.

Reality shows are all staged. I'm sure they just have producers looking for locals selling things and then they 'arrange' for them to show up on Pawn Stars. I'm sure many of the instances where they even 'sell' the item to the Pawn shop it's not a real transaction... just good television.

from what i heard the weather super parts sold out super quick. They were available as exclusives on the Yamato site for later delivery.

Yeah, it's definitely a hastily painted prototype. I would just take the paint to mean "we will be painting these details on the toy" and try not to draw judgments about the quality of the paint job.

Phantasy Star III was alright but lacked something (and I'm not just talking about animations for the bad guys). I miss Phantasy Star.

VF100 line was a few VF-25 toys and is dead. It had no metal and featured huge quantities of parts being swapped to achieve transformation. Feedback seemed to be pretty negative so Bandai scrapped that idea, decided to try to make their toys as close to perfect transformation as they could in the scale they had the license for, and added some metal to them.

Looks like some big chunks missing out of the back of the legs... still, as far as battroid goes, looking good.

The trick for a Robotech LAM would be to not be compared to Transformers. SK is right, Transformers is a more popular series and if Robotech tries to steal its thunder Robotech will be known as the Go-Bots movie of the 2010s. I'd say the huge benefit Robotech has is that whoever tries to make a movie out of it won't have to deal with trying to give the robots personalities or debating whether or not to spend more time developing the robots or the humans. They might actually be wise to have the first third of the movie feature humans fighting in "power-suits" or destroids and then develop the transforming super jets to help turn the tide of the war.

These toys weren't exclusive, Yamato just made a big deal about how small the production run was, it never said it would never do ANOTHER production run.

I don't really know how people have been scratching the paint and I don't want to fool around with that part of the transformation long enough to find out. If I ever have the misfortune of scratching the paint myself I'll be sure to update the post and discuss how it happened in the durability section. For now I think the key is that you fold the nosecone down into the landing gear well and then you push it back (toward the rear of the plane). This helps create the clearance necessary. I'm guessing those of us who were warned about it before we ever bought the toy now know well enough to be extremely careful when at that point in transformation.

That is incredible work.

Toynami was more of an importer for Beagle, with Beagle's project dead there's nothing for Toynami to import. Beagle hadn't even made it to the prototype stage with Yellow's Ride Armor so there's certainly no way it was next on the release schedule. Fuke was getting close when the project got cancelled. BBTS has a bad habit of putting things up for preorder based on very old Toynami info (and Toynami is very neglectful in updating stores). You can rest assured that there will be no more MPC Cyclones unless a third company gets involved.

In case anyone hasn't been to anymoon.com lately, I updated my VF-27 post to include the Grace version and included some pics. I didn't have much of an issue with the lighting making the different types of plastic look different shades of green.

The Beagle Mospeada project is dead, any site listing any future MPC Cyclone or Ride Armor for sale is just ill-informed. OR MAYBE THEY KNOW SOMETHING WE DON'T KNOW!!!?!!? Just kidding, it's dead.

My hopes: #1) an announcement that some small company is going to buy the Beagle Mospeada project and finish Fuke and Yellow (gotta get the pipe dreams out of the way first). Realistically: 1) Bandai Hi-Metal VF-1 Super Parts 2) Bandai Hi-Metal VF-1S 3) Bandai DX Monster release versions (both, next to each other, in final production form) 4) Bandai Hi Metal VF-19 Kai Soundbooster 5) Prototype of next Hi-Metal valk with proposed release date 6) Something on the next DX toy (if one is in the works) but I suspect that will have to wait until the Monster is about to be released 1) Something more on the proposed smaller scale SDF-1 2) Anything on the VF-19Kai

The heat shield has a slot for the chest to connect to... you can't really make it to full battroid without replacing the canopy.

This movie should have been the first 70% of avatar, then when Jake prays to the planet to save the Na'vi we should see three Predators drop down to the surface. The Predators kill off all the bad guys except Super Marine (with two Preds dying in the conflict). Then Jake defeats Super Marine only to have to go one on one with a Pred... which he kills with his pterodactyl. Roll credits.

It'd be easy for a company to make a 1/100 toy that both looks great and features perfect transformation... but it would fall apart like paper in your hands or cost far more than a 1/60 scale toy that is PT. You ask too much. Landing gears are also not an essential part of transformation so they don't really have anything to do with "perfect transformation"; they're a bonus frill. It's also a little silly to boil down the difference between the old Takatoku's and Bandai's Hi-Metal to looks vs. landing gears. The Bandai is worlds more sophisticated in its design than the Takatoku. One of the biggest hurdles Bandai would have faced with built-in landing gears would be the clearance necessary for the gun to be stowed in fighter mode (something the Takatoku couldn't do at all). The gears would have to be relatively large, the doors concealing them absolutely miniscule, and everyone would have broken something pulling them out.

From what I understand, the Hi-Metal VF-1J is selling well and has good buzz. This should be good news for variants beyond Max's 1J.

Can't you move the shoulder covers a bit to adjust the gun?

Graham posted a review last page. Graham, I just checked it out, it sucks that you got one with glue on the intake cover. I checked it out and it doesn't even seem like there's anything with any business being glued in that area.

It's funny you should mention the overlong nose on the 1/48. In my Hi-metal review I did a side view fighter comparison of several VF-1 toys and the line art. When I make my "1/48 mega review" there will be a similar shot. I'll also include the battroid's compared to that battroid line art. When I have those photos done there will be more discussion on the 1/48's issues with the visual proof to back it up. The newer reviews, like this hi-metal review, have the benefit of coming after I started pulling in line art for my discussions so I've been a lot more critical since doing that. Even my initial 1/60 V2 reviews didn't have the line art included so there will be more conversation (including examples of where the 1/60V2 nails it) when that "mega review" is done also. It's a constantly evolving site (with any luck) which admittedly makes comparing the remarks I made a couple years ago to current posts difficult. Note: I also bag on the V2 for the shoulders but that's because I seemingly bought every V2 that's known to have shoulder issues... go figure.

Side Covers: Bandai was seriously damned if they did and damned if they didn't there. I don't like parts-formers so I have never been a fan of side covers. If Bandai had included them more people would have complained about all the fiddily little parts that the 1/100 came with (even if so many of them are optional). I don't mind Bandai foregoing that entire conversation by excluding two parts that pretty much every VF-1 toy ever has not included. If Bandai releases super parts or a GBP it'd be nice to see them there. V2 Battroid: I just can't get over that head position. For me it's a lot easier to overlook slender arms than a misplaced head. I'm going to change all my various 1/48 posts and all my various 1/60V2 posts into 2 mega reviews. When I do that I'll also include comparisons to the line art for both. I have my opinions but I try to let people decide for themselves and I still gave the V2 pretty high marks because I realize that head thing is something that might irk me more than most.

If you were able to curve the tape measure perfectly you might find him a tad small. I don't know how tall he's supposed to be but if he's in the 5'-6' range I'd say the pilot looks roughly accurate (it's really hard to measure due to his shape and posture).

My review is up on anymoon.com. Please check it out and let me know if you see anything I missed or anything like that -