M'Kyuun

Lek has mad skilz. Not sure I'd spend my time and labor on such a lackluster toy, but he can do as he likes. Referencing @mikeszekely's post above, as far as preference, I'm in the same boat, more or less. Paint, heft, and presence are all nice, but unlike Skully, who's all about display and creates elaborate dioramas to showcase his collection, my display preferences are much simpler and tasteless😄, as I have little room, only two Detolfs, which necessitates a bit of cramming to get them all in there. But I'm the only one who has to look at it with any sort of appreciation (my wife couldn't care less), and I know what I've got in there, and it makes me happy. If we ever manage to get a bigger house, I'll get more cabinets and refine my display a bit (spread them out more for better posing options). But I value engineering and a cool transformation sequence more than heavy paint or lots of die cast. Like any number of us Trans-fans, my patience with overly complex transformations wanes as I get older. I thought we were supposed to mellow as we age, but that's not happening with me, and I find that as the years pile on, I prefer more straightforward transformations. Intuitive, if you will, although that's a subjective and over-used term. Hasbro's mainline stuff falls nicely into that bucket, which is probably why it remains the core of my TF collecting. Stuff like MP-36 Megatron can be fun, but I know if I transform him, I'm probably going to need an hour or so, as I very seldom transform my MP figs, and both he and MP BW Megatron are fairly complex and require a bit of time, especially when I'm doing it by rote, and strong memory has never been one of my talents. In fact I have yet to transform my BW Megs back to T-Rex after transforming to bot mode out of the box, so daunting, and potentially frustrating, it seems. Someday I'll take the time. As to the seeming decline in QC with Takara's latest offerings over the past few years, I hope they root out the causes and fix them. They're charging premium prices for QC laden products, and that simply shouldn't be the case. I do wonder, however, since they're primary market is Asia and Japan, are they even aware of QC issues on this side of the pond? Is that something they pay attention to, or are we in their blindspot? I think that goes far more towards the aircraft side of things, obviously, although I imagine car guys get a little worked up if a licensed car has compromises. But Takara have become very skilled at producing cars with few external compromises in the body shells. They may occasionally have a hinge or a pin hole that's noticeable, or a little bot kibble underneath, but they've become very good at doing cars. With bigger vehicles, like trucks, trains, planes, and space craft, all bets are off, and let the crazy bot kibble, large hinges, odd shaped panels and such- lets just say enormous creative license- become the defining characteristics of these alt modes. One would think that the goal, a badge of pride, you might say, would be to refine the alt modes as well as the bot modes for a well balanced toy where both modes have good visual presence regardless of angle. The bottoms of cars can be excused, as we rarely see them, and I doubt even the most die-hard car guys care if bot bits are visible so long as they're not peeking out or ruining the profile of the car itself (like G1 Sideswipe's feet, for example). OTOH, aircraft are viewed from all angles because they fly. More often than not, it's the bottom of a plane you see as it flies overhead- I live near two airports, so I'm well aware. Thus it would be logical to try and make the plane modes look better from all viewing angles, but sadly, that has never been the philosophy at Takara. They approach planes as they do cars, with the lower fuselage open to all sorts of compromise which essentially ruins the alt mode from any viewing angle except straight down. I'm not sure why the fandom has been so accepting, but they are and have been, and I fear, shall remain so. I think it'll take third parties stepping up their engineering to make more realistic jet modes for Takara to change their strategy, but I doubt even that looking at this Starscream. They actually took a step backwards in engineering from MP-03 to MP-52 so far as creating a more accurate, less compromised F-15. Yeah, the bot mode was chunky and decidedly un-toonish, but couldn't they have found a middle ground, employing some of the techniques, like the rotating chest intakes, from MP-03 to this new iteration to make both modes better? That's what Masterpiece should be, IMHO. When you don't give a sh!t about the alt mode, and it's not even close to realistic or accurate, what's the point of the transformation? Not much of a disguise. As far as Macross is concerned, we were spoiled from the onset by the cleanliness and realism of the VF-1's design. Fortunately, Kawamori continued that philosophy with the vast majority of his valks. But Kawamori is an aircraft enthusiast, and I think his design philosophy was to create the plane first, and design the robot elements out of that to preserve the realistic profile of his fighters. Some of his other aircraft designs, like the VA-3 Invader or the FBz-99G Zauberguerin aren't quite as refined or realistic as his jet fighter designs. I'm ok with that- I like sleek fighters, and Kawamori delivers.

