jenius

I don't think the shoulder position or the arms has anything to do with the sliding mechanism, that's just sculpt stuff and other design elements and I like what Yamato did there. I'd much rather have a bit of a crotch (like all VF-1 toys have) then have the head in the wrong place

The whole sliding nosecone thing was a terrible idea... it makes transformation more complex and puts the toy's head in the wrong place with the only benefit being less of a crotch. The head also looks like it sits a little too far back in battroid also. Great toys, no doubt, but the more I handle them the more I wish Yamato had just made smaller 1/48s without wingflaps, removeable nosecones, and air brakes (but keep the bigger hands!).

Having the legs extended isn't all that bad, it keeps the toys from looking to squat. Roger pretty much confirmed that Toynami has excess capacity left on all of their MPC Alphas but that they also have no intention (at the moment) of using that extra capacity.

If you keep the arms of the flexi display toward the center and your screws tightened I'm sure you could get it to work. Carl, my bad, I was reading too quickly. Something different with the head of a potential sixth volume of the MPC Beta... guess i'll wait and see. As to getting a truly GOOD MPC Alpha... I took the approach of just buying lots of them, transforming them all once, returning the ones I didn't like, then handling the ones I kept very gingerly. I know that's nobody's preferred method.

The only Alpha that's hard to get is the blue one. You can still get the green through black variants for $60ish. I imagine that if Toynami is going to release a plastic giftset that won't be until long after all these MPCs are on the market so they don't hurt their own sales... that's a long wait. If I had to guess as to what Roger's hinting at it'd be the Synchro Cannon variant prototype the HG staff showed (somebody referenced a picture earlier in this thread). I'm guessing that'd be sold as a Marcus/Maia Shadow Chronicles volume.

Votoms.. no bikes but it seriously is great.

It's a fair criticism that the Aoshima isn't MUCH of a design overhaul, but certain parts were over-hauled and when you handle them you get even more of the "Damn it, why couldn't this toy be built better!" feeling than you do from the Toynami. So, beyond that, we're basically discussing semantics. The Aoshima improvements were great ideas and if these toys do make it into a full plastic rendition I hope they keep those improvements (although, from what I have seen with the Maia MPC, I have no real expectation of that). No problem on the Imen review, it's been one I've been wanting to get up for a long time... and it's probably not the last time you'll see those little figs.

You got it all wrong. "Thanks for your cancellations guys, this will convince Bandai that their future 1/100s will have to be of a greater quality if they really want them to sell!" If I see lots of preorders and then lots of cancellations I see lots of demand be turned away by my crap product... but at least I see the demand was there.

That is a commonly held, but not entirely true sentiment. HG would love to import a lot of toys and collect a licensing fee, it's a no brainer situation for them. However, their bone-headed moves in years past to try to lay claim to everything related to Macross (they claimed to have all rights to the show and its derivatives) have made it so BW will never allow another company to do business with HG again. If companies can't do business with HG then HG can't make licensing fees (BW is happy) and you get no toys unless you import it from someone who is paying BW licensing fees (BW is happy again).

As much as people hate it, BW shouldn't get a penny for a Valk sold in the US. HG should get that penny. If BW is doing things to prevent the 1/55s from being sold in the US (most likely in the form of a clause in their licensing agreement for the Japanese territory prohibiting the marketing of similar products outside of BW's scope) then it just doesn't seem right to me. That's not to say many things HG has done didn't seem right to me either. I think every Macross Plus and Macross Zero toy should be readily available anywhere... it makes no sense that HG has managed to shut that door. In the end, they're both screwing each other so there's little incentive to work out a happy arrangement... besides, BW has the lion's share of the stuff people want and the people who want it.

Yep, BW put the smack down on the Yamato effort (what was it? Sundown or something like that) and then put the smack down on the Bandai relationship. BW hates America (okay, maybe they just hate HG).

A little clarification: Aoshima's Legioss toys were better DESIGNED toys. They were worse in terms of CONSTRUCTION. So if you wanted to see a plastic Alpha actually built well you'd want it to be the AOSHIMA design, not the Toynami MPC. The Aoshima had ratcheting joints and other little bits (including sturdier hands) that would have made it superior had it not been thrown together from warped parts by people who didn't care. It should also be noted though that Aoshima does have the Toynami as its underlying base so there are plenty of legacy issues (I'm sure Aoshima arms pop off randomly just like toynami ones). I may be wrong but I believe what SAVE posted was a pic of an Aoshima booth at a toy show that showed a TOYNAMI MPC BETA, not an Aoshima Blue Tread. Aoshima was announcing they'd be doing repaints but had not yet begun producing them. Tommy Yune DID create the MPC Beta's unique heads although I don't believe he had anything to do with the MPC Alpha heads. As to the Beagle folks, your rampant speculation is fun but you're building yourselves up for a let down. From what I hear Beagle is very pleased with what they'll be showing but it's not going to be part of a new line.

