MKT

After I submitted ticket couple days ago, they got back to me the next day saying they will put in request to supplier for ‘antenna’ replacement. I’ll be following up with them in a few days if I don’t get any updates from them. However I’m not really optimistic on getting a replacement laser, as couple of others with same issue on FB have gotten responses from HLJ this week that Bandai won’t be giving replacement parts. If it comes to that, I’ll be more interested to know why the double standards by Bandai supporting domestic customers who wrote in directly to them, but not HLJ who is also JP based. My YF-21 was also via EMS from HLJ. The tracking went from date of origin posting, straight to arrival at destination country a week later. There were no updates of parcel having left origin country this time. For a day or two, I thought my parcel got lost.

You are probably thinking of T-Rex, the toy design studio: https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/12/06/meet-t-rex-the-awesome-mecha-toy-designers-youve-likely-never-heard-of/

Yup just tug at it. Video from a few pages back of a reviewer removing it: Also pic on how the head laser is connected to the head:

I was just going back a few pages in the thread, and Arcadia did mention changing their factory again this year. I guess it didn't work out long term with the other previous new factory they were using for the YF-19 and VF-19 Kai reissues. I think they must be really looking to small, inexperienced factories to produce their stuff, hence the delays to bring quality up to required level. On the flip side, the production costs at these factories must be much cheaper for Arcadia to be able to maintain same prices for all the recent and current reissues.

Haha that's just it.. I haven't tuned in to rock channels for a long time, so as with many other bands they just slip away from mind, until they resurface on YouTube or FB feeds. Yeah news item about one-armed drummer do pop up semi-occasionally, and perhaps that is my only reminder of them then.

Very nice displays! I actually have couple of these same cabinets unassembled for years, as there's no more space to set them up. Nice to see how much they can fit..

Totally forgotten about this group. I had access to one of their albums at one time, I think Hysteria, and for weeks it had constant plays in my car. Man music really has a way to transport us back in time..

Perhaps next release would be a Roy 1S reissue, in Mechanics Edition.

This song needs to be played on every YF-21 unboxing lol.

