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Yes, that's what I tried before I took SandPebbleOne's advice. If you look around at the pics in the Toy review/preview pages (from the front page of MW), and at The Valkyrie Factory, you'll probably be able to see a picture of a 1/48 Valk with the tow hook/catapult strop in proper position without any assistance. (Might even be such a picture somewhere on the box.) I think you'll agree it looks nicer that way.

If you want variety, I think the most variety is to be had with the Yamato 1/60 line. All that's really lacking relative to the Bandai/Takatoku 1/55's is a GBP-1S, and a Hikaru Strike (which you could customize out of a Roy Strike). And the Bandai/Takas never had a VF-1D, or FAST packs for the Max & Millia. (Yes, people are bundling the FP's on eBay, but you'll have to customize them to get the right color.) Plus, the Yamato Elint/Ostrich are much cheaper/easier to get than the 1/55's. The Bandais are reissues of some of the original Takatoku 1/55's and of the Bandai 1/55 Super issued in 1990 or thereabouts. Nobody knows what Yamato's future plans are for the 1/48's, beyond a rerelease Roy VF-1S, a Hikaru VF-1S, and a Hikaru VF-1J (optionally with TV-style FAST packs). Chances are they'll do more (like Max and Millia 1J's) but they aren't saying. The other place to see most of the offerings is The Valkyrie Factory, at http://www.menet.umn.edu/~ngo/frame.html N.B. Nobody makes a Kakizaki in DYRL colors, but Toynami makes a 1/55 scale TV Kakizaki (Ben Dixon)...something I might pick up if the price is right.

I suspect this is the crux of the matter. If you know what Yamato's going to release well in advance, you might create a fixed budget in your mind, picking and choosing among all the scheduled items. In effect, the item currently being released has to compete with all the upcoming releases. By withholding information, Yamato encourages people to focus on the current release.

I would distinguish "armies" and "collections". It's a vague distinction, but I'll take a stab at it. A collection is a bunch of stuff. A nice or large collection would include a good variety of stuff. A complete collection would include one of each type of stuff. So you could have a complete collection of Bandai reissues, or a complete collection of Yammie 1/60's, etc. None of these would be armies. For me, an army would include multiples of various types, so that you could in theory organize them into units. If I was building a Zentradi army (preferably at 1/200 scale or smaller), I'd want enough Glaugs and Regults to approximate the Zentradi battalion structure shown at the bottom of this page. If I was including Gnerls and male & female powered armor, I'd probably want similar numbers of each as well to convey the idea of squadrons or wings. Roughly as I see it, you've got an army when the individuals start to become standardized and "faceless". But it can be quite nice if, once you reach those numbers, you still give each little guy some kind of identifying quality.

Hey, niomosy, thanks for that link! So, what's the general verdict on the hovercraft toy? A couple of you don't seem to like it much. And (I wonder if kanata67 saw this coming) can anyone confirm that that the scale is 1/48 for the SC toys (bioroid, hoversled, and Spartas hovercraft) and/or provide the dimensions?

I think you may be talking about the "tow hook not staying up" issue mentioned in this thread from the old forums: Link I ended up using SandPebbleOne's suggestion: It works, but you must be careful not to overdo it or you'll stress the plastic.

...the airforce would lobby against it. ("Not a pound for air-to-ground.") And I forgot to mention, if we're going to examine the logic of building Valkyries, we also need to question not only the Protoculture's logic in making Zentradi, but the biophysical challenge of having a Zentran stand/walk/run without having his bones crack and his tendons tear from his weight/mass. I have noticed that the giants in DYRL look like they're wearing special boots and possibly uniforms that may give them an "exoskeleton", but it's still pretty implausible. Are Zentradi actually "grown" around artificial internal skeletons made of materials stronger than bone? Again, I do enjoy these sorts of technical discussions--and I really appreciate the fact that Valkyries transform for a reason that makes sense within the story, instead of just transforming for the sake of transforming--but we have to make some allowances for the anime/scifi genre.

