jenius

Doesn't the green one still just have both arms smushed together though? What an odd bird this thing is.

I used to dream of owning super sweet Robotech toys when I was a kid. I used to design how the toys would transform using my old Jetfire as a starting point. I also had a huge fascination with the New Gen mechs. When I got into late middle school I was able to start seeing VHS cassettes of the originals and started hearing about numerous toys that never made it to America. In high school I would doodle valks and alphas fighting aliens on the top of my notes. I even remember one night in college having a very vivid dream of being at a toy store and coming across all the toys I had dreamed about as a kid. Then I graduated college and found out about eBay (yeah, I was way late to that party) and Robotech.com's store. I purchased some MPCs and then some Yammies, and then a ton of vintage stuff and there ya have it. I finally have all the toys I used to dream about.

Awww look at the cute little ride armors! Crap, if the other two are exclusives that's gonna mean I'll never get 'em at a discount. At least it also signifies that they're aware they're charging too much and almost no one will buy those variants. EDIT 1: Why don't they ever put the Tread's missiles down in fighter mode? It really looks like they could go down all the way but they never do. EDIT 2: I'm a little worried that the Legioss legs don't camber. Clearly the Tread ones do but when I super zoom in on the Legioss it doesn't look like it has the fudge room. Tough to tell.

The realy reason to have a 17 instead of a 19? So that we toy collectors can finally get a great toy of it!

LOL, addict.

There are licenses involved so monopoly is kind of the name of the game. We, as consumers, have ultimate say in what the price is. They will only charge as much as we are willing to pay. If you stop buying astronomically priced toys they'll stop charging such a huge mark-up on them.

Be careful with some of those RPG books, many of the drawings take random derivations from the original lineart.

They can't because of HG and Big West legal issues.

The in-show animation was admittedly really bad when it came to the Legioss and the Tread. Original lineart is always much more helpful. I could take two pics from the series and you'd have a hard time knowing it was supposed to be the same Legioss. Sometimes it was angular with wings cambered downward and sometimes it was boxy. In that pic above there are defintely some issues.

I don't believe the wings are supposed to mate up with the chest missiles of the Beta, that would render them useless or difficult to use. Most screen grabs I can find look like this:

I really don't think you could make it work. It'd be easier to mod your flexi displays than it would be to mod the Launch Arm. Launch Arms require specific attachment pieces for each toy you plan on connecting. You'd have to create such a piece for chunkies.

The YF-19 is the same size as the 1/48 VF-1S. The 1/48 mold has already remade all the money it cost to make and then tons of money on top of that. This is the first repaint of the YF-19 so they're still recouping costs. The YF-19 is also a more complex toy.

But that was the original argument for Destroids all along. They were economical mechs based on one frame type for varying purposes. A non-transformable vehicle MUST be more economically feasible than a valkyrie. You're going to have a hard time proving a valk makes any sense ever... 'cause it really doesn't. I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe 100 valks would be more economical than say 80 space destroids (which you gotta imagine cost WAY less to make) and 20 Valks. In Mac7 the colony finds a planet, it gets destroyed. If that planet weren't destroyed wouldn't that have been the end of the journey? Wouldn't then numerous ships have been brought to that planet? Wouldn't that be the perfect opportunity to replace the colony's space defense forces with forces designed specifically for protecting a planet (ie atmospheric combat). Besides that, there are several types of Valks in use simultaneously so it's not like the NUN forces have completely homogenized for economic benefit. Why not have just one squad of crazy expensive valks JUST IN CASE you find a planet (and need to defend it until reinforcements arrive) and have legions of space destroids for the defense of the colony in space (where it will spend 99% of its journey). We see advances in every conceivable technology in the show. I still think this must boil simply to a Kawamori preference issue. The Monster going the VB-6 route is just retarded and I don't think it's fair to refer to it as a Destroid.

Here's another one from my launch arm review... I think it's my favorite:

You know a big Beta pet peeve for me? It's something I know no toy company will ever address. The feet on the beta are not supposed to be fixed prongs. If a company wanted to do them right they would have it so those prongs could shift up and down (there's a fixed inner prong but an outer prong that moves). From the looks of it the CMs Tread would look good standing and looking straight forward but if you angled the legs outward the prongs wouldn't give and it'd be standing on the edge of one. This is another reason why these toys should be made at 1/35, they could actually do some engineering on those prongs.

NIce! I love seeing tread line-art. So much anime magic seems to be involved when people try to make a toy of it.

But a tank is better? Isn't it true that Kawamori didn't actually design the original destroids? Is it possible that he has simply excluded them (or relegated them to museum status) as simply acknowledgement that they were never his babies? Yeah, he's gone nuts with new valk designs but he always stated that was his passion. There inclusion in MacZero seems to be his way of making all of this okay by implying that they were just early technology that became obsolete. The problem is that doesn't really make sense. In fact, a destroid makes WAY more sense in space combat than a transformable jet. Think about it, if you were on a colony ship due to spend 99% of its existence outside of the atmosphere wouldn't you have the majority of your arsenal be composed of vehicles that were built without the restrictions of atmospheric combat? Macross can't do that though because then it would be like Gundam and I think that's the real reason we've seen the demise of the destroid. Another show already has cornered the market on big, human-shaped, robots. Think what the destroids would be like if they had evolved... they would be completely friggin' awesome and in a show based on space combat you'd wonder why everyone wasn't floating around in space in destroids more reminscent of GBP'ed Valks than the ol' clunkers of the original show.

No other valks but if you have another SDF-1 this might help:

DYRL paint schemes = teh lame. I don't own any of the following- Hikkie 1S Hikkie 1A Max 1A Hayao 1A

LV1 goes for about $300. Really pristine never opened ones can fetch up to $400 but it's been a while since I saw that happen.

Effective in terms of the animation is impossible to determine since we weren't given a hero destroid pilot. They were mobile defense platforms on the SDF-1 though and I have to imagine that's more effective (less cost effective) than fixed ones. There are lots of arguments for and against destroids but they HAVE to be cheaper than Valks to build and they HAVE to be more versatile in combat than a tank. I really see no reason why they wouldn't exist at all. I'd be happy to see them in their standard cameo-type role. If it's a worry about streets and buildings why not just have smaller Destroids?

The Steatlh giftset might get pretty rare also.

<- Praying against mecha knife fights but also remembering some pretty crazy stuff from the final Macross episodes (like giant cigars, turkey legs, etc.). If this happens it won't be the end of the world, it just won't be something I love.

What really wouldn't seem right is how big a Mospeada Legioss would be at 1/60 scale. It would make the VF-1 seem LARGE. The idea back in the 80s, amongst certain designers at least, was that with technology came the ability to make everything we have now much smaller and much better simultaneously. It seems that Macross kind of started in that direction before swinging back the opposite way to "bigger is better"

$300 can get you a decent hooker in some places... ya know, from what I hear.