Chronocidal

I actually received an interesting email recently.. Is it real, and have they adjusted things to be more affordable? I have no idea, but it looks like they're reorganizing in some format.

Comparing anything to the frustration of the 171 is a very low bar. But I kind of love the transformation itself. The issues are more with Bandai's messy hinge shenanigans around the arms and wings, and the lousy clearance they gave for the fists.

Not going to lie.. I think I willfully blocked the existence of that one from my memory after how it was used in Delta. Wouldn't be a bad scheme though.

Yeah, this is one of those releases I'd expect to see in the sub-$200 range on Amazon eventually. I don't know what happened with Max's YF-29, but it must have been massively over-produced, for how many times it's gone on clearance there.

Still would rather have the Ba model after this long, but I'm thinking that ship has just completely sailed at this point.. or Bandai sunk it, anyhow. I'm surprised they revisited the mold at all, considering how it seemed to fall out of demand so quickly after the original release.

Mine just got delivered, and I did a quick check on the ankles. They collapsed alright, but definitely took a hard push. I'm betting the change was on purpose, since Keith's ankles were an absolute pushover to collapse, and I doubt they would have even stayed extended while standing on the feet. The strange thing I noticed though was that the ankles actually collapse more than is necessary. Pushing them all the way in meant that the feet would no longer have room to fold out flat for fighter mode, and forcing the toes down actually pulled the ankles back out about halfway. The extension joint is a lot larger than you can see in fighter mode alone.

Gotta say I love them playing directly into the individual histories of the characters, including some of what eventually became memes. The fishtank is such a dumb accessory for a figure, but it's so perfect.

I might be thinking of the model kits being finicky for the arm placement, but the ankles on Keith's absolutely have an extension. It isn't much, just a few mm, but it definitely looks like the same amount Bogue's seem to stick out by. Makes me wonder if someone who wasn't familiar with the product just slopped glue in what was supposed to be an extension joint. It's really not very substantial, but it does help the ankles clear the flaps on either side. Edit: Little easier to see from the front of the ankle, with the cuff held against the upper part of the leg.

Can anyone having issues retracting the ankles take pictures of two things: 1. The back of the legs angled outward to see the ankle mechanism 2. The arrangement of the arms with the legs folded fully outward to see whether they're collapsed correctly The 262 is plastic origami, and there are multiple ways things can get stuck or misaligned, so seeing any potential blockers for the ankles will take examining the entire transformation from all angles.

As I recall, there are some very finicky tabs between the ankles and arms that need to slot into place perfectly before the feet will entirely collapse. Make sure your arms are entirely folded up and collapsed, and it might help.

Wow Bandai. Imagine actually supporting your customers. WTAF.

I knew I did for basically two reasons. Mainly I love the color combination, but also I'm hoping against hope that pouring more funds into anything Sv-262-related will convince Bandai to make the Ba variants.

Before you finish up that chop job, make sure to check where the parts wound up on the new fuselage, since the XL was several feet longer, and it might mess with where things line up. Will be really fun to see it though, I don't think anyone ever made a kit of the two-seater variant.

Can't say I agree there, I think the controls in the DYRL game needed a lot of refinement that didn't come until Macross 30 released. As I recall, the usage of the right thumbstick was pretty bad, and the controls just lacked a lot of functionality compared with the standard "Ace Combat" layout. Maybe because it was based more on the PSP format games, which didn't have as many controls to make use of? I don't remember if the game was great or not, but it's probably worth revisiting. I only remember being frustrated with the control layouts while playing it, and didn't explore a lot of it in much depth.

I'm gonna be the stick in the mud whose most wanted HG kit is for Bandai to go back and retool the YF-19 kit to the same standard as the Fire Valk, and make it not suck.

Don't forget that image has two more series covered up in the middle row. One of them is Seven, the other could be Plus, so I could see them doing a VF-11 for both. We know the other VF-19s are almost guaranteed, the molding divisions for the other versions are already present in the Fire Valk.

