MKT

ZD Toys Iron Monger.. Am usually ambivalent at light up effects on toys, because they are usually troublesome to use (batteries, hidden switches etc). This one is a breeze to use.. Articulation ain't its strong point for this line. But sculpt is good, surface texture & paint is just richly sublime.. If I didn't already know it's a man-in-suit from MCU, the somewhat steampunk design elements make me think it can fit into other IPs, like a giant robot in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Oh I cheated a bit. Ran the pic through an app filter to get that sort of CG painted look. Unfortunately that filter is now defunct, & can’t find anything similar..

Roy will have no problems taking on Ivanov, Nora and the entire Anti-UN forces on his own!

Congrats... This is perhaps the hardest to find of all Yamato v2 VF-1 walks, and when they do turn up they usually go for a pretty penny.

An HG 1/144 Barbatos..

Hmm I predict it’s just the base Ghost drone for PO. Super parts for it will be separate P-Bandai.

I can totally see what you mean. This design was confusing to me too when I first laid eyes on them. These Figmas have been circa 10 years since release, and I now realize why Figmas of that era was considered to be very good value. Not only because of the very much lower sticker price then (as with all other toys), but there was ton of accessories included, compared to very barebones release of modern Figmas..

What a way to ride a bike.. faceplant to interface lol

Nice work @Angesdad! I thought something look quite off with the default head, but the black chin was the one thing that made it look right.

Revisiting GNU YF-19..

Yamato 1/72 VF-19A Ex:Ride Joseph. Drossel is very pleased to have her new toy..

Peeked into this thread, and wow what a feast for the eyes @anubis20!

Don't think there is cancellation at this point, but at same time the PFs are really late for what should be just panel lining work at their factory. So something must have gone wrong beyond just work scheduling, but I agree with @no3Ljm , Arcadia would likely to fix any known errors before releasing.

I suppose, any single-layer white parts will show some translucence when held up against direct light. In the Arcadia VF-1 pic, other than the wings and backpack flap, other places remain opaque. I was a bit bothered about this VF-0S, because places like the arms and chest, still show some translucence I've not seen in the other HMR when taking pics of them in the usual lighting conditions. Anyway, I took the short wings of the VF-0S, VF-1J Hikaru, and the VF-2SS, taped them against a lamp shade, and this is what I got: When I measured the thickness of the wings using a vernier caliper, this is what I obtained. But take the absolute figures with a grain of salt, because the wings are not flat and molded with surface curvature, especially so with the VF-1 wings. The thickness varies on different areas of each individual wing, but the takeaway is that the difference in thickness across all 3 are pretty consistent. Although the opacity of each wing appears to correspond to their thickness, the degree doesn't seem to be. The VF-0 is about 5% less thick than the VF-2, but to my eye the light filtering through look to be much more than that... Edit: Well, forget the thickness measurements above. Did another translucence comparison test, and the results are self-explanatory lol..

Iron Man landing pose? Black Widow heroic stance? No, its Roy saying "Oof! Slipped on some oil & nearly fell flat, lucky I didn't damage the pitot!"

Reposting couple of SV-262Hs pics.. Thanks to @no3Ljm for the edit

The DX toys are art come to life, design & engineering marvels that you can admire, touch and play with. A framed painting can be an expensive hobby too, but I'd argue you could do much less with it.

I do agree, the VF-31 heavily opaque canopies are quite a turn off..

Price of HMR VF-0S have been slowly dropping at Amazon JP. At this posting time, it is Yen 12,895 and that hasn't included a further 10% Japanese VAT deduction. Broke down and ordered another copy.

