MKT

McFarlane Toys The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt 1/6 Gerald of Rivia.

With a P-Bandai item, gotta remember retailers will be slower to get their stock in, while waiting for their own proxy, proxy dupes, proxy friends & family to get item in hand before sending it out to said retailer’s warehouse. If by now any retailer haven’t sent out any copies (perhaps Nin-Nin?), I suspect it’s just they are waiting for majority stocks to arrive first before initiating the fulfilment process.

ZD Toys 1/10 Mark 39 Starboost.

Banpresto Ichiban Kuji Sheryl Nome New Orleans.

Moderately bent going by comparison with others. I just wanted to first exhaust options with HLJ, in case they or Bandai asked to send in the bent part if there is a replacement to be given. Guess I'll straighten it myself now. Meanwhile, Bandai published a support article on how to detach & re-attach the head lasers. https://support.bandaispirits.co.jp/s/article/20240705

I think 'contacting supplier' reply is a standard initial response from HLJ for replacement part request. I've also just received the rejection mail from HLJ just now. As you are in Japan, perhaps you'll have better luck in contacting Bandai directly? That seems to work based on a few examples posted over the past few pages..

Blitzway x MoShow collaborating on LD Voltron (plus a Shin Getter). They will be showing it at upcoming Wonder Fest this weekend. I wonder how their pricing be like against Sentinel’s..

Hiya Toys 1/18 RoboCain.

No indication if OP paid or not. (edit: wrong link posted earlier) https://www.facebook.com/share/p/xQkjANvRpdtbPpBk/?mibextid=K35XfP

Love this display. @Angesdad I’m still waiting reply from HLJ. Meanwhile, someone else did get replacements from them yesterday. Bit of head scratcher why HLJ telling some there no replacements from Bandai, & at same time others do get it.

I like watching his reviews, usually he has fantastic still montages at the end of his videos. This is first time I'm seeing him handling a transformable figure though. He nearly put on the missiles backwards too.

Wasn't planning to get this at all, but a chance popped up to pick it up cheap, and I took it. I like the arcade cabinet-style packaging of the normal versions better haha.

Thanks for the pics @tekering. Somehow, I prefer the beige either the HMR or Yamato used. The light beige used on the DX reminds me of a yellowing valk lol. But that may be a good thing down the road. @Usagi Thanks for the video too. Now I can't get the image of a frying pan stuck on face out of my head. It's Moehime-Japantoys. Anyone buying from them just be careful to make sure any PO's are well within PP's 6-month protection window.

Just for fun I weighted the Yammie 17, and it came to to 503g, just slightly above the DX VF-1. The weight matches its chonky looks, but at least the landing gears are sturdier. Still a bit miffed about the DX 21's thin & wobbly ones. I hope this is all it takes to solve every bent laser issue, in the absence of Bandai's support. No 3D print replacements needed even.

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.