Heck make it three if the Maketoys design is appealing and/or you just like collecting Seekers. There's no Universal Law that says only product from one company may adorn your shelves at a time. Options are nice, and I enjoy collecting varying takes on characters. If Takara makes any changes for their further releases, I hope it's to address and correct, if possible, some of the cracks and joint issues. Neither should be an issue with a $250 toy. They need to police their factories and take greater strides with their QC measures, as these issues seem to follow most of their MP releases of late. Surprised FT haven't at least revealed a Seeker design, even if it won't release for another 5-7 years. I still tune in to Skully, although I don't watch all his vids. Likewise with all the other reviewers I watch. I must say, though, I like Skully's presentation style, although he's not the best source for gauging transforming toys, since he frequently has trouble with transforming them, and due to his more often than not transforming someone else's toy on loan, he's rue to be too forceful with stuff. Understandable.

Not what I was thinking either. When I saw the engine bells, I couldn't help but laugh. Rocket powered, baby, yeah! Who says space ain't sexy?

An excellent point. I wasn't even thinking of sun damage when I posted, but yeah, big no-no. Thinking laterally, what if they made a separate solar panel that ties into a base via a lengthy cord, which then plugs into said toy to achieve the electronic effects? You still get the effect, no batteries required, and the toy is safely out of Sol's fiery gaze. If they made that the standard for all toys with electronics, standardizing the connection points as well so the stands could be universal, it'd be a nice boon to the collectors market. If only I was a wiz with electronics, but I'm not.

It's a shame they haven't developed an unobtrusive way to use solar power for toys that have electronics. I'm not a big fan of electronics in toys, as I just don't care about lights and sounds, and all the little wires are fragile points of failure, batteries leak, they raise the cost of toys, etc. No electronics means no worries beyond the standard loose joints, scratched paint, and stress cracks, which are enough of a headache with these pricey little gobs of plastic without throwing wiring issues or leaky batteries into the mix.

Just watched Skullface's review of MP-52, and it didn't fare well. My own subjective critique was primarily with how junked up the F-15 mode is with all the undercarriage, especially the faux canopy cover. I don't understand why it needs a faux canopy to start with, but that cover is just terrible looking. Bobby's copy had a lot of loose or inconsistent joint issues, which was a bit alarming to me, as I've seldom had egregious joint issues with my MP figs. Then again, I don't think I've bought an official MP since the first release of MP-36, as they've all had too many compromises or other things going on with them that I just didn't care for. It's sad, b/c like everyone else in the fandom, I always looked forward to the next MP, and I'm merely indifferent to them now. That said, I do have MP Skids on PO, and given its Hasui era looks, I'm looking forward to it. But this Starscream just turned me off from the get-go. I think the robot mode is beautiful, except the head looks a little too large to me. But as far as capturing the toon look, Takara nailed it. But a MP in my mind should strike a better balance between bot and alt modes, and in that respect, this toy is an utter failure for the numerous and obvious compromises to F-15 mode. If the joint issues that afflicting Bobby's copy are endemic, that's a huge black eye to both the folks that bought this toy, and Takara for putting out such a shoddy product. It's not a good thing when this at legends scale is of an overall better design and quality than this That's my takeaway from the reviews I've seen. I also think the Maketoys Seeker is a better design, and at MP scale, it will remain my choice for my MP collection. If the NA Seeker was ever upscaled to MP scale, though, I'd be sorely tempted to make them my MP Seeker of choice. Just a great design.

I have batteries in a few toys, but if I have my druthers, I'd prefer they keep electronics out of them. It's a pain to try and remember to remove the batteries for long term display.