Unboxed my DX YF-21 from HLJ. The shipping box was in pretty much near perfect condition - no crush damage anywhere except for a small partial puncture halfway into the shipping box wall on one side. Inside, the toy box was in a plastic shrink wrap, but oddly enough the wrap wasn't attached to anything else - HLJ used to shrink wrap items to a piece of cardboard at the bottom. The space on top was covered with 2 layers of air cushions. Screengrab from unboxing video: So, the tension was building as I slice the tape seal. The air was thick with suspense as I pulled out the triple stacked trays from the box. And then.... nothing, because the instruction manual also slid out along with the top tray & covered the valk. Set the now empty box carefully aside, put hands together in a brief prayer, and gingerly removed the manual. And bingo, I won the Bandai'ed lottery. From what I can see, I think it's pretty much impossible the clamshell packaging being responsible for this. There was plenty of clearance between the laser and the bubble all around the top & sides. The bubble is also hardened plastic, there isn't an iota of deformation or crush damage on it. This is as compared to say, the bubble at bottom of tray surrounding the right wing - that is soft plastic which deforms easily, & already deformed because the wing tip rests on it (no clearance) & the next tray set below. The clamshell cover was quite tightly fitted to the tray just like any other new Bandai toy, there was absolutely no slack between them, and the valk was held down quite securely. There were no signs of cover having in any way dislodged in the toy's multiple long journeys. The head laser articulates pretty easily, so any pressure from above, would just move the laser down instead of making it bend sideways. I tried rocking the bubble sideways and the shape of it relative to where the bending occurs on the laser just doesn't align. For me, the conclusion is that the defect very likely came from somewhere at factory level. Some of us may think that HLJ's packing style be a contributing factor for the head laser defect. After all, add this one up to HLJ's continual poor record of defect-free lasers in this thread. But early reports of head laser defects, and there were lots of those, came from Hong Kong by customers who physically bought the goods from retail stores there and the goods were shipped directly by Bandai to these stores. I'm speculating mishandling in factory at certain production batches or lines, and HLJ happen to receive whole batches of it. I've raised the head laser defect with HLJ. Let's see what HLJ comes back with, and I just wonder if there's a new update by how HLJ resolving this now with Bandai other than 'within variance' proffered by Bandai. In the meanwhile, I partially transformed the toy to check on the shoulders (no twin shoulders thankfully). Just some thoughts, in no particular order: 1. I can see how challenging it is to transform the toy back into Fighter. I didn't watch any reverse-transformation videos, but by just tracing back the mere few steps I took to lift up the shoulders, aligning and closing the belly plates and side panels would be quite a fine task. I think it is also compounded by the forearms not really locking or tabbing anywhere along the sides of the leg, other than the arm cannon sort of loosely hooking up to the wing base adjacent to the engine nacelles. If both arms are not rotated symmetrically at the biceps, there's possibility the rear stabilizers will not be symmetrical in Fighter and it would be quite a task to readjust them. 2. The toy is really quite heavy, and no doubt due to the amount of weight in the legs to make it stable in Battroid. Conceptually then in Fighter it carries a lot of dead weight as the legs does nothing in that mode lol. There's also the initial dissonance of holding quite a bit of weight in one hand, and then try to delicately manipulate parts around for transformation with other hand whilst still mostly belly-up in Fighter, because of not wanting to put it down for fear of (further) damaging the head laser. 3. A surprising discovery is that the weight may work against it with landing gears down. It is unfortunate that Bandai has not made the landing gear posts thicker or with support struts, because so much weight rests on the 2 rear gears. Although they lock nicely, roll back and forth, they wobble anytime slight sideway pressure is applied to the toy, and there is a real possibility one or both of the gear posts may snap if one accidentally bumps the toy. Perhaps this is the true reason why Bandai didn't want to make the gears longer (they did admit to deciding against longer gears in one of the HJ Web YF-21 preview article) to avoid the transformable guns dragging, as the wobbliness issue would be even more pronounced with even higher risk of breakage. And so we get those atrocious partsforming guns. All the weight though, will likely make the rubber wheels deform in a short time if displayed with gears down. 4. The wings and stabilizers are too thick. It doesn't feel good to touch those areas and part of why it is so, is that the rounded edges drop off in a more abrupt slope rather than a more gradual angle we are used to in other valks. These areas just feel chunky, yet when it comes to the stabilizers, they are held up by very thin-looking joints at the forearms, joints that also need to slide back & forth with soft lock at both end positions. This looks to be potential failure point, and one we've already seen out-of-the-box from couple pages back. Will gradually transform it over the coming days, and perhaps post more thoughts later if noticing anything not already mentioned in the thread.

Got my DX YF-21. Will open later. Hopefully, this sticker stands for something on this copy.

Figma R-Type Final 2, Cerberus & Albatross.

Wow one in each mode!

I do hope that's the only reason for all the delays. In which case, hats off to them for taking the time to get everything right in production. But then, it is taking a very lengthy time to dial the factory in to make valks. Since production on the reissue YF-19 started, which was when they mentioned a new factory, it's been..... more than 2 years, almost 3? Unless, Arcadia has switched to yet another new production facility after the YF-19 and are sorting out everything at this factory all over again with the current VF1 production.

Yeah Arcadia’s really quiet this year. There has been no announcements or hints of new pipelines, every of their existing project’s been stalled & stuff that were supposed to have been released by now have been delayed twice (maybe more?). It doesn’t look like the VF-5000 can make it in time this year, and I do hope they didn’t cancel the Hargun. The latter was practically ready to move into PO stage. We all want them to take another shot of the YF-21, but it would be cruel if Mr K decides to maintain the sculpt almost as it is with Yamato’s & just made it more robust lol. Just like their v2 YF-19, VF-0 & SV-51.

Just no feels for this BeastKing iteration. It’s just too far removed from Voltron & the whole thing feels like a different robot altogether.

