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Glaug FTW! Like the Regault I don't have one in any decent scale so I would love to have one. Revoltechs don't count.

I hope eyesonme78 meant the plunge or >EXO< is so right! My bank account also goes from "puckered" to "scar the bowl" every time I purchase a valk as well. Ok this is starting to get disturbing...... ......

....dump!?!?!?...... bowel movement equals toy purchase ......that's awesome! If stlightly disturbing.

Once the novelty of it wears off yeah. Right now I like to transform and pose it once in a while and once I get bored of it I will probably touch it up, put it in fighter mode and then put it on semi-permanent display. Thanks for the touch up tips by the way. Will put it to use when I am ready.

Yeah I really think that what it is on mine.

No like a said before I, somewhat lightly, brushed the end of my fingernail down it while I was turning the toy over. I was shocked when I actually heard a tearing sound when my nail rubbed against it. That was the first scratch. The second was because I was so shocked it had to test it out (I had the first scratch already so I didn't really care if I made a second). It doesn't take allot of pressure for it to happen. I can do the exact same thing on my VF-25 and nothing happens. In fact I can try to dig my nail in a bit on the VF-25's black detail on the front of the nose and nothing happens. EDIT: Note: The toy can rub on the nose section if you are not careful during the transformation when you are sliding the upper body over the nose cone. You have to actually swing the upper chest section further ahead than it is supposed to be and then rotate it downwards though. It shouldn't get in this position though so I wouldn't be concerned about it. The only other way that I could see that it would scratch is if you where being a bit forceful when trying to slip the upper chest over the nose cone. Frankly I think the paint on the nose is fragile enough that eventually most people are going to end up with a chip or scratch just buy handling the toy. Some of the toys might be better but on mine it's barely on there.

UGH! Still not as bad as the jaggy I have running down the front nose cone......

Nice review. Although considering how much a VF-11 is going to cost over a VF-1 v.2 I certainly hope that it's that much better. I have to say the I kind of like the "eye blinding" white color. Just begs to have a little home brew weathering tinkering. Also did you notice if there where any improvements over the B to the C? Looks like they are pretty much the same other than color and different booster packs and gun pod like you had mentioned.

Smaller sizes...... sorry if I caused problems for anyone. Major improvement in Gerwalk mode.

Yeah I started transforming them and posing them side by side and all I could say to myself why couldn't the 25's have been like this? It's a much better toy/collectible...... it's just to bad they dropped the ball on the paint again! Is it me or is the paint job on these actually worse than on the 25s or does it just stand out worse because of the colors used? I'd buy the green if it came out (as a non-web exclusive) but it would have to have a more resilient paint job. I love posing my toys and it frustrates me how much I am scratching the VF-27 up. If I gave this to a kid I imagine it would be an ungodly mess of scratches and chips in a couple of weeks.

No the posing I was trying to do required that the leg come back and the ankle forward for a "walking"/moving pose. You physically can't get that as there is a stop in the "toe" and while the ankle has some backwards play there is little to no forwards play . Nice poses though and I never thought about turning the "thighs" sideways like you did in the top pic.

And some pics in Gerwalk mode. It's a hell of allot better than the VF-25 but I still think the VF-1 1/60 is still the king of the Gerwalk mode.

Ugh. Thanks for reminding me. UN Spacy it's worth your while to do it once as you just have to appreciate this baby in batroid mode. Needless to say just be EXTREMELY careful and you'll be fine. Defiantly review the instruction booklet before you do it though to make sure you know how to rotate the head back and unless you rub your fingernail across it like I did (and I didn't do it very HARD!). Also after posing the VF-27 in batroid mode a bit she is defiantly a tippy toe princes. To get any decent posing with the legs I have to "claw" the feet. See here.

Sorry if the size pisses anyone off but I just had to take some quick pics during my lunch break today. REDUCE THE SIZE OF THESE PICS!

Posted some pics in the strike a pose thread.

