sharky

I know what you mean. I keep trying to tell myself that I will only focus on Macross toys. But, then I saw this A-wing and had to have it. Now I'm thinking about the TRU tie fighter. I also have my eye on the B-wing, but I may try to get the Power of the Jedi version off of ebay since it's painted in the ROTJ scheme. I even bought the new Ten Numb figure already which is of the same quality as my new A-wing pilot figure. The Evolutions 3-pack that it came in has an X-wing pilot and a Snowspeeder pilot. I wonder if these vehicles will get released again in the future? I just like that I can go down to my local Wal-mart, Target, TRU, and pick up these items as opposed to ordering something Macross from a website and paying through the nose for international shipping. The hunt is kind of fun as well.

Here are some pics of the new A-wing toy. Improvements from past releases are Painted cockpit detail (they were stickers in past releases) Painted markings on nose(2 white rings) (they were stickers in past releases) Clear reinforcing plastic is gone from the engine nacelles Much better weathering finish Painted laser canons Not sure if the yellow painted exhaust is new or not. New pilot figure The gimmicks for the A-wing Canopy can be raised or lowered by sliding the switch(hump on the very top) forward to open and back to close. Landing gear can be raised or lowered by sliding a little peg on the bottom forward or back. Side canons can be unlocked by popping them outward a bit then rotated 360 degrees. Pilot figure The latest figures are simply awesome and blow away any previous ones that have come out a few years ago. I can't imagine that they will get much better than this in the future. Ton's of articulation on the figure. It does not come with a weapon unfortunately. I few minor misses The landing gear seems sturdy when tugged by hand as there is some spring tension. However, it tends to be a bit weak in that if you bump it from the front they will want to fold back up. The canopy will want to come down about halfway if bumped as well. The pilot figure cannot really grasp the control sticks while seated in the A-wing. I think it's due to the fact that the pilot's grip is molded a bit too small for the control sticks, so it's hard to get him to grasp the sticks. I was reluctant to really put a lot of force on it because I didn't want to warp or bend the control sticks too much, nor did I want to deform his hands so much either. Also, the control sticks are placed too high for the figure to grasp them in a natural looking position. A couple of oddities The paint scheme seems to be reversed from past releases. If you notice the red on the vehicle is not symmetric. There is a badge of red on the front nose, and a couple of darker grey patches on one side. This seemed to be on the other side in the past. As in past releases there is a panel that seems to have been designed as a battery compartment. However, this toy never had any electronic gimmicks even from the first release. Overall, a nice toy with an excellent paint job on both the vehicle and the pilot figure. This is the best A-wing by far compared to any previous releases. I would recommend this to anyone who never had the chance to get any of the original trilogy toys. Heck even if you did get the original toys this one looks so much nicer with all the improvements to the appearance and the pilot figure. Since it's one of the smaller starfighters it doesn't look oddly out of scale or out of proportion as with some of the other toys designed for the figures.

Just a little tip for those of you that get your Chronicles via HMV. I tried to pre-order 5 issues and requested to ship when the order was complete. Well, they ended up shipping me 4 issues and did not wait for issue No. 8 to come out on the 30th. When I inquired they replied by stating their policies. Quote from HMV: The maximum length of time that items can be reserved for is 1 month from the order date. For those customers who, for any reason, have items reserved for longer than 1 month we may occasionally arrange to dispatch items to the customer. In such instances we will bear the cost of shipping the products to the customer. Please note that overseas customer will be charged a shipping fee for each shipment and the shipping fee will be revised according the weight of your order. So, it seems their policy to hold items for only 1 month conflicts sometimes with their policy to ship a complete order. From what I've experienced it seems to be their discretion as far as holding items for longer than 1 month. I guess anything past 2 months is pushing it, and they decided to ship me my 4 issues even though the order was technically not complete. It looks like it is too late to cancel issue 8 as it will be shipped all by itself on the 30th, and I will be charged the shipping cost for the one item. I guess I learned the hard way not to pre-order more than 4 issues at a time.

The new A-wing is good IMO. The cockpit is better detailed over the past versions and the pilot figure is very cool. I like the new sculpt for the figure. Love the helmet and paint job overall. Simply a very nice looking vehicle. I like the included pilots that come with them. I am tempted to create panels to cover over the landing gear when retracted. This way I can hang it from the ceiling as if in flight. Definitely have my eye on the TRU exclusive tie fighter with weathered white paint and large solar panels, and the B-wing. I have mixed feelings about the B-wing in that I would have preferred the ROTJ paint scheme. The new Dagger squadron color scheme is alright, but I would have hoped that the cannons and guns were molded in a dark grey or some sort of gunmetal color. I do love the pilot figure it comes with. The pilots are big plus in my book. I need to wait another week to keep my budget in check. I will post pics a little later.