I agree with Radd, except that the Valkyrie in Gerwalk/Battroid is more maneuverable than anything that would resemble a tank. It also has the sheer mass to crash through obstacles (aided by overtech armor) and punch it out with Zentradi. And I agree with myk & treatment that the battroid mode allows a Valkyrie force to provide a ground combat capability which can be inserted into a defensive position and which can take ground faster than the destroids. Valkyies are like combination air superiority/tactical bomber/airborne cavalry. (In theory, they're probably a little less heavy-duty than the destroids, or the destroids are a lot cheaper...maybe a combination, since the destroids always seem to get blasted. It does appear that destroids largely went out of fashion after SpaceWar I.) Finally, yes, you do have the coolness factor. It's nice to try to explain everything without resorting to meta-factors, but ultimately you have to admit that the Zentradi themselves aren't particularly good weapons. If the Protoculture were really developing a race of super-warriors, they'd probably be human-sized clones, cyborgs, robots, or not even humanoid at all but rather AI-controlled autonomous weapons. I'm sure the Zentradi were invented as an excuse to have battloids. So we have to cut the series some slack, just as we do most anime and science fiction.

Just to be clear, you're referring to a Region 2, non-bootleg, right? Not that I have an answer to that question, sorry.

Careful, if they multiply you might have to call in an exterminator.

Negative. As a USMC M1A1 tanker, I can tell u that all US Abrams have depleted uranium. In addition, almost all (if not all) of our tanks these days have the "Heavy Armor" upgrade, which increased the thickness of the mesh. IIRC, the mesh (with depleted uranium) was on the original M1, as well. FTR, the export versions of the Abrams tank don't get the depleted uranium or the chobam layout but get the space filled in with concrete. As far as reactive, we were using that with the M60s... which some Marine units still had in the '91 Gulf War. I'm sure you're right about M1's currently in service. But the DU armor wasn't introduced until 1988. (Source.) The original M1 had been in service since 1980, and the M1A1 was produced from 1985. Apparently the first M1A2 was fielded in 1986. (Source.) At least at one time, the M1A1 with DU armor was referred to as M1A1 (HA) ("heavy armor"). See also: http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/abrams.htm http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du/du_tabe.htm (Section 3) BTW, that's an interesting detail about the export versions!

i can't read kanji but the katakana at the beginning of the second line says "GO-SU-TO", i.e., Ghost. Also, compare the pics at Nanashi's. Click here. The QF-3000 is a lifting body, while the picture seems to show wings. But otherwise the profiles resemble one another.

Yes, the Regult looks very nice, as does the nontransformable battroid. Thanks for the pics. Any idea of the size/scale? Hm. I can make out "Battroid [something] 7 cm".

Oh, and the picture looks nice, but it seems like we're going to have to do a lot of explaining. I really hope they don't show a Strike VF-0...

Yeah the stuff they have on the M1A1 Abrams MBT, They call it CHOBAM armor. Chobham is used on all versions of the M1. It's what gives it the slablike appearance. http://www.howstuffworks.com/m1-tank4.htm Chobham is designed to protect tanks from shaped-charge rounds (HEAT) better than steel armor. Later M1's (I believe starting with M1A2) also have a layer of depleted uranium for additional protection against armor piercing rounds. Neither of these are reactive armor. Reactive armor is the little boxes often seen on Bradleys and Soviet-made tanks that make them look kind of like The Thing from Fantastic Four. Here's a picture of a tank with reactive armor. Reactive armor works by exploding outward and disrupting the gas/metal jet from HEAT. Depending on the design, it may also be effective against armor piercing rounds. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armor

Don't like it. Edit: but thanks for the pic.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=13668 Uh huh. This may or may not be a great find, but please don't insult our intelligence.

To reiterate that last point--no, the 1/48's released so far do not have landing hooks that come out of the rear wheel wells like the HCM. Will the 1/48 1J? I don't think anyone's asked so far, but I suspect the answer is no.

