The Macross Quarter. DX Chogokin

[holytoledo69]

Dammit.. I think thats the money shot right there..

[ff95gj]

Hi, just joined, collector from Malaysia here...

Graham, you bought your DX Quarter for HK$1,348.00 only? Is that like a special price for you only?

Sorry my asking, coz the unit retails at around HK$1700.00 over here. Thought of asking my friend in HK to get it for me. Thanks a mil!

The price has gone down a bit in HK last week. It's now under HK$1200 FYI.

[m o m o]

The price has gone down a bit in HK last week. It's now under HK$1200 FYI.

Amazing! HK truly is a haven for Macross collectors!

Thanks for the tip, will inform my friend...

Can't wait to lay my hands on this babeh!

[eyesonme78]

Just opened my Chogokin macross quarter today, this item is freaking huge!!

could not fit inside my ikea cabinet... have to find some gd place to display ...

[westfall]

Just opened my Chogokin macross quarter today, this item is freaking huge!!

could not fit inside my ikea cabinet... have to find some gd place to display ...

You've put a smile on my face. For the size of the MQ and for the obvious dirty joke that poped in my head when i read "this item is freaking huge!!". Mine has arrived to my country but seems to have been selected for customs inspection. Wich means i'll be lucky if i get it sometime in the next 10 working days.

[westfall]

A quick question for those fortunate enough to have this in their hand. Are the fingers on the MQ's "hands" articulated or do you have to swap them?

[eyesonme78]

Haha.. well i really think it's huge, and for those who own one, should be happy as well as having a headache on where to display them..

btw the hands are articulative for the hands holding the shield and the gun, the other are not articulative, i did not have much time to play around with them but then it's nice to have articulative hands..

=)

[ff95gj]

Amazing! HK truly is a haven for Macross collectors!

Thanks for the tip, will inform my friend...

Can't wait to lay my hands on this babeh!

Just want to update as not to confuse your friend... it's back to the HK$12XX level generally.

May still get it under that if he/she is lucky... But I'd say it's a good deal already!

[Macross_Fanboy]

Hmm...this seems to be the only Macross F item from Bandai that is worthy of my collecting until Yamato somehow wrangles the rights from them...maybe I'll do it....

[westfall]

Haha.. well i really think it's huge, and for those who own one, should be happy as well as having a headache on where to display them..

btw the hands are articulative for the hands holding the shield and the gun, the other are not articulative, i did not have much time to play around with them but then it's nice to have articulative hands..

=)

Good to know. This is what should have been done with the SDF-1.

I have the 1/5000 SDF-1 and though i love it, i would gladly have one as big as the Quarter. Price wise the SDF-1 is slightly cheaper but, as nice as it is (and i can't stress this enough, it is a very nice figure) you can't really wrap your mind around the fact that you paid a hefty sum of money for an 8'' figure. The MQ compensates it's price tab with sheer size. Just it's size seems to be enough for you to look at your empty wallet and say "Totally worth it!". Quality wise, i'll reserve my judgement 'till mine arrives but from other posts it seems to hold well.

Let's hope this sells well enough for Bandai to consider making a Battle Frontier and, why not, a Battle Galaxy. And as for the SDF-1, let's hope that since their 1/2000 figure down the toillette, Yamato either comes up with a MQesque figure or (just a though) let Bandai do it. If it comes out as good as the Quarter i'll buy it. If i can prevent my wallet from running away from me, that is.

[nanoplasm]

Picked this up from the post office yesterday.

The outer box was pretty big that the clerk at the office decided it would hurt her back if she tried to lift it up to the counter. Instead, she decided the best way to hand me the box is to literally "kick" the outer box all the way to the employee exit, where she can kick it through the door to me.

She was doing this with a package that had FRAGILE printed all over the packaging tape.

Like others have mentioned, this toy is very well built, with metal parts in all the right places both for durability and stability in assault mode.

The shoulder transformation design interferes with downward shoulder rotation, hence the tightness reported by other users. This can be worked around by always rotating the shoulder upwards, sometimes even almost 360 degrees to get to the desired posing position.

The gunship can also be configured into firing mode. I found it easiest to pry open the top two pieces of the gunship by wedging finger nails between them. Once opened, there is more handholds to pull down the bottom-middle piece.