I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say it all sucked. The first few episodes of the series up until the nuke dropped had a decent amount of promise, and the first movie felt like a much more coherent telling of the story in general. The second halves of both versions just fell apart as they progressed.

Fair, and I would as well, it's an amazing design.. though I would definitely rather see it in solid colors than covered in rainbow neon pinstripe. The movie.. I dunno. It had its moments, but it just felt weird and cobbled together from leftover ideas that didn't get fleshed out enough to mean much.. and the ending just felt so wrong on so many bizarre levels, it was hard to process. Or maybe the 31AX soured me on it with how crappy Bandai managed to screw up one of their own best products? I don't know. I think the 303 fits in perfectly with all of the other products that Bandai designed, and then refused to market from that series.

I mean, I don't know how popular the movie was? Probably did fine, but I don't remember the valks getting much focus from any part of the movie. Given the showy presentation with all of the singers, it doesn't surprise me that the 303 was just buried into obscurity even in its own movie. For me, that movie is just firmly in the "okay that was weird" category, which generally doesn't push it very high up my list of things to rewatch.

Honestly, if they can't even print as many markings as the HMR gets, that's just the end of it for me. I'm not spending that much for stickers.

So I'm curious, how much of the markings are actually tampo'd on the VF-0? The earlier Arcadia releases were entirely dependent on stickers to actually have any of the main markings (they didn't even print the text on the sides of the legs).

I kind of don't blame Bandai for not including that particular feature. Holding the nosecone from another valk is a supremely niche one-off display option, and including it introduces several structural compromises. It was an easy step for the Yamato to make since the nose already needed to slide, but the Bandai nose section doesn't move. On top of that, I don't think it would even be possible to display a VF-1 in that configuration in fighter mode due to the design of Bandai's display stands, so you'd just be stuck keeping it in battroid. Though, on that note, I'm not even sure the Yamato stands would work either, but I think the bracket being so far forward might allow it. Far as the HG situation goes though, I'd agree. While I've always had a certain amount of sour grape feeling associated with Robotech*, the primary reason to avoid their products was just their obvious inferiority to Japanese Macross merchandise. To me, the ThreeZero VF-1 really feels like the first Robotech-branded VF-1 toy produced at the same level of quality as the native Macross releases. *Note - one caveat here, my first transforming VF-1 was a actually a Robotech Milia Joke Machine. Those toys fall into a unique category though, since they might be the only case where an official Japanese Macross VF-1 toy got a direct Robotech import version in the US. It would have been really interesting to see if anything would have played out differently if Jetfire had never happened.

Cargo area aside, yeah, that's more like it. Both the new Renegade and the Invader set suffered from a lack of good wing structures on the nose, and that looks much better than the dinky wedges they used. Love the bigger engines too, and the much more subtle use of yellow. I'd really like to find a better canopy though. I know they love getting use out of the parts they have on hand, but I'm frankly just tired of seeing them re-use the UCS X-wing canopy on everything now. Only other option I know of for a recent yellow canopy is much smaller though, just the longer skinny one that came from the Invader, which I actually have spares of from the Buzz Lightyear ship set a while back, so I might make more detachable pods. I might also scrounge some bigger black wing panels and structure from some of my Batman sets.

Hah.. darnit, all I want to hear from them is more info about the possibility of a White Glint in that line.

I always felt part of the struggle with 7 was actually that the early episodes really fall into that "monster of the week" formula you get with so many Japanese shows (sentai-especially), where you have a pile of nearly identical episodes that all start out with a minor plot point, and then resolve exactly the same way when the big bad gets driven off by the main characters using their designated super power. I don't remember how many of those episodes there are, but I feel like it didn't really pick up until I got 10-20 episodes in, once they actually developed the setting a bit more. The series could probably be easily condensed down into a 26 episode run with a little editing.