Chronocidal

That just makes me wish Bandai had done a revival of the old 1/65 instead, that looks so much better in pretty much every way. I actually wonder if this will drive up prices for the old version. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head for Bandai's financial analysis department.

They're even more cramped and further out on the wing than on the Advance though, since I think the Advance used the innermost hardpoint to help hold the boosters on, and you could only make use of the outer two with them mounted, but they still had room for more than a single missile.

Actually, my suspicion? Since the F/S have shorter wings, they probably copy-pasted the CAD of the outer wing segment, and those are the hardpoint spacings on the smaller wings. If we get them at all, of course. There's literally no reason to throw those three mounts so close together at the tip when the entire underside of the wing is blank.

My VF-1J had the arm slider issue, along with the wing paint problem. Fortunately the wing was a cheap enough component that they didn't balk over just sending me a new one, since it's not something they can really fix. I never tried to complain about the sliders though, since that's a problem I knew I could fix myself. I had to take the entire thing apart, but I was able to ream out the sliders with a small drill bit, and now they work perfectly. The thing was completely impossible to transform until I did that, the arms would not move.

Many thanks, grabbed a pair online. The nail set worked, but only to get the pins started. For now I've gotten them back in, but I might experiment with these heels more in the future. Bandai just managed to make two unique designs that only really work in a single mode.

So I'm dragging this one up again to see if anyone has recommendations on how to theoretically disassemble the legs of the DX YF-19, or possibly just extract the metal pins holding the feet together. I've been wanting to swap out the feet on this thing since day one with the VF-19 Advance, just to get them to look decent in fighter mode, but the legs are your typical Bandai special glue and screw sandwich, with no way to get access to what looks like it should be a very simple ball joint to extract and just swap the entire foot. So I'm left with spring pins. Is there a specific tool I could use to potentially press these things out, or am I stuck finding a nail of the right diameter to hammer into the pin and hope it eventually comes out? --- Edit: So I actually had a nail set that was the right diameter to tap out the heel pins, so I managed to get a pair off of both one of my YF-19 and VF-19 Advance. Looking at these though, I think I might try and make a hybrid heel. I don't like the thickness at all, but short of taking a hacksaw to the the high tabs on the YF-19 heel plate, they aren't going to work with a shorter heel paddle cover. As for the spring pins.. yeah, I hate these with a passion. For the moment, I managed to force one pair back in with a vicegrip I could crank to the proper size. The heels aren't as tight as they were before, but they're staying put, and I managed not to lose any paint on anything but the interior metal parts, which are covered by the plastic caps. So, for the moment, I've got the YF-19 to display I wanted all along. We'll see what solution I come up with for the VF-19 Advance I stole the heels from. If I had a resin printer, I might try and design a replacement heel cap that would extend the heel to the same length as the Advanced version, but I don't think my spool printer will be able to pull it off. Now to tackle the fugly wing tampo...

Yeah, I also have to wonder if this is based on using the mobile app, or just something that doesn't work in my state. There is nothing even remotely resembling those options on the website that I can see on my computer.

You know.. I keep hoping that one day Bandai will attempt to understand literally anything about aircraft, and the reason that things in real life are designed the way they are. But it is not this day. Yeah. They shoved all of the hardpoints toward the wingtip to the point that you can barely mount any of the weapons they've produced. You know.. instead of spacing them out like the YF-19 had them. I know, minor quibble, it's not like the Fire Valk ever mounted any weapons anyway, but it does mean that we'll be stuck with the same lack of space if we get a VF-19P. I don't know if anyone has complained about this in Japan, but I'd love to post this feedback to Bandai and slap them upside the head to try and convince them to just match the spacing on the YF-19's wings in the future. So, yeah. If you happened to buy at least two YF-19 Full Packs (or maybe two or three sets of VF-171 armor sets?) you're in luck.. you actually have missiles that will fit in all three spots.

I'm still a young'un with TF stuff, since I missed out on G1 entirely, and until G2 all I had was the deluxe Spay-C Gobot shuttle, and a Robotech-branded Bandai Joke Machine VF-1. I fell down the rabbit hole when I saw the fancy G2 commercials though, and asked for a G2 Starscream for Christmas of 93. He wasn't available, so I got a Ramjet instead.. which confused me for years, since he was essentially colored like Skywarp. G2 is also why I thought Megaton was always a tank. My younger brother got pretty into Beast Wars, so he had a bunch of them, but I think the next actual TF I picked up was the Walmart MP Skywarp.

