Chronocidal

Honestly.. if we're going with Palpatine surviving, there's no reason Ben didn't. After all, he just fell over and disappeared. Not like he was dropped down a hole into a reactor that exploded, or anything.

Boy I hope Jazwares reconsiders their packaging for the Tie Defenders in the future. Good thing I picked up a pair. I was only able to pull together three (mostly) un-warped wing panels between the two. Seriously, those plastic molds had a death grip on the ships, I had to cut them out with my sprue clippers.

Dunno if this is on anyone's radar, but apparently MR got the molds to the old Diamond Select phaser and communicator. Not sure whether it's missing any major functions, but I was not expecting the price to be anything this reasonable, and I just decided to order one on impulse. https://www.masterreplicas.com/collections/star-trek/products/star-trek-phaser-type-2-2266-69

Yeah, it's kind of a natural progression to the active camo/paint they had in Delta. I don't think we saw anything like it in Frontier on a valk (unless you want to count Battle Galaxy ), but they obviously can project holograms over pretty much anything they like at this point.

Yeah, I had varying levels of leg lock on the couple I got, and it was never consistent. The tabs were pretty shallow, and it wasn't hard to knock the legs loose on any of mine. For all its failures, that is one thing I don't think the 171 ever had issues with. I can't say I ever had the issues with the Yamato 17s' feet that I did with the VF-19s', but I also had even less desire to display a 17 in gerwalk than I did the 19s. Mine seemed to hold up well-enough in battroid, but I never displayed them that way for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm probably a bad judge of 17-related stuff in general, I was just happy to get a solid fighter mode to display. Yeah, fair, I guess I was never a big enough fan of the 17 for the issues with the Yamato one to bother me? I thought it looked good enough, but it did have the same kind of weird backpack issue that the DX YF-21 has. It was always one of those designs so firmly planted in the "impossible anime magic" category that it was never going to really look like the animation. What I guess is kind of funny to consider.. have you looked at the old Bandai 1/65 versions? They were far more limited in articulation and features, but I'm starting to think they got some things right that neither of the more modern takes have figured out.

Yeah, the general availability of this one speaks volumes. Though I do suspect it's kind of a perfect storm of disinterest. Bad representation of a design that already had low international appeal, just due to the weirdness of the show it came from. Basically, anyone who really wanted one probably got the Yamato when it was new, and was happy with it. But since that point in time, there's really been nothing to make any new fans of the design. The Fire Valk at least has overlap with the YF-19, which is just eternally popular, but the VF-17 doesn't have that. Sadly, Bandai is chasing the international dollar with a design that has no real demand locally or abroad, rather than making stuff for their primary market that everyone wants, and would still jump through the financial hoops to get it.

I think the trick to this is that, if you didn't have to stick the gunpods to the outside of the YF-21's belly plates, you could absolutely just make a small bulge like the Yamato VF-22s had, and it would look much better than their actual gunpods. Yamato didn't attempt that internal mount either, it's just not physically possible. At least with the VF-17, you can just leave the gunpod off, and pretend it's internal.. but then again, you're still missing the actual gunport on the leg, which I'm fairly certain Bandai couldn't be bothered to even paint on. Which.. yeah, that's another ten pounds of $#!7 on this dumpsterfire. Even ignoring the proportional differences, the 17 and 171 share almost no panel detail whatsoever, and the 171 is covered in micro-missile launchers that the 17 never had. I think the absolute best case you could ever make for this thing? It looks like a halfway point between the 17 and 171, as if it was a test model for the upgrade process. Which.. ok, yeah, I could buy that, planes go through those sorts of mid-lifecycle upgrades all the time. Still, I absolutely recognize that it's just my coping mechanism to explain away things that don't make any sense in-universe. I kind of came to appreciate the "Strange New Worlds" Enterprise in the same way, since, if I ignore any actual adherence to any timeline at all, it looks like a mid-point between the TOS and TMP versions. I can appreciate the design and its theoretical lineage, even if it's completely outside the bounds of the canon.

I'm just waiting around for them to get to more of the Batwing designs, personally. I never really cared for any of the designs past the classic 89, which they nailed pretty well. I'd really love to see a Forever or TAS Batwing in the same rough scale as that newer Forever Batmobile though. Shame they couldn't make the 89 Batwing to the same standard though. It really needs a redesign to bulk up the body and streamline the cockpit, probably using something closer to the UCS A-Wing, or even the old TV Batmobile canopies.

Judging by the package contents, it looked like Bandai actually included two separate sets of shoulders with the fins in both positions, rather than make them move. I'm not going to pretend it makes any sense, but Bandai certainly aren't known for trying that hard either.

After some of the disasters involving Squeenix's FFXIV statues, I don't trust anything about their production quality.

See, right there is where I think the price should have been from the start. I'd seriously consider grabbing one more if I didn't have other priorities at the moment.

Having the ports for firing forward doesn't mean the doors shouldn't open to fire outward when the ports aren't usable though. Those ports are only good for use in fighter mode. What's always been funny to me is how the YF-29 just went completely overboard on this concept though. Not only can it fire through the ports or open the doors, but the entire launcher bays rotate.

The relative lack of demand doesn't surprise me. Between the 171's terrible history, and the Yamato VF-17 just existing, I can't imagine anyone really attached to that design is scrambling to pick one up.

I think a significant portion of the weirdness comes from the fact that the nose of the 171 makes up a significant portion of the torso, which is just completely absent on this "17" version. There's just nothing there to look like it even connects to itself, and the legs are just left floating around the nosecone.

If they ever get around to making the super packs, the hardpoints will also work as a ready-made attachment point for them under the wings. Which.. boy I'll be really curious if Bandai even bothers with those, or whether they function at all. All of the packs in Macross7 were pretty janky in their implementation (except for the VF-11, which came from Plus).

Yeesh.. I mean, it's stupid, but I absolutely believe Bandai would cut costs by not making the hinge and missile parts for the legs, since they weren't shown in the animation. "If we didn't see it, it didn't exist."

I'm just committed to breaking them off entirely on at least one of mine, can you tell if they're glued in as a separate piece, or actually molded together with the shoulders? If they're molded on, I'm just going to saw them off of the sideways gerwalk set, that looks even dumber to begin with.

Boy, I can't wait to see how terribly the arms and gunpod fit with the packs on. Pretty telling they didn't bother to mount it for the display.

As one who has read the original NeverEnding Story in book form, that's a very succinct way to describe the differences.

Yeah, this one was a hot topic a while back when it was revealed. I'm not ashamed to admit I ordered one just for the sheer hilarity, but the reception seems to be a mix of high comedy and despair. The amazing part of this to me is that it might actually be the best-looking jet transformer we've gotten from Takara in a very long time.

I'm not sure, but I think at some point they may have changed how HLJ places charges in yen? I've had my paypal linked to my account for a long time, and always flagged to use yen by default, but they might not accept new requests to use that method. I wouldn't quite blame them, since the way the exchange rate has fluctuated has resulted in some wild price differences over the past couple of years.

Yeah, I'm in no rush to receive anything at this point. If the sites don't mind holding my stuff, I'm happy to let them do so until the shipping options open up again.

Yeah, once they've put out product images, it's pretty unlikely Bandai will make any changes at all, no matter what feedback they get. They sat on the YF-21 for so many years, and had so much time to correct their bad decisions, but nothing ever changed from that first prototype.

It's fixed, the page was broken and listed as out of stock, try again now. I think they prematurely added all of the products to the main page, and then had to re-list and re-link all of the Bandai products they added, because the pages were all 404 errors.