The DYRL FAST packs are the same for everybody, except that if you fly a 1S and you have a FAST pack, you get a Strike cannon. Yamato's DYRL FAST packs come with both options in the same package. As for the TV FAST packs, we don't yet know if they'll be producing Max and Millia 1J's, let alone FAST packs to match them. The TV packs which have been announced for the Hikaru 1J (and which never actually appeared on his 1J in the show) are the same as the ones for Skull Leader. So if they'll fit the Roy 1S, you'll basically have the TV version of the Valk Hikaru inherits from his sempai. The only difference would be the color of the "arrows" on the sides of the head (black in the series, red in DYRL), and the resculpted arms. The arms are the same in DYRL and the series, but the 1/48 1J will include a redesign that makes it more accurate. Nobody knows if the rerelease of the 1S will include the redesign--or if they do know, they're not talking.

That's okay, it's worth including. Besides, doesn't it have some kind of booster doohickey in the back--meaning it would at least be mobile in space? Edit: on second thought, a destroid obviously isn't an aircraft. Nor is a Regult. We could limit the list to "mecha and aircraft". Or we could do all vehicles--in which case we'll have to add Hikaru's non-magic bicycle in "Miss Macross"

What when where?

Sorry, I'm still confused. We see several different Valkyries in DYRL (specifically, 1A,1J,1S,VE, and VT). Are they all 1X's (or at least the armed ones)? This (generally good site) implies that a 1X only comes with a 1A head: http://www.mahq.net/mecha/macross/vf-x/vf-1x-plus.htm If so, what are the 1S's and 1J's in DYRL? Antiques used for the movie? 1X's with makeup? CGI effects? This (seemingly good site) suggests that 1X's can have any head: http://www.steelfalcon.com/Macross/vf1xplus.shtml If so, how do you designate a 1X with a 1S head vs. one with a 1A head?

Sorry for leaving out the Magic Bicycle! To be really nitpicky about it, I'm interested not only in the types flown by each character, but the actual number of individual craft. E.g., for Hikaru in SDF:Macross, we now have, in the order we first see him piloting each craft: 1. Fan Racer. Total loss, probably. 2. Possible biplane in the flashback. (Did he also dream of Roy when he was in hospital?) 3. VF-1D. Forward section salvaged, maybe other parts if they were found on the island after the fold. 4. Brown VF-1J in training. Fate unknown--and are we sure it's a 1J? 5. Red & White VF-1J. May be #4, repainted. Equipped with GBP-1S at one point. Trashed by Britai. 6. Fan Liner. Survived the series, most likely. 7. Replacement VF-1J. Shot down by Misa, probably a total loss. 8. Magic Bicycle. Went wherever dreams go. 9. VF-1S Skull Leader. Equipped with FAST packs at times. Survived the series. Probably ended up in a museum. Similarly, we know that we saw Kakizaki fly at least two different VF-1A's.

I'm not particularly disagreeing with either of you, especially as it's true that general themes appear in different literatures. I'm saying, rather, that attempting to fit the Hikaru-Roy-Misa story to the specifics of the Oedipus myth may be diverting, but it doesn't completely work--first, because it doesn't do justice to the actual story and characters (they aren't shadows or types of the Oedipus story), and second, if we believe in taking the author's intent into account (not everyone does, admittedly), the Oedipus myth may be somewhat irrelevant. (Not that I'm saying Kawamori et. al. were ignorant of the Western literary tradition; simply that the WLT probably doesn't loom as large for them as it would for James Joyce or an English major.) From my microscopic knowledge of Genji, I don't see much of a similarity there, I'm afraid, either to Macross or to Oedipus. I'm sure Joseph Campbell would have something to say; maybe he could even classify the Hikaru story into the exact variation on the "young man coming of age" theme.

Right, no offense intended to anyone. Although my post may be somewhat polemical, it's intended to explain the issues that went into my decision, with the thought that I might bring something up that others aren't aware of.