M'Kyuun

Oops, I forgot about the upcoming leader class Optimus- that'll also be a definite buy. Curious to see how it turns out: are they going to take major cues from MP-44, or do something different? I'm rather enamored of ER Prime; it's such a good design- the wheels on his back are the only real detractors, but I can overlook them for the all the good. I'm sure it'll be the most accurate G1 OP we've ever had in the mainline; the only negative is that there won't be a corresponding G1 Megatron with a proper pistol alt.

Well, they wouldn't need a Beetras license if they veered so far off design as they did with the aforementioned Roadbuster; they actually got pretty close to the mark with Whirl, although his overall design, IIRC, was based in part on the IDW design (primarily the legs). I remember that Whirl released prior to Roadbuster; the closeness of his design to the OG got me excited for Roadbuster, as I really like the Mugen Calibur from Dorvack and I was stoked for an update. The toy we got wasn't at all what I hoped for, so far did it depart from the Calibur's design. That same extreme difference in design is what I fear if Hasbro decided to actually make Deluxe Insecticons that aren't regular Insecticon repaints. Maybe they'd be cool, but then again... But then again, too, sometimes Takara surprises. It's always a toss-up. Hasbro, and Takara by extension, have indeed been digging deep and wide these days, so not much can be ruled out. I was pretty excited when Evan mentioned Omnibots in one of their streams awhile back. I've long felt that those were some of the most ignored yet update deserving toys in the roster. They're G1, and they should have at least had a cameo appearance in an episode to appease all the kids (like me) who sent in their $5 and 2 Robot Points to get one or more of them by mail order. Had they just that one appearance, we probably would have had any number of Omnibot toys by now, at least by third parties who've tended to dig deep far longer than Hasbro. Thus far, only XTransbots have produced updates to those old toys, and I'm all in for them. But mainline is my primary collection, the one in which I'm most invested, and I'd absolutely love to have some official Generations Omnis to fill out the collection.

Yep- pretty much the only figs in that lineup that I'll be buying. I wish the Deluxe Insecticons were getting their own distinctive molds at least reminiscent of the 80s Beetras figs, but I'm guessing they can't or just aren't interested in pursuing the licenses from Bandai. I wish they were doing a voyager game edition Fall of Cyberton Optimus; I loved that design, and it'd be nice to see the old adorable deluxe toy get an upgrade.

That's nice, but odds are high that his alt will be a tank or some other gun-wielding thing, just not the proper pistol he should be. I still can't believe they won't give Shockwave his G1 space blaster alt mode. Megs I can understand due to his more realistic pistol mode, but you'd have to be a color-blind and myopically challenged cop to mistake Shockwave as a real gun. It seems an oxymoron that toy guns are so regulated in a country where guns are deeply and irrevocably ingrained in the culture, and it's easier for a kid (of legal age) to open carry than to go to the store and buy a toy gun. Back asswards.

I don't want an SS86 Megatron at all if it turns into a tank. G1 Megatron was a gun and any Movie or OG series referencing fig should reflect that. For any other continuity, they can make him turn into a can opener for all I care, but if it's G1 specifically, he needs, without exception, to be a gun. I can't understand why Takara won't make a proper G1 Megs for the Asian market. They aren't hindered by our gun safety laws, so the only obstacle would be on Hasbro's part. And if that's the case, F##k Hasbro for screwing over fans on both sides of the pond.

Couldn't disagree with you more. If they ever decide to do a proper G1 Megatron as an SS86 fig, I'm hoping it will be at least as good as Magic Square's Doomsday. I want a proper Walther P-38 mode, and a toon accurate bot mode, albeit with more detail than the plain animation models allow for, just as the majority of the SS86 figs have been realized. Even if it means they have to put a big ugly orange tip on the barrel, as long as the rest of the pistol alt mode looks believable, I'll be pretty happy. I wish Takara, who are unhindered by toy gun safety laws, would do an SS86 Megatron for the Asian market; if it means buying from an overseas vendor, well that's pretty much old hat for most us by now. I just want a proper mainline G1 Megatron for my CHUG collection.