I was browsing Toys R Us and came across a lego-type of set called War of the Planets. http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3140310 From what I was able to search on the web, there was an old Italian sci-fi movie titled "War of the Planets" that came out in 1977 but I am hard pressed to find any actual images of the ships used. I just find it interesting because these ships look like the type of things I would build on my own as a kid.

I'm totally with you on that. We're sort of screwed either way because if they had not started with Frontier, the probably would have done the VF-1. And we all know there is hardly anything of the VF-1 out there.

I am curious to know what are people's opinion on this PSP game vs the PS2 game. Does the PSP game seem a whole lot better than the PS2 game? I heard the PS2 Macross game is just about the best out there. I was entertaining the idea of getting a PS2 just to get the Macross game and the Gunbuster game. I'm not into gaming that much that I would get the latest system. I will however wait until a system is a pretty sweet deal. At which point it seems worth it to me to get something like the PS2 just for 1 or 2 games. So, I wonder which game is better. Does the PSP game blow away the PS2 one, or is it similar but with additional vehicles and updates? Your input would be most appreciated.

OK, after browsing through this very long thread, I was able to get answers to my questions. Just to make sure I have this right. These new Blu-ray releases are of the theatrical movie editions. So, I wonder if they will release the OVAs in their entirety on Blu-ray.

I was on Amazon today and I realized that Gunbuster and Diebuster are coming out on Blu-ray. From the run time of 95 minutes each on 1 disc I'm not sure what to make of it. My question is are they split up into episodes, or is it like Macross Plus Movie Edition where it's edited and spliced together to make one long movie. Then I see a listing for Gunbuster Theatrical Edition DVD which I didn't' know about. A little clarity please from the experts out there. Gunbuster Blu-ray http://www.amazon.com/Gunbuster-Blu-ray-Mo...3284&sr=8-7 Diebuster link Blu-ray http://www.amazon.com/Diebuster-Blu-ray-Mo...352&sr=8-20 Gunbuster Theatrical Edition DVD http://www.amazon.com/Gunbuster-Theatrical...893&sr=8-19

Yeah, who knows what the real reason is. From Howard's side it might look bad to say publicly he wanted more money. He might want to maintain a good public image. From the studio side, it might have been typical Hollywood politics. Maybe he rubbed one of the studio execs the wrong way, but the studio will never say that's the reason. So, perhaps they are making up the story about not offering enough money. Maybe someone owes Don Cheadle a favor. Again, none of us outsiders will probably ever know the real reason. It seems plausible to me that Terrence Howard wouldn't simply drop such a huge role. Even if he wasn't getting what he really wanted for the role, it would make sense for him to still do it simply because it could take his career to the next level. From what I have read Iron Man 2 was going to have Howard's character play a much bigger supporting role as he was going to get a suit of his own. So, IMHO the studio execs are full of s**t, and they are not saying why they dropped Howard.

A link to the overdrive newsletter. Halfway down is some built and painted pics of the wave valks. http://www.over-drive-inc.com/overdrive-blog/info/1749.html

You couldn't be more right. I've been watching some items on ebay that are going for much less than they used to. I've cut back on my toy spending considerably, but I will save up and try to get some things here and there that I feel are good deals on stuff that I always wanted but thought to expensive in the past. Also, people will start to put things up for sale that they wouldn't have in the past, so you may see some rarer items out there.

Whenever I see some sort of levitation phenomenon in anime I tend to view it as a psychokinetic event where a person is using some sort of mind influence on a physical object. I like the idea that perhaps Sara Nome can manipulate objects through song via some super dimensional manipulation. As she sings she creates disturbances or some sort of energy wave in another dimension that can manifest itself in our 3D world as a floating rock or what have you. You might also look to how people can describe a ghostly or poltergeist event where physical objects seem to move by themselves.

Ahh, my bad. IMDB has James Cameron listed as a "character" writing credit which technically is true since he's the creator of The Terminator franchise. Yeah, he's not credited for the story itself. An oversight on my part.

Hopefully, Terminator Salvation will be all it's cracked up to be. I mean Christian Bale as John Connor and written by James Cameron. I like what I am reading so far.

OK, this series is getting good IMHO. This last episode tonight was rich with character development. They elaborated more on Garbage chick and her daughter. John Conner is moving up in my book after watching this episode. I wonder if he really did attempt suicide and chickened out at the last second. Their actions and reactions seem to add a sense of realism in how they are dealing with all this psychologically. I'm certainly hooked for the next episode.