Just saw this on Twitter and clicked in here to see if it had been posted. Beat me to it, Mike. Anyway, this one hits the old nostalgia button for me too, as I still have my old G1 Galvatron, and I always dug the color scheme of the toy. This is a really good translation, overall. I hope those are tampos; HasTak's thin foil decals are notorious for rolling, tearing, or just falling off. I wish they'd given him the black gun like the original instead of recoloring the silly Revenge guns. From the very beginning, there were serious inconsistencies between the toys and their screen likenesses, in no small part due to Floro Derry's contribution to the series and Transformers: The Movie. My first disappointment was the stark differences between Prowl the toy and his lovely robot depiction on the boxart. That, and the very limited articulation of the toy line, gave me a sense of disappointment from early on, so by the time I got Galvatron, those translative differences between toy and toon gave me more of a sense of disenchantment than anger. Anyway, this is a pretty nice homage, although I'm not sure I feel like double dipping on this mold. It strums the heartstrings, but with my shelves all but full, and The Movie colored one PO'd, not sure I need another.

Definitely made a huge blip on our pop culture radar. Superman, in my mind, will always be synonymous with Mr. Donner, although his directing resume goes all the way back to1960, helming tv episodes in many well known shows from the era before moving onto film. Although he's made numerous well-loved films, most poignantly to me, he and Christopher Reeve made Superman real, and paved the way for today's superhero films, for which I'm enormously grateful. RIP

Pretty cool fig, but not without its nitpicks. Dem hands- not sure how they could look at those horrible things and high five on a job well done. They look like gardener's gloves. Shheesh! Hopefully, for the sake of Primus, some third party rescues us from the terrible design of these mediocre mitts and graces us with some proper mechanical fully articulated hands. Please third party, please. How hard would it have been for them to just mold holes in the hull and give us a set of little cannons on a sprue so they could rotate? Seriously, those things just invite being played with, and Hasbro cheated us of what could have been a cheap and simply implemented play feature. For a toy company, the obvious eludes them. I still think, with a little more thought and engineering, they could have devised some sort of folding panel system to cover those enormous leg holes. I seriously thought they left something out or mis-transformed it when it was first revealed, but no- just Hasbro at its most mediocre. As to the good; I think there's more good to redeem this guy than bad. Sculpting is really nice and it looks like the G1 Ark, minus the two rear bulbous sections on the sides and the fifth engine bell. It has a mini flight deck courtesy of Mainframe, who also transforms into a rather well done, if slightly undersized (relative to voyager and larger deluxe class figs) Teletraan 1, complete with Sky Spy Drone (Explore, Explore!) and the two golden discs which were sent out famously in the Voyager Space Probes, and one of which later developed its own intelligence and captured the Starship Enterprise. Crossing the streams here; I digress. Mainframe also transforms into a decent looking robot mode that's actually pretty svelte, considering the level of panel-fu involved to achieve his Teletraan 1 mode. Anyway, the inclusion, and triple changing nature of this guy to give us more of the G1 experience is appreciated. While mileage may vary as to the effectiveness of it, I certainly appreciate the effort. I think they missed a golden opportunity to make the Ark's chest pop open purposefully to disgorge Mainframe similar to Soundwave's cassettes. You can still pop it open, but it's basically untransforming him to do so. Woulda been a nice additional touch, though. This guy has strong ratchets throughout, like nearly every articulation joint. I love me some ratchets, so I'm profoundly heartened every time I here that staccato sound of pose holding goodness. The ankles and neck are both very limited, though, which is all the more notable considering the high range of articulation of nearly every other joint. At the very least, it would have been nice if the big guy could look up, and especially, down. Ah well...Hasbro. If it was too good, it'd become the expectation, so flaws are essential. Honestly, I would have preferred better head articulation over the extending ramp, which is a cool feature, BTW, but essentially useless, as nothing will really fit in there except perhaps one or two of the cassettes, and anything other than the crappy slug figures that have been coming with these large figs would be grossly out of scale. So the ramp is nice, but moot. The ability to look down on friend or foe would be better, IMHO. Extending landing gear is always, always appreciated, and his do the job nicely, even if they're a bit chonky looking. But they give him admirable ground clearance allowing for the purposeful use of the purposeless ramp. The thought was nice, though, Hasbro.Filling in those knee slots woulda been nicer, though. Just sayin'.😏 So, after watching PvP's fantastic review, which like most of his unapologetically effusive and positive reviews (still think he's on the Hasbro payroll), I'm inclined to think that One, PvP's vid reviews are prime fodder for a drinking game- just take a sip after the repetition of the adjective of the day, and Two, despite a few flaws, the overall toy continues to appeal to me greatly, and while his bot mode may or may not be for everyone, I love it, and I will keep him displayed next to Unicron once my copy arrives. Cheers all.