The landing gear? Seriously? Man those things are so hard to get out you can't help but chip the paint. The rest of the toys are great and you shouldn't get hung up on that. Yamato should actually just plate the parts like Bandai does and this wouldn't be a problem anyway. Frankly I could care less anyway as while the landing gear are a nice touch, I rarely use them. I just want them to be sturdy and have some nice detail. If the paint chips at least I can fold them up and hide them in the body. On some Yamato toys I have removed the paint completely and just coated them with a sealer and left it at that. The VF-27 has the smoothest transformation!?!?!?! Really? Frankly I find the VF-25 smoother to transform but I just got my VF-27 so.... Anyway IMO the VF-11 has the smoothest transformation around. The heat shield is a bit tricky the first couple of times but it is the only valk I ever had where I did not have to refer to the user's manual for the transformation. For instance if I hadn't refered to the manual on the VF-27 I wouldn't have known the whole head assembly rotates up and back to allow you to slip the nose in the chest easier or how to rotate the shoulder pads properly to stow the arms back in fighter mode. I am in no way saying it is extremely difficult or anything though. It is fairly easy to transform but I think if you get over confident with what your doing your going to be scrapping paint, breaking off canards and/or getting frustrated. Oh and I did not mention in my review that the VF-27 shoulder mechanism is completely metal unlike the VF-25 where the shoulder balls socketed into plastic on the main body. Defiantly nice!

Ouch. that's horrible. The worst I ever had was when the nose cone hip hatch on my VF-1D came broken. It still works but I can pull it right out when I want to.

Yeah I figured I was doing it wrong. I just didn't find it intuitive at all. I see that if you don't have the shoulders and arms in the right position when you rotate them in you get problems but I have yet to figure out that "just right" alignment yet....... Guess I got spoiled buy the VF-11. It's not a major grip but like my VF-22 I will have to do it a few times to get used to it....ah now bed time.

