M'Kyuun

At the risk of derailing the current anime conversation, I just finished watching Macross 7 and all but the Frontier crossover eps and having only watched once before with an overall low opinion of it, this time around I found myself enjoying it much more. I'm still not crazy about "Planet Dance", which they play ad nauseum throughout, but the vitriol I felt towards it and some of his other songs has tempered with time and age, I suppose. I found that I enjoyed far more of his songs this time around (I even watched the full 2007 live concert with Fukuyama and Kajiura and came away very much impressed- Fukuyamasan can play some mean guitar! Moreover, they did a set of 20 songs and he sang most of them as lead at the same level as he did in his twenties for the show. Bomba!) As for the show itself, some of the "spiritia" stuff and the extent of "song energy's" power was a bit much, but overall, I enjoyed the show. There are some great humorous moments throughout. The usually reticent Veffidas gave me a good hearty laugh at the end of "Which One Do You Love", part of the Encore series of unaired eps. My wife and I think Mylene should stick with Gamlin and Basara should hook up with Emelia, Mylene's older sister. 😁 Anyway, sometimes it's good to rewatch stuff with older eyes and ears; I'm glad I did.

Misery loves company, but in this case that's disheartening news. I've been enjoying Dr. Wu's takes on the cassettes (I hope he eventually moves on to do the staples: Ravage, Rumble, Laserbeak, Steeljaw, Ramhorn, and Ratbat at minimum) and they're generally much better than Hasbro's offerings, Eject being the only real exception. To have the combining mechanism on a combining set be so poorly executed seems a gross oversight, and I just can't believe they didn't fix it before mass production. Alas, they didn't. However, as you said, these guys are obscure, as I think they only came to my attention when Dr Wu announced them. I had to visit the Wiki to learn about the original toys, which rank pretty low by comparison, although G1 Slam Dance couldn't rotate its arms fore and aft either. However, I think the dino modes shine (I know, technically Pteranodons aren't dinosaurs, but for the sake of argument...) and the combined mode, if you can get it to stay together, looks good, too. I don't regret the purchase, but I hope they receive a fair amount of necessary feedback about this and make adjustments on future releases. There's still Dile and Zaur which form Legout to produce, so hopefully, if he decides to do them, they'll be done better. I'm looking forward to his takes on Slugfest and Overkill, whose original toys I don't own. I have the Fanstoys versions, and they're pretty well done, but I'm looking forward to having versions that scale with Hasbro's Legacy scale, as much as I wish they'd go back to making them actual microcasstte scale again. I just want a nice full set of cassettes for Legacy+ that are similar in articulation and craftsmanship, as I have little faith in Takara/Hasbro to deliver (Eject is a surprising entry, so credit where due- I wish the rest were to that standard).

