SuperHobo

My goodness that is a ton of metal. If MP was more of an established company I would probably have put down a pre-order already, but since this is their first outing with a transforming metal piece I still want to wait and see some reviews. However, the more I see, the more I'm itching to pre-order.

NICE! I guess the price drop will reflect in our invoice later on sometime in December. Now if they can only lower the shipping price by $20 we would be in even better shape.

Let us know what NY says to that. If they can price match then it's all good.

Anyone cancel from NY before? Just when I thought HLJ wasn't going to carry it. Boom there it is.

I got my steelcore a few days ago and I think he's a great solid toy. Paint apps are sharp and nearly perfect. The ball and hinge joints are just the right tightness. He can hold dynamic poses with very little effort. Transformation is simple, but effective. The powermaster-ish gimmick works well and the opening cockpit gimmick adds some fun to the toy. My only complaint is I wish there was a small filler piece you can put on the main robot's chest when the little robot steel isn't attached. I'd say he's worth it if you could pick it up for non-scalper prices. Apparently FP is working on getting more steelcores made so I would wait until a reissue is made and forget the scalper prices.

I had the same problem with my Ozma and that's part of the reason I sold mine off. I didn't even know anything was scraping until one day I looked at the hips and flipped out.

Thanks! I'll be getting more statues in the future, but fully clothed or armored appropriate statues only.

Hmmm know that you mention it I can't stop seeing Cloud. It's a great statue and is quite photogenic. The bike design was just too cool to pass up and I love Fate/Zero.

My first anime statue. Saber and her classy ride.

It's awesome to see the vehicle voltron progress and since that shot was from the factory the figure shouldn't be too far away from release. Proportions now look great. Now miracle productions has to get on it and take some hi-res sexy photos for me to be pushed over the edge to buy this thing.

When your swiveling the leg to put them back into figther mode make sure the knees are fully collapsed otherwise, the lower swivel is locked in place.

I got as far as seeing the add to cart button and when I did add it to my cart I got a message "we don't have enough stock to fulfill this order were sorry." Hilarious. Too damn funny.

I'd be confident to say it probably lasted for like 30 seconds..........or less. No joke.

I refreshed and refreshed and bam its sold out. I was there for the whole thing.............yup

My theory is that Bandai is having trouble with the factory or factories producing the latest DX chogokins. I believe whatever factory Bandai is using to produce these toys are producing a lot of toys that have sub-par quality and maybe that's why so few of them are making it to retailers. It's just a crazy theory but Bandai's quality on quite a few of their toy lines have been sinking. I can no longer open up a Bandai toy and expect near perfect paint, there's seems to be a lot more chips, hair and dirt on my recent Bandai purchases.

If I didn't buy my spec -17 from nippon yasan I would have most likely put my bid on that one for $115. I saw it, but I figured someone else would get it. Anyways, this new Dragonar definitely has some very dynamic proportions that takes some getting used to, but I have to say I've come around to liking it. I think Max Factory's Dragonar has the best proportions, but that figure suffers from bad paint, fiddly wing joints and some weight issues in the hips. Bandai's new Dragonar has a very good sum of metal and is super articulated, but it looks a little odd in static poses. I might do a review for the new Dragonar from Bandai in the coming weeks.

Potential Alto rerelease? I may bite, but just maybe........crap then I would have to buy the super packs.

Just one more because this thing is pretty cool .