Not my cuppa, but for those who dig the Flame Toys design and wish it transformed, here you go. Hopefully it proves to be a more enjoyable process to transform than their Drift- beautiful toy in both modes, but the journey from one to the other will have you biting your nails.

This thread has been silent for some time. Here are a few upcoming items from 52Toys. I'm most excited for the giraffe and the Beastdrive kitty-car. The racing car and weird motorcycle combiners are interesting; the car looks amazing, but the bike is so-so. I wish, like the jet combiners, they'd made them both racing cars, but they didn't. The combined mode looks alright though. Kinda digging the Beastdrive flyers (wyvern, Pteranodon, and bat) although the color palettes aren't really appealing to me, especially the wyvern, which is probably my favorite design of the three. I hope they give the giraffe a somewhat naturalistic look and don't go crazy with the colors.

I don't buy or collect non-transforming Transformers figures, as the ability to convert them into other things, the root of their namesake, is the very thing about Transformers that gives them their appeal to me. That said, I can appreciate the style and artistry applied to some of these non-transformable toys and models. Flame Toys definitely bring a cool anime style to their figs, and in most cases, I like how they look. Of course, I always lament that they don't transform. I wouldn't mind seeing Hasbro/Takara do a subline of transforming figs in a similar style along with an animated series. Like Animated and Prime, I think it's cool when they take a chance and lean into a different aesthetic. Granted, I don't care for the WFC or FoC aesthetics too much nor the Bayformers aesthetic, but many do and that's fine. The franchise requires change to remain interesting and relevant and I hope they continue to push boundaries and have the courage to experiment a bit. Too, I hope they don't continue to feel like everything needs to be G1-ized. G1 is great, but it's its own thing and the other lines should be celebrated for what they are- while they're starting to lean more into the Animated aesthetic in Legacy, I wish they'd just do straight updates to those character designs without compromising them with G1-esque touches. Likewise the Legacy/United Prime figs. Just give us some nice updates to those old toys keeping the style intact; it's what differentiated them and made them unique within the line, and to homogenize them with G1 is a disservice to the artists who created those designs as well as the fans who love them. I hope someone from Hasbro is reading these posts. I doubt I'm the only fan who thinks this way.

A good-looking battroid is my chief concern as well, but as a DX toy, it should still be better than just average. These guys are professional toy makers with a long history; this should reflect a caliber of requisite refinement.

I hadn't thought about the belly plates. Ironically, I like the choice of truncating the bit of plate hanging off the legs; however, if you're right, and I have little doubt you are, then I concur that better solutions should have been employed. Seems like a fair bit of 'good enough' was afforded this design. Dismaying.😒

My wife and I are both short, but she's got an inch on me so I only hinder my own reach by elevating stuff. Fortunately, my wife rarely comes into my cave, so my stuff remains safe from careless jostling most of the time. She's not malicious- she doesn't do it on purpose; she just doesn't really care and if something gets knocked off or over, so be it. She just carries on doing whatever with little concern. She and I are polar opposites when it comes to caring about our possessions; I've always been pretty careful with my stuff since I was a kid. Stuff just doesn't really matter to her. Back OT, I'm really curious what prevents the wings from folding flat into the backpack; seems a bit of depth could have been shaved had they folded flat. It's a questionable design decision.