Never gave it much thought, but it's true; there's nothing constraining them. Too, Hasbro and/or Takara established both MP and legends scales, so why stick religiously to the former, and yet deviate all over with the latter? I guess every company has its reasons, but it does seem odd not to stick to a universal scale, as it makes product more marketable than not. Too big or too small, and you may put your product out of consideration , regardless of how well crafted it is, simply b/c it doesn't fit.

NA tend to have their own scale which is smaller than most of the other legends figs, 3P or official, which makes mix and matching problematic, depending on the figs you buy and from which companies. Magic Square seems to scale better with other legends, except NA. Too, I think more of their figs have cleaner sculpts, better engineering, more pinned joints and less ball joints than NA, although I prefer certain NA figs over MS, such as the Seekers. Both make fun figs though in my experience.

Yep legends, although a rather tall legends (almost to the top of Magic Square's Megatron's upper torso). Hasbro's Thrilling 30 Arcee is about 13cm to the tops of her car fenders in its backpack form, so at 9.8 cm, Wu's Arcee would only come up to 'nipple' level of T30. I don't have WfC close at hand, or I'd do a quick measurement, but as Mike said, I'd guess she's about 13-14 cm as well. So Wu's Arcee might fit in with CHUG if you just accept her as being really small comparatively. I've worked with adult women under 5', and I'm only 5'2" myself, so who am I to be biased against short members amongst my Cybertronian figures? If I'm being honest, though, I wish they were making her in deluxe scale- sure would be a welcome improvement over the very poorly executed WfC toy.

Thanks for the shoutout, Mike. I'm still messing with my old RotF Jolt fig. I'm still impresed by the engineering of this thing, and just the sheer number of moving parts between the transformation mechanics and the articulation. The transformation itself is wonderfully unorthodox, relative to pre-Bayverse, and if I can give one tip of the hat to that universe, it's that it forced Takara to really step up their engineering and creativity to come up with ways to make these things mirror the look and complexity of their rather inventive CG counterparts, for better or worse. Out of that learning curve, we got Animated and Prime, both of which took departures from the old blocky robot looks of yesteryear, and had more complex toys to mirror those looks as well. After that, it seems HasTak took a reversal, really dumbing it down for the CW triliogy, although improving with TR and PotP, and pretty much staying the course with the WFC line. Not saying WFC isn't good, or even any number of the TR and PotP toys, but the engineering just isn't on the same level as it was for Bayverse, Animated, and Prime. Studio Series for the Bayverse stuff still comes closest, and MP is over the top with its engineering, at times, IMHO, to the detriment of the fig. YMMV. Anyway, the new Jolt looks interesting to me, so I think I'll pick him up. I've kinda washed my hands of Bayverse, but every now and again something comes along that intrigues me. If I like what I see in a review, I'll give old grey and black Jolt a blue doppelganger to hang out with. Agree about changing up something on the Sweeps to differentiate them from Scourge beyond swapping an open hand with a fist. Lame. Some color change, even subtle, would be nice. I'm surprised marketing back in the day didn't pick up on the fact that they were essentially identical to Scourge and at minimum, have different faces on them or different color variants. Hasbro loves to milk a mold through repaints and variants, so given this was their army builder fig from the Movie (along with the Sharkticons), it should have been a no-brainer.

What scale is this Arcee? It takes a giant dump on Hasbro's, so if it's in deluxe scale, I'm interested. If it's legends, still looks really good, although paying leader to commander scale prices for legends sized figs becomes taxing on the wallet, and I'm trying hard not to fall into the legends pit of no return. If I had never started collecting before now, I probably, for the sake of scale, would have gone almost exclusively with legends, as the engineering on these things and the presentation is often as good, and sometimes better, than what we're getting with CHUG and MP scales, and I'm pretty enamored with the legends figs I've bought so far. But, I've been collecting now off and on since '84, with CHUG as my primary collection, so that's my main focus, and I wish third party would work in that scale again. We need someone compensating for the occasional crappy official releases. FT's Trailbreaker looks great. I have MMC's, and I'm happy enough with it that I don't feel I need to replace it. But In both modes, I think FT captured the toon look really well, and just pulled off a really visually appealing figure. It's not shown in any of those pics, but I'm wondering if those panel seams in the hood over the front tires indicate a pop-out gimmick.

