Pontus

And "no step" printed on every available corner/edge. Ironically, they might finally remember to put the ejection warning on tho. It's probably more along the lines of an AI/algorithm that scours the internet for hits on particular subject matter, then reports the amount which then registers them as mentions instead of complaints. I bet they probably just pay google to do it, but don't want to pay for the deep dive details. So the more screw ups they include, the more people talk about it, so it counts as a win. Honestly, it goes with the double entendre, "No publicity is bad publicity." If you had nothing to talk about, even bad things, you wouldn't be talking about it, and thus they would sell less because less people would hear about it in the first place.

I was just looking into my 1/72 regult preorder from KC and noticed I apparently still have Hikaru Advanced Figure preorder listed in my order history. Thought I'd come here to see if anyone actually got theirs, but I don't see any. Wasn't this supposed to release last December? Did anyone get one, or are we still waiting? Website says it's now due out this month, but I've seen KC stuff come and go and come back again for PO. Any word on that?

Did anyone else hate this toy as much as I did? It didn't transform well if at all, looked awful in every form/pose, and was overall just a frustrating PITA to play with. I'll PM you @MKT. I have the 1/60 version which is much better and matches my DX YF-19, so I've been meaning to get rid of this 1/72. I may not like it, but it's still worthy of love and should go to a good home.

I got mine from this wonderful ebay seller that had all 6 figures I wanted (used without boxes, but very well packaged), combined shipping, AND discounted the multiple purchases by $40. She still has some Macross figures including some of the Blau versions and at least 1 schoolgirl version that you might be interested in.

Manda had them for just 400yen, but only 2 of them. I found mine on ebay, all 4 for $110 or so. That seems extreme for $4 kits, but Manda probably would want at least $40 in shipping. Amazon has a couple of them too, and I think they were $15 or so, but didn't have all of them I could have bought them individually on ebay for much less, but there was one that was going for a crazy price iirc, so it was about the same buying from one seller. I'm in the wrong business, or at least the wrong side of it.

+1 for Mandarake, that place is awesome! At least until the shipping charges appear. Not unreasonable tho.

Weeping? Srsly? Dang tho, that is a gorgeous figure! Congrats Miria on finally getting your man.

I figured it wasn't fair to the other Delta ladies not to have at least some representation when I have 3 (possibly going on 4) Freyja figures. Even so, Freyja figures are all just too darn cute to have just one! And of course, I can't afford to spend oodles of moola on all 5 DX, but I can't have all 5 figures without matching valks. I really liked the Tomytecs but they only made 2. I thought about doing 1/72 kits but don't want to build them (and also expensive), so these lil Bandai Mecha Collection numbers should suffice for a nice display behind each figure. Got a good deal on Chuck's DX, but now I might have to collect all of the spy/recon valks. Boohoo.

Ok, that was hard to find but fun! According to this, it appears only in ep.27, so I pulled it up on youtube... and even just skimming around looking for it with no sound on, I'm honestly tearing up here. What an amazing episode, my favorite I think, the culmination of all of the astropolitical AND the personal drama, destruction of earth, and the retaliation and war juxtaposed against interglactic cooperation, personal and social love, and "culture." Wow, reminds me why I love this show so much. Anyway, @11:28 you see the VEFR-1 for all of a fraction of a second in the fleet of valks gathered in front of the SDF-1.

Awesome, thank you everyone. I forgot about that RVF-171 which is a really cool looking machine! Hope I can find one for a decent price eventually. Which show/movie/media did the VF-11C appear in? I'm assuming it was Macross Plus, but I don't remember a scene with that. Edit: nevermind, found it. Well, close at least, it's the VE-11, and it looks awesome! I think I'll just go with Hasegawa fighter kits since the DX versions are all very expensive, and they only really look their best in fighter anyway.

This thread will probably die off quickly, but I wanted to give some love to the spy planes. I've always fancied them with the big disc on top, especially the RVF-25 which happens to be my favorite color, sea green, and I recently picked up a Chuck Mustang VF-31E (in my other favorite color, orange). So I guess I have to find a Vsn2 RVF-25 and a 1/60 scale VE-1 Elintseeker now - even though I don't collect Fronteir/DYRL toys - just to complete the collection of spy valks of course. But are there any other "spy valks" that I'm missing here? Wasn't there one in SDFM that was a bit different from the VE-1 of DYRL? (or maybe I'm thinking of the trip to Alaska Hikaru and Misa took). Oooh, gotta get a 1/72 scout regult to go with them. Gotta have that spy vs spy action!