Happened upon this by accident browsing Amazon, and I have no idea if the brand is any good, but boy do I want to build one of these now. https://www.amazon.com/Building-Control-Compatible-Rechargeable-Robotics/dp/B0D8149WMY?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0D8149WMY&pd_rd_w=bL8QN&content-id=amzn1.sym.ee4d428e-9145-4c8f-81ac-5c7e8f43b2cc&pf_rd_p=ee4d428e-9145-4c8f-81ac-5c7e8f43b2cc&pf_rd_r=XY7XJG6YJMVMREV30R5B&pd_rd_wg=c3Dlu&pd_rd_r=7bc0e19d-ba8e-4417-a0a9-a8c26ac23526

Unfortunately this is kind of what I've come to expect from companies in China, but my interaction with them to replace my VF-1J's wing (came with damaged paint in the package) was nothing but smooth, if a little long. What's tricky is when they actually want the item returned for a replacement, at which point, you're probably much better off fixing it yourself. In my case, they just sent out a replacement wing, since it was easy to swap out, and they didn't ask for the damaged one back. With something like the canopy, you might have to replace the entire nose section, so they might want you to send it back before they replace it. Depending on what you buy from China, I've seen cases where someone received a faulty item, and they didn't want it back, but they wanted photographic proof that the purchaser had completely destroyed the faulty item before they would send a new one. The product in question was a flight sim joystick, and they wanted the buyer to disassemble the entire thing, smash all of the individual components with a hammer, and send them photographic proof of the destruction before they would discuss a replacement. That particular seller is absolutely draconic about not letting people scrounge their faulty products for spare parts.

Not sure if the price is a regional thing or not, but it's definitely not $185 when I check, it's showing $263. Maybe just a typo?

Yeah, there's a good reason for that, Bandai just bought up a bunch of the CAD designs for Yamato/Arcadia valks, and reproduced them in smaller scale.

Yeah, the comparison of the neck alignment is interesting actually. I don't think either looks bad at all there, they're both far superior to the old original YF-19 from Yamato. I also don't think that photo of he Arcadia VF-19 is doing it many favors, the nose actually looks droopier than it should be. Animation-wise though, I actually think the Bandai gets closer to the art. The Yamato looks closer to the YF-19 in general, but I think a lot of the art in Macross7 is closer to the DX profile. They keep getting so close it's really hard to pick any major benefits between one or the other.

Maybe I need to get another set of the normal super packs and paint them in gray too.. although, honestly, Messer's set in black looks pretty decent out of the box. If only the armor pack didn't come in freaking day-glo orange.

Up for sale at AE now, so I grabbed one. We'll see if they show up on Amazon later, but I'm just happy to see it show up again. https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=99137

Yeah, these look really good. This is why I picked up spare sets of super packs when they went on discount from.. I think Luna Park? It was back when I tested whether they could actually deliver, and ordered a couple of other items they had.

My go-to has been AE lately, but if this one goes international, it might not be worth scrambling.

See, this is the part that I'm not sure if we've ever gotten any truth about, and probably never will. The rumor/excuse at the time was that Bandai had production issues with the paint, and it caused them to cut production. Granted, this was also deep in the midst of the Great Nippon-Yasan Fustercluckening, so any news anyone had was probably at least partially polluted by their customer gaslighting service. What I suspected was going on was that Bandai truly didn't expect any heavy demand for a CF variant from the domestic customers, and never made that many to begin with. That smaller production run might have truthfully been reduced further due to production problems, if the stories are to be believed. What's not really clear though is where the scalping began (you know, beside NY). I actually half expect that some of it came from Japanese collectors who picked them up just to complete their own collection, only to discover they could make a tidy profit on the international market thanks to those silly international military aircraft enthusiasts. I would love nothing more than to see all of the prices of the old 31As tank after this, but I doubt they'll really drop that much. What I think is probably more likely is for this one to wind up discounted at Amazon.

Oh, definitely, but what I think is kind of funny/ironic about this re-release is that I don't think the Kairos had much demand in Japan to begin with, which may or may not have contributed to the low production the first time around. I would be really interested to see how sales go on the re-release. In fact, I hope we see the scalper market absolutely gobble them up, and then dump them on ebay for cheap. I think it was actually both now that I think about it. The crystal covers definitely caused issues, but the Kairos also had a bigger canard that wouldn't fit through some part of the chest armor.. although I might be thinking of the later armor pack? I think that one had a piece that clipped around the canard entirely. Either way, there are too many versions floating around, and since the original question was about the AX super packs, I thought the canards and different chest covers on that one might cause even more problems than just the regular 31 packs.

Oh, they're still trying to make money. Their financial crystal ball is just obsessed with chasing the international dollar, instead of putting out things everyone wants.

That would have required them to actually care enough to make a variant of the packs that fits the Kairos though.

This is a Bandai valk. We're not allowed to modify them in ways Bandai didn't intend. More seriously though, I'm actually pissed that they changed the hips so much from the YF-19. Those were all assembled with screws, and you could easily disassemble them to tweak the tightness. Yeah, that's gone now. They replaced one of the screws with a permanent pin, so good luck adjusting anything. It won't come apart anymore.

The legs? Maybe. The rest is very unlikely. The boosters especially won't work on the different wing/tail design, and the chest armor tends not to match because of the different canard shapes. I just realized this goes on sale in a few hours though. That's fast!

Boy.. I still think the nacelles are really the only part of that that kind of mostly work... Secondary hull isn't too bad, but the saucer is just a giant eye-sore. Whose idea was it to scatter little brown triangles on it like they were intended to be there? All they do is highlight the fugly angled garbage going on. For all the work they put into making the actual edge of the saucer shape work, the rest of it feels like a complete aesthetic failure. I can't look at it without just immediately picking out dozens of little places where I can't understand why they chose the pieces they did, when a very obvious alternative would have looked much better.