Received the VF-0S today. To be honest, I had some trepidation because there have been little rumblings here and there on the quality not being up to usual HMR standards. These were mostly to do with how cheap the plastic feels & how thin the plastic is until light shines through easily, stuff that were never an issue with previous HMR releases like the VF-4. Some quick impressions: In hand, the plastic feels.. different than other HMR VFs, but not necessarily cheap. In fact, the texture feel very similar to the new plastics used for the recent VF-25 WWM and YF-29 Max. I've only handled Battoird & Gerwalk so far, and find some parts do look quite thin, with joints & hinges around the chest area flexing a bit more than I would like during mid-transformation. But none of the parts feel as though will break easily - on contrary they are quite strong. I'm thinking Bandai is really going for accurate proportions here, so perhaps some parts are smaller / thinner / finer to achieve that for this size. Where other feeling of cheapness may come from is its weight. It is only 94g, compared to the VF-4's 110g and VF-2SS's 122g (the VF-1 is 80g). So it does kind of feel lighter than expected for its size. Once I start putting it through its paces though, its quickly apparent that that the tolerances are pretty much top notch. On my copy at least, all joints move with consistent fluidity and mostly appropriate tightness depending on area, making this toy a pleasure to handle. I feel this aspect is the hallmark of excellent engineering, more so given its scale. Kitz Concept would do well to take copious notes here for their 1/72 VFs! Only the cockpit shield was much tighter than it should be; on the upside it does cover the canopy completely in Battroid (I was afraid it wouldn't, seeing quite a few mis-transformed examples before this). Unfortunately, the plastics appear to have some unwanted levels of translucence. This is the complaint by some, but the way I see it, wrongly attributed to plastic thickness but is due to the plastics color itself. It's not noticeable during normal handling, but the moment some light gets behind it, the translucence becomes quite apparent, like the following pic .. After Battroid, I moved on to Gerwalk and have to agree with others who mention this is the best mode. The range of articulation & balance here is really nice, and I attempted to have it emulate Roy on one of his moves during his Gerwalk melee with Ivanov on the aircraft carrier deck.. It is really a treat to have the rainbow cockpit canopy here again, after losing it from Yamato's valk days. For now, I'm leaving it in Gerwalk for display..

Thanks.. but what is that drawing, is it a settei sketch?

Haha fat turkey.. I can kinda see it from certain angles.. Well, just a few more pics of the VF-2SS: Here I'm picturing the VF-2SS being on the way up some hangar to be launched. Handling normal fighter mode is already not that much a fun affair, but once the SAP is added, it's a whole new level of frustration to align everything symmetrically. The whole VF looks even more of a mess from below. With the SAP pack, the look graduates fully into a heavily armed space fighter - exactly its intended role. But sometimes I would imagine it as a stand in for another video game fighter-shooter, perhaps not a Silpheed but more of Thunderforce. I tried to take some pics of Gerwalk, but IMHO it is visually the weakest mode. After trying out a few angles and binning them, in the end I just took an upskirt pic and called it a day.

Other than the waist, it appears the joints in hips, ankles and feet have been tightened considerably. Pose-ability now greatly improved now without risk of toppling over like Yamato's. One of the chest cannons now have proper hole at the tip, matching the rest of them.

While waiting for my VF-0S to arrive, I spent some time to reacquaint with the HMR VF-2SS.. My introduction to the VF-2SS was all the way back in mid-90's, during RPG sessions with my buddies using just the Palladium RPG book. What made the experience here different from our other sessions of the original Macross RPG (Robotech!), was that we did not watch the Macross II anime, so the plays became rather short-lived as we were not at all familiar with the important world settings, characters and overall story for context to draw from. But I would be studying the line-art of the VF-2 variants & other mecha for quite a bit, greatly admiring all their updated designs from the original Macross. It was only just a few years ago I watched Macross II. Though very middling overall, seeing the monochrome line-art jumping out from their pages and now animated in color was a treat. Fast forward to today, when I look at the VF-2SS's fighter form, it is quite different from other VFs in the Macross universe in such a way that there are individually recognizable jet fighter bits like the rather normal shaped wings, vertical stabilizers, and nose cone; but when all parts come together as a whole, it just about leans more towards a space fighter rather than atmospheric jet fighter like most other Macross VFs. Nevertheless, my absolute favorite feature of this VF design, is the shape of the nose cone. At this angle, it has all the right curves, blending well with the rest of the body... Bandai really did well with the VF-2SS sculpt, it's great most of the moving parts can flush rather well together even if it means some effort needed to finagle them just-so into position. The opening cockpit canopy here is the highlight feature that we perplexingly continue to not get with other HMR VFs... Battroid is where I feel the direct lineage to the VF-1 shows through. The shape is largely similar, but everything made slender and curvier. The HMR sculpt really evokes my memory of the line-art that Evolution Toys' version doesn't.. And so, after finally watching the anime, I can have the VF-2SS in a pose something similar in spirit to the anime, in a way the RPG book doesn't convey..

This is basically their existing P-Bandai / web exclusive model. The fact they are not even doing this, is perhaps whatever projected orders they crunched will not even meet MOQ for profitability. There’s also the idea (not sure where it originated from), that antagonist mecha generally don’t sell well. I got impression that Bogue’s 31AX didn’t move much quantities, so perhaps there’s some validity to this.