jenius

You're being way too picky or you need to turn up the brightness of your monitor. The Toynami is navy blue with black, gray, and gold accents. You can definitely argue that it takes inspiration from Yamato's 25th anniversary scheme, and some other inspiration from Yamato's stealth scheme, but essentially what you're really saying is "any dark valk is a rip off now" and that doesn't really seem fair. All this complaining about the scheme seems silly to me. Is it out years after Yamato's efforts? Yes. Is it dark like Yamato's efforts? Yes. Is it blue like one of Hasegawa's efforts... well, kinda, but darker. There are hundreds of valid reasons to complain about Toynami's toys, whether or not this toy is original enough to make your panties wet wouldn't rank high on my reasons to bash them. I'm fairly confident with all the customs and everything else done with VF-1s just about any new non-canon scheme will have similarities to something someone released before. Seriously, there is almost NO orginality in Yamato's 25th anniversary scheme, it's a rip off of a thousand black with gold trim items before it and the stealth isn't that much more exciting. As to being slow to the party? Can you imagine how much more they would have been bashed if they released this toy concurrently with Yamato's and Hasegawa's darker efforts?

Niiiiiiiiice.

Since they have sold several DYRL? toys now ranging from superposeables to the 1/100 line without any word of them being sued by anyone and with no indication that they're going to stop we're at that point where it's safe to assume they're working legitimately. Even if they originally didn't have legal right to the merchandising rights they've reached that point where whoever did own said rights would have had to have acted to protect their license by now.

Nope, dead serious. That paint scheme doesn't look like anything produced by Yamato. In fact, I really wish Yamato had made that the 25th anniversary paint scheme, it's way better than that retro black and gold they put out. The toys come with all the same accessories as every other release, it would have been silly for them to remove some accessories because they never appeared in The Macross Saga. Maybe Toynami will release all non-canon schemes under the Robotech name and use the Macross name only for canon releases... it seems fitting.

It is not at all a rip off of the Yamato... you will see. EDIT - picture added to back up the statement.

HG claims merchandising rights for DYRL also so they can make strike parts. Their "stealth" scheme is also unique. Pics will be up on my site later tonight.

I'm confused about those Mospeada figures, there are 10 pieces in a box but only 5 different figures? You're going to have to buy duplicates and you still might miss one? That's really a bad way of doing things. Why not just put together 10 characters by including Jim Austin, Batra, Sorji, Wolf, and Aisha?

Are we about to have one.... site is getting slow....

The hold up is not with Toynami but rather Bandai. BW told Bandai told cut that crap out and Bandai listened. Toynami has dropped all talk about Bandai Macross merchandise in the US recently. Is any of this clear cut and in writing? No so you can cling to hope but I think both companies are moving on.

I think it'd be far more likely that WB would court BW so that they could keep the story of Macross more in tact and not have to alter it so radically. I would imagine that WB would want to use updated designs that look nothing like they did in the cartoons but the story of Minmay's bringing culture to a warrior race would remain very attractive.

The riding suit has been complained about, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it in my review. It was improved for the Rand release, they added a coating to it to protect it a bit. If you're having a hard time getting the figure to stand on its own then you need to adjust the heels. There is articulation in the boot but it's probably pretty stiff right out of the package and at an angle not conducive to making the figure stand. Pick up the figure, play with the heels a bit to get them to a better angle, then put the figure down and continue to adjust the heels. I have pictures of Rand standing on one foot hopping on his bike in my review... once you get used to the heels you can do amazing things.

The Beta is a great toy but it's not perfect. I still think the cockpit should have spun around before sliding then folding down so that the bottom of the cockpit was facing outward. Then they could have taken a couple liberties with the bottom of the cockpit to make it look more like part of the chest. It's definitely too bad they skipped the shoulder missile bays and it would have been nice if the legs sat flush with the yellow missile bay in bomber mode instead of having that gap on either side. All minor complaints though, it's definitely a nice toy.

The Ghost version of the VF-0S (Not Shin's VF-0A with Ghost) is fixed but fixed differently from the latest release of the VF-0S. What the difference is, I have no idea. Ruskii is right, beyond that it's just a little piece of packaging plastic on the tailfins that indicates it was the newest release from what I recall from a thread here on MW.

It's a misconception that Toynami marked up the toy from $79.99. Here's what happened: 1) Toynami developed a kinda crappy Cyclone toy they were going to call an MPC and charge $79.99 for it. 2) Right before Toynami was to begin production on this toy they saw what Beagle was cooking and realized they'd look retarded selling their toy as a "masterpiece" when a Japanese company was putting out such an obviously superior product. 3) Toynami scrapped their idea to make their own crappy toy (for $79.99) and instead offered to buy several thousand units from Beagle of the toy they had designed. 4) Beagle's toy, being absolutely amazing in comparison to the crappy Toynami design, was ALWAYS going to be a $200+ toy. Never, ever, not once, did Beagle imagine their toy would be under $100 and never ever did they say so. 5) Toynami notified retellers that they would be supplying an MPC Cyclone, but not the $79.99 one but an improved $200 one. A better way to think of it is that Toynami notified retailers that the $79.99 MPC Cyclone was CANCELED. Then, they announced that a new vastly superior toy, going by the same name, would be made and cost quite a bit more. Anyone who handles the Beagle/Toynami Cyclone that eventually was released and thinks "This toy should only cost $80" is straight up insane.