I figured the single knee joint would suffice, but a set of hinges capable of a 'z' formation to elevate the lower leg parallel to the ground may prove a more efficient design. Said second hinge could extend and retract out of the lower leg. I've got a LEGO YF-21 in early stages of design, and I may try applying these ideas. Thanks! Toy collecting and an incorrigible sweet tooth are my two main vices (as well as a cultivated predilection for frequent profanity), so I indulge in my hobbies. This represents 40+ years of collecting. Did anyone notice that the middle shelf above my desk is also made entirely of LEGO? There was a lot of wasted vertical space there, so I made a shelf to store more of my Classic Space sets. In retrospect, it probably would have been cheaper and less time consuming than just buying a shelf and brackets, but it was a different sort of project than I usually do, so what the heck. I pretend it doesn't exist or else I would descend into madness. I've been meaning to get a makeup brush- very soft bristles; my buddy uses one to dust his LEGO collection and I've been meaning to get one, too, as it would likely be useful on my figures as well. Just a little more care with them due to protruding and loose bits. If the nacelle was to be employed as a storage method for the legs, they'd likely have to be widened, and due to the arm positions in fighter, they'd naturally have to be widened towards the center, which is ideal for the legs while accounting for the arm divots. I hadn't thought of using David's 'z' type hinge arrangement, but I've long entertained the idea that those nacelles seemed the perfect way to stow the legs while keeping the overall fighter profile fairly shallow, more so than Kawamori's prescribed laterally rotated legs allow, as we've seen. Yamato's only choice in keeping with Kawamori's line art was to thin the legs out disproportionately to favor the fighter mode. It's a gorgeous fighter, but as a battroid fan, it never appealed to me, as I couldn't unsee how awkward and just wrong it looked. If I were designing the toy, I'd only consider using metal with stout plastic ratchet joints securely ensconced within to affect such an important set of joints. They need to be able to withstand a lot of manipulation, torque, and easily bear the weight of the toy in both battroid and GERWALK configurations. It's a lot of demand on one small area of the toy, but essential to its functionality and durability. No skimping. I mentioned earlier a schema where the lower joint would retract into the leg, but what if both joints were connected by a short linkage which, in battroid, sits parallel to the ground: O-O where the right hinge attaches to the upper leg and the left to the lower leg. The right hinge would allow for forward knee bend in GERWALK, the left hinge for normal knee movement in battroid, and, after rotating the leg 180 degrees at the thigh swivel, the two hinges together could be manipulated 180 degrees into David's 'z' arrangement raising the lower leg into the nacelle cavities. It's a lot of manipulation, but I think it would offer an effective result. 😄None on most days. I'm quite mindful of where the really precarious things are and do my best to skirt around them. Not so my wife, who has a singular talent for always finding the one thing that's sticking out just a tad too far and knocking it over. Additionally, she has a care factor of zero, so it's of no concern if she bumps something of mine over. Actually, she's like that with just about everything- knick-knacks, whatever. I've glued a number of knick-knacks back together over the last 21 years.

Thanks! This pic pretty much encapsulates my three major passions: LEGO, Transformers, and Macross. Like you, I'm feeling the burden of lack of space- LEGO occupies a goodly chunk of space throughout my house which is only about 1600 sq feet, and I'm considering building an addition as I'm pretty much priced out of buying a bigger home here due to skyrocketing real estate prices. LEGO is booming, the sets are just getting better, and I've got about another 30 or so years of collecting before I check out, so I need some room for expansion and just to build and store my MOCs, as well as my other assorted toys. I have more than are pictured, but a number of them are in storage as I simply don't have the room to display them all, especially the base/station sets. There are some Blacktron sets up there, but they're hard to see b/c, well, BLACKtron. 😁 More shots of my chaotic mancave:

Because I'm old and remember, I also try to maintain perspective. Prior to Yamato, there was nothing mass market, save for the occasional rerelease of the 1/55 VF-1 or the crappy Toynami toys. The evolution in design from their original 1/72 toys to their 1/60 toys was night and day- hard to believe they came from the same company, so stark were the improvements across the board. I think that was the point where a lot of us started to finally feel spoiled- for better or worse, Yamato was upping their game with each successive release, concentrating on aesthetics and line art accuracy, aircraft realism, complexity, articulation (although their ball joint placements oft left somewhat to be desired), and delivering high end toys of valks that many of us wished for but never imagined we'd get. It was an exciting time to be a Macross fan. I still maintain a small collection of 1/60 Yamato/Arcadia valks on my desk where I get to enjoy them every day. (VF-19S Emerald Force color; VF-17, VF-4 original release, Arcadia YF-19, original Sv-51, VF-11, original VF-0, and Max's VF-1A w/ Super & Strike Parts) Bandai's Worldwide Anniversary Ver. VF-25 is the outlier on my desk, but I love the VF-25, so there you go.