The flight deck requires a mounting bracket to secure to the back-left-side boom in assault mode. The bracket is included, just not shown in the stock photos.

The thumb in the articulated manipulator has very limited movement range, and appears relative fragile. Mine is already showing stress whitening on the plastic. Need to be a little more careful when mounting ARMD-L/R in the future.

All the turrets are made with flexible plastic, so there is no fear of snapping them off while man-handling MQ during transformation.

For anyone still sitting on the fence, this is definitely a worthy piece for the collection.

[s001]

Aren't the colors too bright???

[anime52k8]

Aren't the colors too bright???

no

[macrossnake]

Aren't the colors too bright???

I still perfer if it has a darker color.

However it looks much better 'in person'. The white part is actially more like a light grey.

Here is a photo that you can see it stand next to a DX 25S.

It is a great toy, bty. Love the size (very tall), details (enough), weight(heavy with some metal inner parts and feets) and solid feel (qc is good, tight joins but ship mode is a little floopy).

Edited January 1, 2010 by macrossnake

[Macross_Fanboy]

Well, after a failed attempt at blowing 4 grand on my wife's ring I stopped by the Yellow Submarine and saw the price slashed on the MQ, it was going for 16000 JPY which seemed pretty reasonable, unfortunately I didn't feel like buying it since I don't quite have enough room for it and it would just sit in the box, maybe I'll be kicking myself later but oh well. I also saw the WAVE DYRL Macross kit, forgot the price on it though. Tomorrow I'm going down to the hobby shop with my wife and baby to retrieve my lost cap and take a peek, maybe walk out of there with Miria's VF-22 or Max's or maybe nothing, who knows, depends on whatever sales they have.

[Letigre]

I think I could really care less about the small figures that came with the ship. They seem slightly off scale, not by fault but rather that it's impractical to sculpt precisely that size of a figure. Iguess they are nifty if you like them, but I do not think I'll ever use them for display myself.

[007-vf1]

I think if the little Vf's were in scale to the Quarter, close to 1/1000, the VF's would hardly be about 1 cm long way too small to play with. By the picture size comparison I think they are 1/400 scale range

[drifand]

Just got back from a toy hunting trip in HK with 2 pals. We scooped the DX for HK$1250~$1280 at Richmond Centre on Argyle Street, Mongkok. Fabulous bargains all over town :-)

[mph2501]

Hiya!

I got my MQ about a week and a half ago, and I love the heck out of it. I also hate the thing.

I have nothing against the design itself. It’s a cool ship. The problem is that it’s another “screw you” to the toy designers as far as execution goes. The metal legs cause the rear section to sag in cruiser mode. I know they tried to fix this with that little clip the back, but it’s too little, too late, just like the guide clip inside the waist. There’s too much mass for those things to be effective. They need some kind of latch mechanism to lock it in (or a real powerful magnet.) Likewise, the enormous gun and carrier pods cause the “arms” to sag in carrier mode. Now, the metal joints are nice and stiff, but to the point where there’s got to be some stress on the plastic there somewhere. That said, I’d rather it be stiff than all lousy-goosey, like my first Ozma VF25. The arms hold up in battle mode, oddly enough. Why they can't stay stiff in cruiser mode bugs the heck out of me.

That said, I love the detailing, I love the accuracy, and though they may still be pretty out of scale, I like that it came with the teensy little VF's. Maybe they only have a squadron or two inside that carrier, but when you hold them up to the bridge/head, eeeeehhh.... maybe it's best not to do that.

HLJ shipped its MQ’s with a cool “making of” booklet that showed some of the earlier designs (image attached) and I wish they’d settled on one of those, b/c they featured bow/arm sections that locked into the hull (see the bottom left part of the scan) Everything looks like it rotates into place and locks together cleanly; knees lock iup into the arm subassemblies so you have clean deck running from carrier into knee and so on. It looks a little more solid, like an enormous catamaran. Personally, I hope they do a better job on the New Macross-class Frontier, if they ever make one.