Yeahh just thankful it is being made in 1/72 even if it doesn’t really fit most valk scale. Can finally retire that cheap Testor’smodel kit I’ve been using to display haha.

One of well-known TF toy reviewer. Pretty cringe the way he manhandles the toy and forces parts to move, but it seems he does that for every toy, that he actually has a scoreboard for 'days without breaking something' lol. Good news is the toy held up.

Cracked open my 0A, transformed it straight to Fighter and attached the Ghost. I think Bandai did some tolerance adjustment from the 0S. As opposed to the 0D, in which most of everything was slightly looser, on the 0A it was the opposite. Stuff just feels tighter. For eg, the head, which is on a long, thin plastic pole at the collar, seem reluctant move up or down said pole so had to use quite a bit of finger strength to press into the underside of nosecone for Fighter. One of my shoulder joints is overly tight - basically the part where the metal is connected to the plastic C-clamp via a spring pin to become a sort of butterfly joint, is extremely stiff. The C-clamp bit is where it attaches along the sliding rails for transformation, and I had to resort to detaching the whole arm altogether from the rail, use a lot of force to rotate that small butterfly joint & then pop the arm back in. Likely have to do the same thing to bring the shoulder out of Fighter mode, & I hope the spring pin doesn't destroy the plastic as it expands over time. In the 0S, the rear landing gear doors do not seat as flush as they should be when closed, and I remember the one on the right leg being particularly egregious. So am quite pleased Bandai fixed that for this 0A. On other hand, the doors are quite a pig to open now with the slot being too tiny for the pick tool Bandai supplied. Had to use something sharper and it brings back memories of trying to open Arcadia's landing gear doors on their VF-0 lol. The landing gears themselves were extremely tight fit, much more than either 0S or 0D. I couldn't plug them in using just my hands at all. Had to use another separate tool with a blunt head to press the base flat part flush into the bay, and I don't know how I'm gonna remove them yet. Don't want to yank them out by the gear arms lest they break. Ghost booster attaches rather securely, the thruster nozzle is also rather tight so had to be quite careful when articulating it. Somewhat disappointed to discover that the inside of thruster, although has molded detail is naked plastic, so creating a disparity with the insides of the valk's feet thrusters being painted whilst the Ghost's isn't. Why, Bandai?

One of the boosters has that antenna thingy sticking out... hopefully that doesn't get bent, or at least make it a separate piece with extras like the Gerwalk antenna.

Well, at least there's new hope yet in securing replacement head lasers, & hopefully its Bandai now having a change of mind. I'm reluctant to think Bandai is forcing customers to contact them directly, screwing over international focused retail outfits like HLJ by telling them its 'within variation', and only giving service to JP domestic customers in a backhanded way to encourage overseas customers to buy from only respective local channels (which Bandai will provide aftersales support to!) in future with that massive mark-up. @nightmareB4macross Hopefully you get a satisfactory resolution for that broken stabiliser.

Thanks @Valkyrie Hunter D for pointing me to this thread. Just cross-posting this news: Hobby Master is making the 1/72 YF-23. News on grapevine is that there will be repaints down the road, including a fantasy JASDF version. https://x.com/specialdiecast1/status/1808441574063259861

Ok, the product page for Weathered 1J is now up: https://www.threezerohk.com/product/robo-dou-robotech-vf-1j-veritech-rick-hunter-weathered-edition/ Limited 2000 units. TZ must have done great sales for the regular version, and enough POs for Roy to settle on this quantity. Man, I feel bad for KC - they struggle to move even 100 units on some of their releases.

Great to hear the fix worked out 100%, thanks for sharing.

I remember Yamato's a bit nerve-wracking to transform the backpack the first time. Basically when the pieces at those areas disengage, it sounds like plastic cracking, but on other hand it is always these tighter tolerances on late Yamato / Arcadia valks that makes for a tight Fighter mode. I think the difficulty is transforming back into Fighter - the knees have to be in exact position for it to work. I see @Jenius already working on the Bandai DX review; as the Yamato YF-21 page has been updated with some DX content.