I received these guys yesterday and decided to post a quickie review. Forgive all my LEGO stuff in the background; I'm working on something and just took some quick pics. This is Dr. Wu's Impact Wave, his take on the G1 Autobot cassette combiner, Decibel. here's some art and the OG toy for comparison. The G1 combiner featured very little in the way of articulation and was one of the poorer efforts among the G1 cassettes. I say this as a fan of the cassette bots. It's the only G1 combiner team i don't own, and quite frankly, I don't feel like I'm missing out. Dr. Wu's take is fairly faithful to the artwork, minus his shoulder weapons. For whatever reason, Wu attached those cannons to his upper arms, pointing up no less, instead of sitting on his shoulders pointing forward. It's a weird decision, but the range and amount of articulation packed into this fig earns my forgiveness. the head is on a ball peg which allows it to move fore and aft as well as rotate 360, with full 90 degrees up and about 5 degrees down. The arms are on ball joints and can rotate 360 degrees, the biceps swivel 360, the elbows bend 90 degrees, the wrists rotate 360, the hands can bend inward 90 degrees (for transformation), and the claws on the outsides of the hands can bend 90 degrees outwards. There's no waist swivel, but the legs can rotate fore and aft 90 degrees on ball joints, swivel 360 on mushroom pegs at mid-thigh, the knees bend 90, and the feet can rotate down well past 90 degrees while the toe can rotate, in place of a full ankle rocker, 360 degrees. All four of the individual cassette weapons store on the combined mode: the aforementioned cannons on the arms, and the other set tab into the calves. the feet have molded and painted details reminiscent of the Pteranodon's weapons which were used as feet on the OG toy. Note too that the rivets in the OG toys thighs have also been replicated as molded and painted details. The only issue I have with the combined mode, and perhaps it's just an issue with my copy, is that the two cassettes are only held together by a single tab-slot connection, and the slot is located within a rotating panel on a ball joint to which the arms also mount. On mine, the arm ball joints are tighter than the rotating panels to which they're mounted and without anything else securing them together, and with such small tabs holding them together, mine fall apart far too easily. I'm surprised that Dr. Wu didn't create a more robust method for holding them together, but he didn't. You can see the slot in the blue panel and the tab on the upper torso. Given all the additional real estate to work with, I'm still surprised that there's not another point of connection built into this. It definitely could have used it. The individual cassettes took on the forms of a T-Rex or Allosaurus (Noise) and a Pteranodon (Graphy) respectively. While Wu's take on Graphy, Supersonic, holds pretty true to the G1 toy, albeit with better articulation in the wings, his take on Noise, Explosion, takes a fair bit of license, but IMHO, the result is a far better executed therapod mode with more in common with Grimlock's look than that of the flat and more suggestive shape of the original toy. And much like the combined mode, the weapons are mounted to the legs pointing upwards instead of to the torso pointing forward. Weird, but it is what it is. the range of articulation is great for such a small toy, though. Since his legs form the combiner's arms, all the aforementioned articulation applies. the head can rotate up and down and it can also raise and lower since the bit it attaches to is hinged further down in the torso. Unfortunately, it can't rotate left or right and the jaw doesn't open, which is forgivable on such a small fig. The little arms are on ball joints at the shoulder and feature a bending elbow allowing for about 180 degrees of rotation. The tail is formed of two section- the tip can rotate up and down through about 120 degrees and the larger part, which contains the combiner head, rotates a little over 90 degrees. Overall, pretty impressive for such a tiny fig. Unfortunately, as cassettes, these guys fail miserably, as there's no attempt whatsoever to impart any cassette details. Even a hint of reels would have been nice, but nope. As it is, the cassette alt mode is more suggestion, which is a bummer and something I really miss from the G1 toys which did a much better job of trying to look like microcassttes. However, their wafer modes do fit in kingdom Blaster and Netflix Soundwave, so at least that bit of interplay is possible. This one's a mixed bag: I love the individual bot modes and the combiner mode. However, the weak connection for combined mode is disappointing and makes handling the thing a pain, as it just doesn't want to hold together and I can't believe Dr. Wu didn't come up with something more robust, especially when combination is its major gimmick. Cassette modes are more suggestion than realization, which also sucks for "cassette" bots. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with these figs.

As a collector of both official and third-party toys, with a focus on mainline, I think your current approach is apropos. For those who only collect Hasbro/Takara but aren't opposed to an upgrade here or there, are just curious, or perhaps simply unaware, showcasing those upgrades in the official thread puts that information where it needs to be for interested parties, as well as for folks like me who buy both official and non. While the upgrade itself may be third party, the intention is the betterment, subjectively, of the toy in question, and when that toy is an official Transformers figure, I think it should be featured in the official thread. Likewise third party stickers/decals, and such. Ultimately, when the intent is to enhance an official toy, it should be showcased in the official thread. My $.02 FWIW.

Wow, that's very high level for papercraft; you'd never know that that is what it's made of as it looks like a plastic model. very impressive and well beyond my ability (I struggle to fold a piece of paper perfectly in half- no matter how much I try to align the corners, the end result is almost always off. Attempting something like Blue Thunder is well beyond my skill level). Anyway, it's nice to see Blue Thunder revisited- still a beauty in my eyes.