16 Days until we'll get our first pictures of something very nice...

I don't think the "tooling" in that sentence should be anticipated to mean any sort of "re-tooling." I think they are simply saying that the place that made the Beta will make all future Alphas. It's certainly not a bad thing but I wouldn't take it to mean there will be any improvements in the new Alpha other than having a better factory put them together.

Apparently not...

Man, I hate to say "i told ya so" but if Yamato couldn't do it I didn't see how Bandai would.

This isn't the end folks, the economy was fine but it got kicked in its nuts. Just like we all survive a kick in the nuts so will the US. It's just a kick, not cancer. Putting ice on your balls doesn't necessarily feel good either but it might help the swelling. In the end, all it takes is time. Again, tough times call for rational thought people, now's no time to grab your tin foil helmet and start expecting the end of days.

Well we're not supposed to get political. I can say that all politicians, not just the two at the top, share their fraction of a percentage for not being able to see the writing on the wall. The various lobbyists had everyone convinced that this wouldn't happen because they would always play it safe enough to survive... in the end we all saw that they were way too confident and everyone was suckers for believing them. There are plenty of reasons to blame Bush for the way money was spent and such but this problem was way too insidious to say its his fault... it's his fault, the congress' fault, the house's fault, Wall Street's fault, the bank's faults, the rating agency's faults, the lenders' faults, the borrowers' faults, etc. etc.

I have the New Gen I-Men

Where did the money go? Here's a real simple example of how it simply vanished... Bank 1 buys $100Billion in Mortgage backed Securities. These securities pay the bank 7% per annum and have a market value of $120BIL if split up and sold 8 ways of Sunday (all just hypothetical stuff here). Bank 1 goes to Bank 2 and pledges that $100BIL MBS for a $100BIL Line of credit. Bank 2 makes 5% plus a ton of fees loaning $200BIL to Bank 1. Joe Blow can't pay his mortgage... neither can roughly 10% of the people in the security. The Security is no longer profitable. The agency rating that originally said the MBS was as safe as government paper now sees their valuation model is wrong. They warn that their ratings on MBSs are now entirely suspect. The market for MBSs vanishes. MBSs are affectively worthless in the eyes of Wall Street and thus worthless as collateral on debt obligations. Bank 2 sees that the best Bank 1 can do is fire sale their MBS to some schmuck investor (who isn't really a smuck since there's still 90% of MBS people paying their mortgages) for $50BIL. Bank 2 calls Bank 1 and says "Your collateral is only worth $50BIL by our calculations. Please repay us $50BIL today. Oh yeah, and since the market is heading down, we won't renew your line of credit in six months so even if you have $50BIL to keep you alive now, you better have another $50BIL to give us again in six months so we can get out of this relationship." Bank 1 says "We don't have $100BIL lying around, we used it to buy MBSs and now there's no market for them." Bank 1 goes bankrupt. Bank 2 receives a $50BIL MBS and lots of other MBSs in repayment of the $100BIL line of credit it had. Unfortunately, those aren't cash, and people are calling Bank 2 to repay their debts since Bank 2 also was using MBSs as collateral. Bank 2 goes bankrupt. The vicious cycle continues until you reach a bank that either held only MBSs backed by the government (as there's still an active market for them) or a bank that had enough cash on hand to wait out the MBSs and survive on the monthly remittance of borrowers. The perceived value of a security vanished, so did it's value as collateral, that freaked out everyone, everyone called their debts due, no one could repay them 'cause they were all in the same boat, and that's how you get where were at.

The economy naturally jumps up and then falls down. Every single time there's a new reason why it speeds up and a new reason why it slows down. Every single time we learn from our mistake only to learn a new way to (essentially) repeat it. The policies put in place by institutions like the US' Fed are simply meant to slow down the economy when it's speeding up unsustainably and then to speed it up when it starts slowing (reduce the height of the peak and the valley). It's because of these natural cycles and our ability to (when things aren't completely FUBAR) influence these cycles (and/or severity) that makes economists so important. When Wall Street gets into excessive gambling there isn't much the world can do about it so long as Wall Street keeps winning. Maybe now that the current crunch is happening the government will be able to stay a step ahead of Wall Street for a while but when there are such huge rewards that can be reaped from gambling the incentive is always too high and the world's most brilliant minds will always come up with ways to get beyond government control and engage in huge risks for what are deemed even more huge returns. Pull through this, hope for the best, and then don't be shocked when the next downturn comes. Don't get crazy though, this is a natural cycle. Don't hide your money in a box. Don't fall for conspiracy theories. Don't start blaming immigrants for taking jobs. Hard times call for an excess of rational thought, not a dearth of it. (None of this is directed at anyone in particular).

I am so happy I don't collect DYRL specific schemes

At this point, the Regult and the Glaug absolutely have to be on an itinerary somewhere. My destroids are itching for someone to pick a fight with!

The line art presented there (really cool with the cut-away showing the mechanical stuff inside) was also present on various toy and model kits. Just the other day I was looking at my Robotech release of the 1/55 triple change Alpha and admiring that same art.

The price is definitely ridiculously expensive for the scale and the parts-formation. I may not get any VF-25 variants after the Alto.