First off.....Come on better than Yamato?!?! I agree that it's a great toy but better than the VF-1 1/60s (broken shoulder aside) VF-11 or VF-22's? I'm not saying recent Yamatoes are better but Bandai's VF-27 DX while in the same league is in no way better. Sure there is more metal but diecast and some good attention to detail does not make them better toys. Oh and paint.....uhm......I have to totally disagree with anyone who thinks Yamato does not do a good paint job. I have very little problem with paint scratches on my Yamato Valks. Nothing even close to as bad as what I have gotten with Bandai's Frontier offerings or as pissed as I am about the VF-27's nose! Now My initial impressions: Shipping with AmiAmi - 1 minor and 1 major complaints here. - They declared the value of the toy on the box so I had to pay $20 duty at the post office.....not a big deal as that is the legal way to do it but....hint, hint, nudge, nudge if you do what Overdrive/HobbyLink/Hobby Search does (ie. just list as a diecast toy) I more than 3/4 of the time get away with not paying duty. Less duty I pay the more I have to spend on $100+ toys! Besides the 40 bucks shipping is enough of a crime to my hard earned cash as it is. - Now my biggest grip. HOLY HELL the shipping package on this was beyond wasteful. I am not a small man and this box seems huge to even me and it took up the entire front passenger seat of my truck! The last time I got a box that large was when I ordered THREE valks from Hobbylink. The box was 2-3 times the size of the toy box's box. The toy box was packaged in a brown box with a poster insert. If you had just sent me the smaller cardboard box things would have been fine. How much could they/us have saved on shipping! You could have fit 6 or 7 of the VF-27 product boxes in that box. Now the VF-27. This is a good toy leaps and bounds better than the VF-25. Here are my initial impressions. The Good. - My God the box for this is small! After that dreadful behemoth of a box it shipped in I thought they had accidentally sent me the model kit! The box is just the right size for the toy and EVERY toy manufacturer could learn a lesson from how well Bandai packaged this product. - Detailed landing gear. Plated too so I don't have to worry about scratching the paint every time I try to dig them out. - Nice sculpts on the pilots. Almost as good or as good as what you would get from Yamato here. - Ankle joints are just awesome. That plastic panel that slides with the metal ankle joints is just pure goodness. Articulation is ok but the better aesthetics of the ankle make up for this. - Arms have nice articulation and are leaps and bound better than the VF-25. Wrists are the usual fare from Bandai though, nice but not any better than the VF-25. - Folding mechanism for the Wings.....beautiful. No flop. That's pure goodness in my books. - Nice Gerwalk mode. Not quite as good as what I can get from my Yamato's but good enough! - Nice shield that hides nicely in the fighter and is nicely proportioned to the battroid mode. Knife in the shield is a nice touch and 100% better than the un-stow-able butter knife that comes with the 25s. - I can use whatever hands I want in fighter mode. No more digging for hands when I want to transform! Why one earth you would want to use any hands except for the ones that hold that beautiful gun are beyond me. - Beautiful detail on the gun. Even the crappy VF-25 1/100s had more astetically pleasings gun pods than the VF-25 DX does.....Shudder....just thinking about the fugly gun pod from the VF-25 DX is putting me in a bad mood. - No bloody attachable piece needed to attach the gun pod! THANK JEBUSS! (yes I spelled that wrong on purpose) Now why couldn't you have used the exact same mechanism on the VF-25 DX's Bandai! Bad Bandai Bad....go to your kennel! - Paint is nice.....oh who am I kidding I can't stay made at you. Come out Bandai your a good boy...Yesss your ARE!....wait it's nice paint and all but there is something wrong with the nose (refer below).......Moma get my gun! - The pitot tubes on the canards are a nice touch but they are just begging to snag on something and then snap off. - Metal shoulders are brilliant because of one thing. The peg. Keeps everything inline and nice. - The neck and head are nicely proportioned. Good work Bandai I was afraid you where going to screw this up! - Movable thruster nosels on the "nacels". Nice touch! Now the Bad. - It's just as nice and tight as my VF-25 was when I first bought it.....why is this a negative you ask? IT FEELS EXACTLY AS TIGHT! Especially in the hip joints. i.e. I can rotate them nice but they stiffen abit during the movement then get good again like they just grinded past something. Which leads me to believe that 3-4 months from now I might be dealing with a floppy mess as it works itself loose. It's good now but I withhold judgement considering how bad my VF-25's got. - The front canards are eventually going to break sometime during a transformation when I am not paying attention. When you peg the hips loose the first and only thing they will hit going forward will be the those canards so eventually one day I am going to find they are missing. I don't understand why they did not make both of them fold-able or pop-off-able as a protection against this. - Floppy wrists. I know the hand is in no way going to be able to hold the gun on it's own but both hands are just barely strong enough! I get it set just right and when I get back to it the gun has dropped a bit. Argh that is frustrating. - The ankels are nice but I wish the toes/feet had some better posability. The front of the foot is the real problem hear. It can go flat for standing but has little to no forward/upward movement. (I didn't attempt to go more forward than flat as there was allot of resistance. If it can let me know and maybe I'll work up the balls to try it.) It's an improvement over the VF-25 but considering the "three" toe design I was hoping for something better. - For the love of God getting those shoulders back into position for fighter mode is a real test of my patience. It's just as bad as the leg alignment problem on the VF-22/YF-21 or the arms on the YF-19. I am sure I will get better at it but....ugh. The Ugly - Pale purple paint on the nose/cockpit scratches way to easy. I scratched it dragging the FLAT OF MY NAIL ON IT! I actually HEARD A TEARING NOISE! That's just plain horrible and good sign of misapplied paint. It's like they forgot to apply a primer or gloss coat as the paint on the nose is of a slightly different in texture and pigment. Normally I wouldn't mind but it scratches WAY to easy. Overall a good toy that just looks DAMN NICE! Too bad about the paint though. I just plain wrong to see paint scratches on a toy within the first couple of hours of handling it. Note that I only found this on the forward fusalge/nose and the cockpit. Everywhere else seemed ok and held up to my back of the nail rub test. Which I didn't do on purpose initially. The back of my nail rubbed on it as I was figuring out who to get the arms to align better for fighter mode........Hulk mad.......Hulk need beer now..... I will post some pics tomorrow. Especially of the craggy scare running down the front of my VF-27s nose now.

SACRILEGE! You can never have to much missile spam in Macross!

Are those sound boosters in the pic going to be a web exclusive? I'd actually purchase a HiMetal if I could get sound boosters. Forgive me if someone posted the answer to this already.

Little late to the party on that one. Someone posted already.

Also worth noting is that you can loosen the shoulder and upper arm screws by about a quarter of a turn and that helps allot as well as it puts less stress on the joints during play and transformation. I have done that to all the VF-1s I have with knurled pins and the only cracks I have are one the ones that came out of the box like that. I have yet had to break down and file the pins down.

Mine arrived at Vancouver customs yesterday ...... good luck with that leaving there anytime soon...... ....... and it still has to travel 2000+km to reach me after that. I am still pumped for it even with the paint issues though.

Hey ff95gj, how well does it hold the gun with one hand? From the pics it looks ok but....?