I hadn't even given thought to a Powermaster approach, although, knowing Has/Tak, it would have been clunky and would have detracted from rather than enhanced the look of the ship, so I'm glad they didn't take that route. That oversized pod was obviously intended for an occupant, which makes the omission all the more glaring. I'm sure some third party will make a little Grogu to put in there. As big as that pod is, they could probably make his floaty pram as well. Bummer that they didn't sculpt the cockpit to access a small Din Djarin fig as well. Having the Mandalorian's fighter with no Mandalorian seems odd, and no I don't consider the ship in bot form to be the Mandalorian himself, but more like a transforming Batmobile to Batman. Well damn. Wish I'd waited a little longer, too.

My copy of The Mandolorian crossover showed up today, two days earlier than tracking indicated, so yay DHL and USPS! In hand, not too shabby. I love the molded gun holster, which is a feature sadly seldom seen on TF figs. The tail gun is, well, what it is 😄, but I can appreciate the attempt and the use of part of the ship to make a transformable accessory. That's the best kind of weapon storage. Both modes are solid, and yeah, the omission of a little Grogu or a Din Djarin minifig to helm the ship is lamentable. I wish it had double jointed elbows or at least a deeper bend with its single elbow joint, but it's ok as is. I also wish the engine spikes on his shoulders could somehow retract a bit or otherwise swing out of the way, as they're pretty long and due to the crappy Hot Rod/Rodimus-styled shoulder hinges, they can potentially hit his head when raised all the way up and turned outwards. Although it creates a little bit of back kibble, I like how the portions of fuselage form little wings. The little hinged rings that form engine covers over the elbows are a tad unwieldy and unsightly, but ultimately, they make the N-1 mode look better, so it's a reasonable sacrifice to the bot mode. He's still a bit pricey for what you get, but as @mikeszekely pointed out, he comes with no shortage of accessories, except Grogu, and both modes of the main fig are done well. I'm glad I got him, and I have a feeling in the long run, he's going to be one of my favorite crossover figs, as I really love that N-1 design and he has a better bot mode than many of the other crossovers as well, IMHO.

Unfortunately, according to Experten himself on Twitter, the kit isn't available to ship to the US. For 25, 000 yen, I'd have been in for a kit. This is a grail toy. I keep hoping for Arcadia (little chance) or Bandai's HMR line (slightly greater chance) to make a toy of the VG, but thus far, the main makers of Macross toys have shown no interest. At the very least, Experten shows that it can be done, done well, and throws down the gauntlet for the big makers to take notice. I hope it sold out quickly demonstrating a clear desire amongst the fans for this mech.

Ah, I appreciate the clarification! Experten never disappoints with his Macross models. This thing is brilliant.

The omission of Grogu while providing an obvious space for him on the toy is curious and disappointing, especially for those of us who collected the older waves that did come with small pilot figs. I'd rather have had Grogu over the blast effects, personally, as well as an accessible pilot's area and a small Din Djarin. I'm not at all a fan of making the bot modes on these sorts of crossovers look like the characters who operate them. I'd rather they were their own separate characters which would free the designers to be more inventive when crafting the bot modes instead of trying to shoehorn in aesthetics of the pilots. If my old Ford Ranger could transform, I wouldn't want it to look like me. I don't understand that creative direction, but that's probably why I'm not running a multibillion-dollar toy corporation.

I happened to poke around on Pinterest tonight, as I haven't looked around in there for awhile, and I stumbled upon these pics. They were saved by a user calling himself Hal0999, with no other info attached to the pics. I'm a fan of the VG's design, and I made my own a few years back with LEGO. Until now, I believed my LEGO version was the only transformable version of that mech in existence, so imagine my surprise seeing this! It makes me wish Arcadia would make an attempt at the design, or that this was picked up by Bandai or Moderoid for widespread distro. I'd definitely be down for a copy. Anyway, I thought I'd share this here, as it seemed the most apropos place to do so. I take no credit for the model- huge kudos to whoever designed it, as it looks amazing. 😍

@mikeszekely I appreciate your candid take on The Mandalorian crossover fig, and I'm of the same thought of just ditching all the effects stuff, cape, and shield, and just give us the basic fig for voyager price. I bought this guy, too, after having initially passed on it. I watched PVP's vid review, and that was the nudge I needed to commit. I very much enjoy The Mandalorian show, and the N-1 Naboo fighter has long been one of my favorite Star Wars designs, one of the few things I actually like about the Prequels. I bought any number of the old SW crossover figs but I can't recall ever picking up a Naboo fighter, so this seemed a good opportunity. Mine's due to arrive on Thursday, so something to look forward to in a year that thus far holds very little comparatively of interest to me Transformers-wise.