NP, buy the Beta.... buy the Beta... buy the Beta. It's sweet.

I think you're reading the problems he had with his previous ALPHA and you're thinking he had problems with a previous BETA.

Is that what you're going to use to indict him? I just watched that whole video and I almost feel like you're making your complaint up because you want to have people watch your video. It's like when Kevin Smith made anti-Kevin Smith websites and said "OMG, look how terrible his next film is going to be" and then would show legitimate behind the scenes stuff that looked pretty cool/funny and then added "See how horrible he is!" All I saw there was a grown man rough housing with children just like how children rough house with each other. High pressure water? I pee with more pressure than that. I've seen a bunch of videos now from SDCC and when I was there I didn't see a single one being made. That place is immense on a ridiculous scale. EDIT - I'm certainly not saying I think his schtick is funny, or that I think he's a good parent, I'm just saying that looks a good way from abuse to me.

WANT!!!!

On a less depressing note, my MPC Cyclone is number 1302 so we know they must have made at least 1500 of the 3000 Scott Ride Armors. EDIT - by the way, I think the stat that Toynami cut their order into a third comes from Toynami's original 10K limit on the toys. Before anyone gets angry at Toynami for cutting their own order way down, I'm pretty sure Beagle also produced way fewer for themselves also. The economy took a crap.

I definitely think $200 was a fair price for the Beagle Ride Armor. The classic Gakken used to easily fetch that much and more and it isn't even in a league anywhere near the Beagle. I now own both Beagle releases and a Toynami Scott... I will definitely pick up a Toynami Rand at some point... hopefully at a good price . You know would be sweet? If a really talented person on these boards (that does not describe me) was able to come up with a Rand to Rook conversion kit using the prototype shots from the Beagle. The hardest part might be the figure but you could probably cheat at that by just creating a new head (maybe only the helmetless one) and new boots. There was some talk earlier of what an "appendix" kit for these toys should come with. Even if the MPCs are off the table, and an appendix is now even less likely, what did we think were good items to include? Here are my thoughts: 1) Scott's pendant. I would like it so that it could be flipped open and there would be a little peg in the middle where you could attach a little plastic Marlene figure so you could make it look like Scott was looking at the hologram. 2) Saddle bags, accessory bags, etc like those recently sold at Wonderfest 3) Annie/Mint figures just like CMs did them, one standing and one crouching... Hell, they could sell these separately for like $5 each. 4) Now that they're not making them, Rook, Yellow, and Jim figures would be cool too like CMs is doing. 5) A headless helmet so you could make it look like Rand or Scott was about to put the helmet on or just taken it off. 6) ?

I flipped through this book at Comic-con... absolutely gorgeous high quality stuff... but they wanted $60 for it and that's too rich for my blood.

Ignacio pretty much nailed it right on the head. I have no idea how many MPC Cyclones Toynami ordered but I would guess that if they capped their production at 3,000 then they've probably only produced about half that and would wait until demand warrants the second half to be made. Remember the MPC Alpha is capped at 15K and they haven't made that many of those. Does anyone have a high serial number MPC Cyclone? I'd venture Beagle and Toynami probably only made like 1500 each and they didn't manage to sell out... that's bad news. I did hear that the Stick version was a solid seller for Beagle though. I imagine sells of the MPC Beta line haven't been all that phenomenal either but since the only thing changing between each is the head and the paint it would make almost no sense at all for Toynami not to produce at least a thousand of each variant.. all costs with that line are essentially sunk at this point. I believe the delay with the greeny has to do with Aoshima getting the orders filled for their Japanese release which I believe is due any day now. My guess is that there will be a standard Shadow Beta release and they are debating on doing a Shadow Chronicles Maia Beta release with Synchro cannon. I don't know that things look good for Shadow Chronicles merchandise though, there's no longer talk of a Marcus Rush MPC Alpha and the superposeables and I-men haven't been shown since the Comic-con after Shadow Chronicles' release. I'm guessing Tommy is pressuring for a Maia Beta with Synchro and Toynami is reluctant to the idea... the dead silence at Comic-con regarding interest probably didn't help Tommy's case. EDIT - there is still interest in Mospeada and I would be surprised if all the merchandise for it dries up, even in these tough times. Still, I think if we get anything more it will be expensive with small releases.

I suck on my Macross history, but if there was another colony ship sent out not long after the Hikaru/Misa ship that would be cool. I'd love to see the VF-4 in action. There could be references to Hikaru's colony ship as nods to the fanboys dying to know what happened to it and maybe a Supervision army tangle so we can learn more about them.

Whoa, thanks for reminding me, I updated my Robotech Panel post to include the following bit:

Visit my blog for my summary observations from the last couple days. I've included some cosplay pics. For those of you wondering "Where the hell is this guy's blog" just click the linky in the sig.