I'm not one to keep up with the "pre-order madness" and only pop in once in a while to check for new stuff. I pretty much have everything I could want by now, but being in the middle of padding out my Delta collection with a few figures, when I saw that Max makes an appearance in the new movie (although I cannot find a synopsis for the life of me) with a beautiful, tricked out YF-29 that's currently up for pre-order on BBTS, I had to pull the trigger for what seems like a decent "old man tax" price, lol. Considering that I normally end up paying $300 for even the basic DX valks, $260 seemed reasonable. But am I going to get one? Usually if you miss the pre-order, you're stuck with the scalpers. But this is the first time we're getting US pre-orders for these things. Did BBTS order a set amount and haven't filled their pre-order quota yet? How does that work now? Looks like the YF-25 anniversary edition will come out any day now if it hasn't already, but it also still has pre-orders available on BBTS. I'm tempted to get that one, but heard that the QC wasn't too good.

I used a pair of hemostats (or just fine needle nose pliers) to squeeze the clip together underneath the plate while pushing up with my thumb and it popped out easily without damage. Personally, I wouldn't pry with a blade if you can access the clip. I tried that but didn't like the stress it was causing to the plastic.

I'm gonna have to find/match the brown color to paint the shoulders and tips of the rudders. White for the lower legs should be easy tho.

Oh, and I didn't need to, but I disassembled the back panel by removing the little screw in the middle, but it took careful prying in the front of the wing slots to pop the plastic pins loose on either side. It's not glued like the fore arms are tho. Time to build an off white Frankenstein with all the extra pieces! Now to make an extra large steak accessory!

Bandai just announced an upcoming pre-order for an HMR TV Kakizaki VF-1A! Jk! I thought about inserting a rickroll link above, but thought better of it. Anyway, since I'm guessing there's not many who take their HMRs completely apart, thought I'd share some pics for reference. I considered painting my CF, maybe buying another Hikaru for the white parts. But they cost a lot, and I already have one. I generally only collect one of each valk, and I recently got an Arcadia Hikaru GBP, so I don't really need an HMR. So I took to carefully tearing apart the cheaper CF first. It was surprisingly easy, but the arms proved difficult. I could have just pulled the elbow pin, but it wouldn't match the upper arm color. I opened the arms by splitting the arm at the seam on the elbow end with an exacto knife, then pop the middle apart by prying between the joint and arm box on one side. It will break the plastic pin as you can see, but it's easily glued back together. I needed to swap hip joints for the brown intake with white legs, so the gerwalk pin had to come out. The hips pop off by turning hard on the peg while supporting the hip bar from breaking. I used a short piece of thick paperclip to hammer out the gerwalk pin. You have to do so in such a way that it can take a light hammering without moving while leaving space underneath for the pin to come out. The lower leg comes apart easily with 2 screws, one of which is under a friction fit cover. Here you can see the chunk of "hi metal" they put in the legs, lol. I figured it was easier to match white than brown, so I decided to use the CF legs and paint the off color. For now it doesn't even look that bad with the white wheel covers. But then I realized I'd still have to match brown for the shoulders. Speaking if paint, I tried taking off the red stripes the soft way first with alcohol, then acetone, but they just smeared it around staining the rest. Scraping it off carefully with my trusty xacto worked great without staining. You need to clean off the chest, the wings, and the leg wheel covers... oh and the fuselage being careful not to cut into the kite. Turned out pretty good if I say so myself. Still needs some paint, and I haven't gotten the other wings out yet to remove the red stripes.

Thanks again @Shawn for helping me complete my SV-262 with a reasonably priced Lill Draken set. Why do they have green wing tip markers on BOTH sides? I guess they might need to change color when attached, but then one should be red, lol. Anyway, I only really wanted the armors and especially the sword. I was really disappointed to find it didn't come with the valk. Was the sword a movie only item, or was it an integral part of the valk? I never finished the show or started the movie. How does this set figure into the anime?

Just got this SV-262 from Shawn with some crusty glue on one of the legs. I managed to carefully pick it off after softening with goo gone, but it did take some paint with it. The goo is gone tho.

I just left mine white, but I did consider carefully carving out the canopy with a rough pilot and dash inside, taping around the fuselage, then pouring in a tiny bit of epoxy.

Detolf pro-tip: Replace the steel rod ladder racks with threaded rods.

Thanks to @Skull One for these Zentradi ship models. I didn't even know they existed! And I'm new to figure collecting, so this may be common knowledge, but these Popup Parades are really nice for just $40. Especially considering that most figures I want/see are INSANELY expensive. Consequently, I've taken to collecting figures I find for a good price that look cool over ones I'm familiar with. In fact, I actively avoid buying familiar figures because that's a slippery slope that leads to having to buy expensive ones to complete the set. Even so, not a fan of Nekopara, but... I had to have all the cute cat girls. At this price, it's not killing my wallet. I usually avoid my wife's favorite collecting enabler, Hallmark, but the one time I did go in, they had an ornament of my favorite Doctor, Tom Baker.

I must have that Freyja figure! I couldn't find any preorders, so I'm assuming this is just announced and not yet taking orders?

Thanks to @Xigfrid, I just got the final piece of my plus collection.

What the fokk? That's a mother fokking fokkload of fokking Fokkers!