Couldn't have stated it more succinctly. I think this is the best solution to preserve all three modes in a fully transformable YF-21 toy while maintaining the aesthetics with minimal concessions. To me, the final product and how it looks through the three modes matters more than the methodology of arriving at those modes. When the line art is drawn in a realistic logical fashion without compromise, then follow it; but in the case of the YF-21 and any other number of Kawamori's works, realism and logic give way to artistic license and visual impression over actual feasibility or functionality. In such a case, the toy/model maker should be free to exercise license of their own to make the best looking and functional toy free of the constraints and fudgings of the line art/animation.

I'm not really a big fan of cel-shading, but I certainly appreciate the artistry of it, especially when done well. LEK's work always impresses; it's difficult to tell that's an actual toy standing there and not a 2D render, a testament and a compliment to LEK's skill. Amazing. I like the toon's Skyfire design because it's not the VF-1, which was ubiquitous in the 80s, from official to KO toys. It was everywhere. Granted, Jetfire's toy was the VF-1, which I found confusing after watching "Fire in the Sky" for the first time, as the artists, perhaps even Floro Dery himself, did a pretty extensive redesign that, aside from being a jet with a large red jet pack, shares virtually no visual similarity to the VF-1. I pined for a Skyfire toy for years until I finally got Fans Toys Phoenix. I was pretty excited for Hasbro's Generations Jetfire, as he at least shared some similarity to Skyfire's bot mode, and I figured that was probably the closest we were ever going to get to a proper Skyfire in the Hasbro mainline. When Siege Jefire was announced, I was over the moon, and the toy didn't disappoint- about as good as one could hope for in a mass retail figure. When MP Skyfire was announced, well, it was a no-brainer purchase. While I think I still prefer FT's Phoenix, the MP is a pretty fine figure, and I'm happy to have him. I'm also glad that he was marketed under his proper namesake, the only official Skyfire fig that I'm aware of. The Siege toy may be called Jetfire on the box, but he's Skyfire to me, too.

This. Although it runs counter to Kawamori's line art, which employs copious animation magic to fit the legs, from a toy manufacturer's perspective, the most logical course is to use what space the design allows for, and I think Bandai did well by using the nacelles to that effect. The only other option would be to make the bulbous sides of the lower legs be separate panels that somehow hinge into some other part of the leg bay, a tall order given how cramped said space is. I think orienting the legs straight ahead and placing them in widened nacelles is the best compromise for this design. Kawamori did toymakers no favors, thus necessitating some creative solutions to achieve balance in aesthetics and functionality. Following the line art, I realize, is what most of us die-hards want, but with some of his questionable designs, it becomes necessary to say "F" the line art and go with what works.