Growing up in Texas it was interesting to see the familiar sites of San Antonio in the movie. This one and Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

Halloween in my neighborhood is still alive and well. We have tons of kids that are elementary school age, so at night the neighborhood is bustling kids. The parents usually tag along to keep an eye out. Almost all of the households are families, and we sort of know most people. I really only stay within walking distance of my house when I take my daughter. That's usually enough to get a ton of candy. Occasionally you get the nutty parents that drive their kids around to many, many houses. It's kind of insane. They slowly keep pace in their car as their kids walk from house to house. I can understand if you don't care to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood you live in, but some people are all about getting as much free candy as humanly possible in one evening. I simply walk around, and I still have so much candy that we haven't even finished off last year's loot. I think it has more to do with the apartment living vs houses. I lived in many apartments in my lifetime, and I never saw trick-or-treating in apartment complexes that I lived in. I also think it goes back to knowing your neighbors. For whatever reason I have come to know most people that live around me now, but when I was in apartments I really kept to myself most of the time.

I wonder if Bandai would ever do any SOC line of toys for Macross such as the SDF-1, Macross Quarter, or Battle Frontier? Seems like the SOC type of toy would be perfect for these.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ARTBOOK-Toppu-wo-Nerae...id=p3286.c0.m14 This link has an ebay auction of that book with some pics. Looks like a nice one! Anime Books seems like a good deal compared to what this guy wants on ebay.

There is one project you should consider doing although it does take some time. One thing I did with my CDs is to put them in a large CD storage binder. I prefer the Case Logic brand. After ripping all of my CDs onto my hard drive I took the CD and booklet out and chucked the jewel case. This alone saved a huge amount of space for me. Of course I kept my Macross CDs and games intact in their respective jewel cases. As it was, I wasn't even listening to most of my collection because it was sitting on the shelf. have all my music available whenever I care to listen at home or on my iPod. Now, I don't even buy new CDs anymore unless it is something special such as a Macross import. You might still want to back up any downloaded music on some CDs or DVDs in case your hard drive crashes one day. I prefer to keep my movies in their original cases as a lot of them are special collector type cases and/or they have extra booklets etc. If you don't care so much about the cases you can get a storage binder that is similar to the CD ones. They typically have pockets for the booklets as well. The best thing I did was to get cheap DVD storage shelf units from Walmart. You know, those MDF, ready-to-assemble, jobs. They don't cost a whole lot. What I like about them is that they have a minimal footprint because they are really only designed for CDs and DVDs so they are not very deep. The one thing I don't like about the particular one I got is that the shelf spacing is such that you cannot make all the shelves spaced for DVDs only. I got rid of any VHS tapes since I don't even own a VCR anymore. Anything like home movies I transferred to my computer and I backed them up as well. I haven't reached a point where I need to manage my toy boxes. It seems I kept moving into larger and larger apartments and/or houses. Right now I have tons of space as I have an entire bedroom for nothing else by my toys, books, and collectibles. I always keep the original boxes of my toys because I usually get tired of something on display. I want to be able to put it back in the box and take something else out for display. Besides, I tend to move around a bit, and nothing beats the original packaging for protection during a move. My next storage project will be to get a bookcase and start to organize my books. I just have them stacked up in boxes at the moment. I'm not sure if it's preferable to keep them upright on a shelf or stacked flat in a box.

Does anyone know if these sets have secret characters? If so, does anyone know what they are going to be? I saw these sets listed at toyslogic.com as a set of 5 for the set with bikini Sheryl. Don't know if they are counting the little Nyan Nyan character as a 5th item. I thought that little character comes with the Ranka in Nyan Nyan uniform. The other set, the one with Brera, is listed as a set of 6. So, my conclusion is there are 2 secret ones in that set. Can anyone out there share some insight regarding these sets?

WTF! I was thinking 'hmmm, let me check out that Science and Technology thread for a change of pace.' So, I click on the direct link to page 21 and this is the first post I read.

Man o' man, those are really cool for the price. I have been looking at some of the 1:18 vehicles from 21st Century(aka Ultimate Soldier) and Blue Box(aka Elite Force). They make some really awesome toys for Joe scale figures, but they are pricey. While I'm more interested in Vietnam era items, these True Heroes F-22 and Blackhawk seem cool and are priced right. My only dilemma is that they probably take up a lot of space being 1:18 scale and all.

It's the slanted eyebrows isn't it? That's just the physical traits of a Vulcan and/or Romulan like their pointy ears. If you want to get technical Spock is half human, but being raised as a Vulcan he is able to almost completely suppress his emotions. IIRC in the first movie it was shown that he never went through the final rituals/process that was supposed to completely purge his emotions. Instead he decided to go back to Star Fleet.