If it's the lights you're concerned about, I think you needn't worry. Bandai haven't put lights in any of their DX toys, and I don't see why they'd start now. Electronics complicate the toy and drive up prices, and they seem content to eschew them, which is my preference as well. If it's the Basara soundtrack, I don't want that with Any DX.🤮

I've not seen The Boys, not even a trailer, so I have nothing for comparison between it and Legacy. I didn't even know it was Disney, but The Mouse certainly has the larger pocketbook to fund these shows. Still, I thought JL looked good enough for what it was and the story it was telling. Mark Millar, the creator, seemed to happy with it as well. I didn't mind the characters. I thought Duhamel, Bibb, and Daniels all did a fine job with their characters. Their daughter was a bit of a brat, but putting myself in her shoes, I can see how the expectation of being 'better' b/c of the hero thing would get overly preachy and stifling. Perhaps I'm a bit myopic, but Anyway, for what it was, I thought the show was decent, certainly no worse than anything on the CW, which tends to pander more towards the teen/early 20s crowd. JL had a little more maturity to it than that, IMHO.

Well, hopefully by release time, Bandai will have figured out its strategy for marketing Macross in the West, and the days of the Midnight Madness will recede into dark history. That's overly optimistic, but hey, I can dream.

Honestly, I didn't mind the chunky connectors so much, although it pretty much forced the robot be designed around it which led to simpler transformations and other compromises. It was a matter of function over form. Devastator and a new Bruticus at voyager scales, or more complex deluxes, would be nice. More solid figs and better G1 accuracy would be the ideal.

This Macross stuff is an emotional roller coaster.

Nice to know. No dates announced yet beyond sometime this fall. Hopefully, there's an all voyager scaled set of Constructicons coming for Kingdom/Generations.

Likewise. Perhaps my standards are low. I did grow up in the 70's and 80's, so compared to what I grew up on, even today's low pro tv looks pretty damned good to me. This was decidedly not low pro, but moving on. Anyway, I enjoyed the first season. I didn't think it did much new, but I did like the moral quandaries it presented and the story of how they got their powers was interesting, although it took awhile to get to it. Shame there won't be another season; I would have enjoyed it, I think.

Aw man, I was riding an enthusiasm high. Hope restored!

There is hope! This proto exists; it's not a render. It's been exhibited at least once at some event, otherwise these pics wouldn't exist. In my mind, that's justification enough to know that Bandai have given serious thought and effort into designing this rather troublesome valk in a transformable toy form. Perhaps they're still working out bugs; there were criticisms on this board following the release of the pics initially, and they likely have their own nitpicks with the design internally. Plus, the pandemic may have stalled progress for a time. But, they know, just as the fans know, that there's a need for a more balanced YF-21 toy that appeals to both fighter and battroid camps. Of all the valks, this one poses the greatest challenge due to how Kawamori designed the legs, and cheated the ever living sh!t out of the design on paper to make it look good across all modes. I can deal with a slightly fatter fighter with a slightly stubbier nose if that means the battroid has more complimentary proportions. This proto looks amazing to me; it's not egregiously compromising the fighter mode to achieve a really good looking battroid; no mean feat. Anyway, knowing that they've invested this far into a YF-21 toy makes no sense if they don't look to carrying it to fruition. There's demand, and they've already done the YF-19, so within their own toy library, there's a hole that needs filling. Like I said, fan nitpicks; hopefully they're taking their time to work these things out. Since there's no movie or tv show whose schedule they need to meet, they have the luxury of time to work out the kinks, and hopefully that's what they're doing. It would be nice, though, if they'd throw the fans a bone, even a little one, to keep hope and excitement up for this. Social media is a fantastic and free medium for companies to gauge demand and interest in their wares. Bandai should put something out on FB, Twitter, etc about this thing and then sit back and watch the reaction. I'm betting it'd be good overall. Even critiques like yours indicate a level of interest and given enough common complaints, lets them know where to concentrate improvements. It's free QC.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Just release this, and take my money.