😄 You're not wrong! Y'know, at this point it's the expectation that anything that turns into a jet is going to have a sh!tastic jet mode. They've proven me wrong on a few occasions, but I'd say maybe one in thirty or forty jetformers has a jet mode that's actually decent. In recent memory, the three standouts to me are Skyfire, Maverick, legacy Dreadwing/Skyquake, and Wingtail in the Sonic the Hedgehog crossover set has a really well-done bi-plane mode. I wish it wasn't Sonic, and I wish it was sold separately as I'd be somewhat inclined to pick it up. Hopefully it'll get a retool/repaint. Notably, Dreadwing and Maverick copy transformation elements from Macross. Maverick is probably the closest we'll ever get to a VF-1 again in Transformers (thanks to Harmony Gold, may they burn in Hell for eternity). It's a hugely missed opportunity that they didn't reissue him in the Jetfire color scheme with an approximate VF-1S head sculpt. I think that would have appealed to fans more than Maverick did. As to Liokaiser, I have no interest, so nothing's really lost on my end for the lousy jetformers in the set. I'm glad I popped in here, though, as I was unaware of the new drops. I headed to Hasbro Pulse straightaway and scored a set of Long Haul and Hook as well as snapping up a copy of Legacy Animated Wasp. I sat on the latter, but considering they never sold a version of him that turned into a car back when the show was originally airing, and given my enjoyment of Animated, I relented. After what I thought was a really well-done interpretation of RescueBots' Chase, I was looking forward to Heatwave, but he looks to me like a retool of Legacy Prime Bulkhead, who IMHO, has far more in common with the Animated design than Prime, but whatever. Anyway, disappointed, I passed on Heatwave. No interest in Hearts of Steel or Skybite. Hasbro's just not making much that appeals to me this year, which is good for the wallet and my lack of space. Incidentally, Iron Factory is making their own version of Liokaiser. Here's their take on the green and white plane dude. If I was gonna get a Liokaiser set, guess which one I'd go with.

Your knowledge of this stuff is remarkable and much appreciated. Had to do a bit of searching for the tiltrotor you mentioned (The Macross Mecha Manual let me down😟), but I'm glad you mentioned it. It's a pretty cool design that deserves a toy or a model in its own right. I wonder if this served as inspiration for the Oblivion Bubbleship, as there are some parallels. Really neat design. Might have to do something like it with LEGO, as the idea of variable utilitarian vehicles has caught my fancy over the last decade, Think I'd probably modify that tail section to split and make it a quadruped instead. The Octos, though a military mech, is a really cool but nigh forgotten variable mech from Zero. I realize the valks are the big draw, but stuff like this tiltrotor and the Octos are equally forged of cool, IMHO. Bit of animation magic there with those forearms taking on a much deeper curve than when they're deployed. Still a neat design worthy of some form of plasticization. The Octos:

That, indeed, is cool. I was pleasantly surprised when they showed pics of the Glaug as inspiration for ED-209. They didn't mention it in this documentary, but I've heard it mentioned in other RoboCop BTS vids that the open grill was also meant to be humorous, putting a point of vulnerability right up front on an otherwise tough combat machine. Until I heard that, it never really crossed my mind; it just looked really cool to me, and I guess growing up in the 80s with so many nigh invincible vehicles in shows and movies, it was intentional and probably reinforced. Anyway, it's such a gorgeous design. I have the Neca toys of it and RoboCop on my desk, so they're always there in sight. Just lovely.😍