Here's my review of the Metal Build Freedom Gundam Sculpt and Paint: This is one of the categories of where the MB Freedom really shines. The proportions that Bandai gave the freedom feature much longer legs, a smaller narrower chest and longer arms. In other words, Bandai stretched the freedom design out from its more bulky animated version and kind of gave it proportions that are closer in kin to something Yamaguchi would do. The whole sculpt just screams dynamic and it really shows in the poses below. While some might not like the deviation from the line-art, I find the proportions refreshing and definitely more attractive than the rather cartoony looking master grade. The color palate that Bandai chose for the figure includes a slightly pearlescent white, flat grey, metallic blue, metallic red and a slightly brown metallic grey. I deeply enjoy the flat grey highlights around the body to add some contrast among the white and it gives the figure an almost real grade feel. Another thing to note is the lighter blue stripes on the wings and how they act a lovely contrast to the darker blue. The tampo- printing is neat and almost readable! Overall I’m in love with the sculpt and color palate that Bandai chose for this figure. Articulation: The MB freedom has fantastic articulation and I would say it’s on par with current master grades. I’m not going to mention all of the articulation points, but I will mention a few points that stick out. First of all the knees are double jointed and feature an awesome sliding knee armor gimmick akin to what a master grade feature. The shoulders are triple jointed and can pull away from the body. The shoulder pads are on their own joints and allow the freedom to move its arms wherever they need to while still having the shoulder armor in a normal position. It’s kind of hard to explain how the shoulder pads interact with the rest of arms, but the effect works. The front hip skirts also split down the middle to help get out of the way and allow the legs to move further up. The wings feature a lot of movement and can move in pretty much any direction you want it to, but they’re a bit tight and can be kind of a pain to articulate (more on this later). The legs also have some pull out metal boosters. How cool is that? Accessories: The accessories include two beam sabers, two pink beams, a shield, beam rifle, a nice assortment of different fixed posed hands, a stand and some attachment clips for the stand. The beam rifle is panel lined and features a moveable handle. The shield features some breathtaking detail and paint applications. The shield also features a handle that’s on a sort of ratcheted joint to remain firm during posing. The stand is like a Bandai action base, but with some awesome graphics on the base of it and the stand features safety locks for all of the positions the stand can be oriented in. Metal Content: This line is called metal build and it lives up to its name. While there’s not a lot of exterior metal besides the feet, freedom gundam has a lot of heft. Metal content is in the ankle joints, inside the lower legs, knees, elbows, hip joints, inside the torso and the wing joints .Most of the metal bits are not painted and instead have been given a gritty metallic grey finish. The heft is great and the metal joints contribute to the sturdiness of the figure. Furthermore, the metal content provides a good sense of balance on the figure even with the wings attached. Quality Control and Potential Design issues: So if you’ve been looking through the pictures you’ll notice that the paint job isn’t the cleanest it could be. While to the naked eye my copy is passable, but if you start looking for painted dirt and overspray you can easily find some. I’m a bit disappointed the paint job didn’t come out as amazing as the MB 00 gundam. I guess Bandai decided to use the B factory on the freedom and it shows. For the $185 I paid for this piece I should expect a cleaner paint job. Paint aside, while the joints are all nice and tight, some of them are overly so. The amount of torque I had to use to get the wings to move for the first time was a little scary, and the same could be said about the elbows. Nevertheless, I’d rather have super tight joints than floppy ones. Thankfully all of the joints are metal so they could take a good beating. Another point of criticism I have for this piece is the way the back pack attaches. The backpack attaches to the back with two tabs that stay in about half of the time. The connection isn’t loose, in fact it’s quite tight, but the amount of torque required to move the wings or hip joints can unseat the backpack. Another annoyance I have is how thin the joint is to elongate the hip rail guns. Apart from most of the joints being metal, the joints on the rail guns are plastic and ones to elongate the rail guns kind of scare me how fragile they feel. Furthermore, when freedom gundam is on the stand make sure the backpack is securely attached or you could get a face planted gundam. Hopefully these issues are just reserved for my copy and there’s a lot more near perfect pieces out there. However, I have read on a lot of the HK forums that the paint job wasn’t very good and mine is no exception. Overall: This piece is definitely beautiful to look at and it holds poses wonderfully. However, getting freedom to the right pose can be a tad irritating. As I mentioned before the paint job is a bit sloppy on my copy and I really wish Bandai took their time to get this piece as perfect as it could be, but what are you going to do? I think the MB 00 is still the better piece of the two and I hope Exia will be of the same quality as the 00. Freedom gundam is good, but not as good as it could be. At the end of the day posing freedom gundam feels like I’m posing a piece of art and that alone almost melts away most of my criticisms with the piece. Despite, some quality issues I will still recommend this piece to gundam high end gundam collectors and mecha fans alike. By the way Bandai normally don’t reissue their GFFMC and MB figures, so get this one while you still can. Thanks for viewing.

Sweet I can add MP-10 back on to my want list. I'm glad Hasbro didn't change much on Prime's deco. Accurate game colored Bruticus being an SDCC exclusive kind of blows, but I think I'll still try to pick one up. From the new pictures Bruticus looks passable for a retail combiner.

Next Metal Build will be Exia. I can deal with that.

http://blog.yahoo.com/_ED274AZGFINLESDVVHRADMVIMU/articles/635453/index Robot Damashii Sazabi. And look how big he is. Price not too bad either 5,000 yen.

In about an hour or so in CDX talks with one the guys who's involved in the new chogokin vehicle voltron. In this video the gentleman also shows off an early grey-prototype of the 13 inch combining beast. I think the best thing from this is that you can hear all of those loud clicks that are going to be an all of the joints. http://www.collectiondx.com/article/collectiondx_episode_24_omgwtf_vehicle_voltron

Blue sol tekkaman pre-ordered! I can't wait until July. Sure the sol tekkaman weren't very tough in the anime, but they looked good. So pose away!

Yeah both the normal version of evil and his blastor form are web exclusives. They might be kind of hard to find now, but you can search: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ they'll pop up their from time to time.