Modular Space Station 60433 | City | Buy online at the Official LEGO® Shop US Finished building this today. It was a fun, if somewhat repetitive, set to put together, but the final result is a large station with plenty of play built in. It's done very well, and the only change I would have made is to have the pods arranged so that they themselves form a ring with internal access from pod to pod. However, I think that was a bit beyond the scope of what the designers wanted to do, and the singular interchangeable pods in this and a couple other sets in the line lend themselves to extensive modularity, which is admittedly far more fun. I love the clear delineation of roles based on color coding of the astrofigs' helmets and backpacks; the og red, white, black, blue, and yellow astrofigs were similarly delineated, at least in the minds of the designers if not so overtly indicated in the sets themselves. While not a new idea in Space themes (Galaxy Squad did it well in 2013), I appreciate the way it has been done in the 2024 sets, with the orangish-yellow maintenance/construction figs sporting a helmet with similar shaping to construction or mining hard hats, blue pilot figs sporting a non-opening but spacious visor, and the green scientists sporting an opening visor (which is helpful for making quick visorless observations without doffing the helmet, in pressurized areas, of course). The various backpack accoutrement is similarly role-specific, especially the mechanical arms on the fig that comes with the Space Construction Mech. Notable in these sets is the lack of any implied conflict; it's a welcome return to exploration and science-based play that so characterized the Classic Space era. That said, the use of minifig heads for the aliens included in some of the sets lend themselves, in my dark sci-fi loving grey cells, to "The Thing"-like parasitic possession of the human astrofigs. Whether that ever crossed the designers' minds, I don't know, but it sure crossed mine. I digress. I have the majority of the 2024 City Space sets, excluding the polybag and the 4+ Spaceship and Asteroid Discovery, and I saved the largest, Space Base and Rocket Launchpad, for last. Given my very positive impressions from the previous sets, I'm looking forward to building it too. I lament I don't have the space, pun coincidental, to display all these sets as a collective; they beggar to be played with, and I'd love to have them on a table where I can just interact with them on a whim. Alas, not right now, but hopefully I'll remedy that in the next couple of years. I also feel compelled to build a large vehicle akin to the excellent M:Tron Mega-Core Magnetizer in the theme's color scheme that, as is my wont, transforms into a mech. I'm adding it to the shortlist of projects I hope to accomplish this year. In other LEGO news, goat lovers rejoice! As has been their habit over the last few years, LEGO is once again releasing a more robust successor to an older set, this time the 2009 Medieval Market Village gets a hearty update via the Icons 10332 Medieval Town Square, which also combines aspects of another 2011 set, the Mill Village Raid which came with a single and highly sought after goat, the only occurrence of that animal element until 2024's CMF line featured a Goatherd w/ goat. The upcoming Town Square comes with a goat, newly molded in grey, which will likely make this an irresistible purchase for goat fans and collectors of rare LEGO elements. I still have the Medieval Market Village on display, still a remarkable set, and this update looks amazing. I'll likely skip it due to lack of space, but my hat's off to LEGO for doing such a great job. To those for whom this appeals enough to drop $230 for it, I envy you greatly and I hope you enjoy it immensely!

Oh man, I hope not. I avoided that whole mess with the ver. 1 of the VF-25, which looked terrible to me. I went in on this YF-21, and I hope it's not the same scenario. It's a lot of ducats to drop on a purposely poorly-done first pass.

Wow, great find, Mike. Congrats!

Honestly, I think they'd be further ahead to put Ramen Toys under contract with full licensing and let them do the hard work of development. Take a page from the Japanese approach: make the best toy possible and assign pricing accordingly instead of placing each product under a severely limited budget resulting in toys with subsequent limitations as we often see with Transformers. Promote it as a 'craft toy' line and see how it does. Of course, the prices would be higher, but if the quality and designs of the toys are this well executed, it's worth it, I suspect, to collectors and fans, especially considering what we Transformers fans pay for third party toys.

Yes to all your suggestions. I'd be happy with just better proportioned legs and stronger hip joints, but far be it from me to hinder any attempts at improving articulation throughout and even adding more so long as the joints are strong and well-toleranced. I'm firmly in the camp that would love to see Arcadia apply said fixes to the Yamato design. It would likely require less tooling to accomplish, and they'd still sell it at north of $300 ensuring they made a healthy profit. And we would buy it, many among us buying multiple copies. Seems a sure-fire win for Arcadia if they chose to retrofit the Yammie. Win for us the fans, too.

Interesting news indeed. Considering Hasbro is a toy company first, one can only assume there are toys in the pipeline, although I'm dubious that they'll come close to what Ramen Toys are doing.