You know you’d buy it. The Galaxy, too. I would. Especially if the Frontier came with a little scale partsformer Quarter. You can have that idea for a small percentage of the gross, Bandai. (I'd also settle for just a free set of both carriers)

On a side note, my Armored Ozma Special suffered structural failure. I was transforming it with the leg armor on when, silly me, I let the hip section swing for a moment and lo and holed! the entire hip section breaks off of some flimsy little rubber bit. It snapped back onto the fuselage/nose section but, well, you were warned. Look at it, I can’t see why they’d make that section anything but a single piece on that part of the nose. I mean, it doesn’t need to flex when you bend in that weird hip assembly. Just a weird way to engineer the toy, and that added weight of those big plastic leg armors just killed the little nubbin.

Edited January 4, 2010 by mph2501

[nugundamII]

Hiya!

I got my MQ about a week and a half ago, and I love the heck out of it. I also hate the thing.

I have nothing against the design itself. It’s a cool ship. The problem is that it’s another “screw you” to the toy designers as far as execution goes. The metal legs cause the rear section to sag in cruiser mode. I know they tried to fix this with that little clip the back, but it’s too little, too late, just like the guide clip inside the waist. There’s too much mass for those things to be effective. They need some kind of latch mechanism to lock it in (or a real powerful magnet.) Likewise, the enormous gun and carrier pods cause the “arms” to sag in carrier mode. Now, the metal joints are nice and stiff, but to the point where there’s got to be some stress on the plastic there somewhere. That said, I’d rather it be stiff than all lousy-goosey, like my first Ozma VF25. The arms hold up in battle mode, oddly enough. Why they can't stay stiff in cruiser mode bugs the heck out of me.

That said, I love the detailing, I love the accuracy, and though they may still be pretty out of scale, I like that it came with the teensy little VF's. Maybe they only have a squadron or two inside that carrier, but when you hold them up to the bridge/head, eeeeehhh.... maybe it's best not to do that.

HLJ shipped its MQ’s with a cool “making of” booklet that showed some of the earlier designs (image attached) and I wish they’d settled on one of those, b/c they featured bow/arm sections that locked into the hull (see the bottom left part of the scan) Everything looks like it rotates into place and locks together cleanly; knees lock iup into the arm subassemblies so you have clean deck running from carrier into knee and so on. It looks a little more solid, like an enormous catamaran. Personally, I hope they do a better job on the New Macross-class Frontier, if they ever make one.

You know you’d buy it. The Galaxy, too. I would. Especially if the Frontier came with a little scale partsformer Quarter. You can have that idea for a small percentage of the gross, Bandai. (I'd also settle for just a free set of both carriers)

On a side note, my Armored Ozma Special suffered structural failure. I was transforming it with the leg armor on when, silly me, I let the hip section swing for a moment and lo and holed! the entire hip section breaks off of some flimsy little rubber bit. It snapped back onto the fuselage/nose section but, well, you were warned. Look at it, I can’t see why they’d make that section anything but a single piece on that part of the nose. I mean, it doesn’t need to flex when you bend in that weird hip assembly. Just a weird way to engineer the toy, and that added weight of those big plastic leg armors just killed the little nubbin.

thanks for the info. It seems regardless of PG gundams or macross toys bandai has been hit or miss lately

[anime52k8]

>snip<

that looks... really awesome. I'm kind of sad that's not what it looked like in the show.

the one thing that really bugs me about the quarter is that it has a very gundam-esque "robot lying on it's stomach" look in ship mode. the early design it actually looks like a SHIP in ship mode.

[holytoledo69]

I still dont know if I should pick this one up.. The new Combattler V is calling to me..

[jimber]

hey i got my macross quarter yesterday. Its great. although i did not get an artbook. Can someone tell me if i'm missing anything if i don't have an art book. is the artbook even worth it?

thanks

[QuinJester]

hey i got my macross quarter yesterday. Its great. although i did not get an artbook. Can someone tell me if i'm missing anything if i don't have an art book. is the artbook even worth it?

thanks

It's only about 6 pages, and while the drawings are kind of neat it's nothing groundbreaking or critical, I don't think.

After glancing through mine I put it back in its little plastic wrapper and popped it in the Quarter box.

[DarrinG]

that looks... really awesome. I'm kind of sad that's not what it looked like in the show.

the one thing that really bugs me about the quarter is that it has a very gundam-esque "robot lying on it's stomach" look in ship mode. the early design it actually looks like a SHIP in ship mode.

I'm a MF newbie but I can't get over this design. I like much of what we call Macross designs but not this one.

Not sure a full robot mode is realistic or mildly practical. Maybe more of a Gerwalk mode with thrusters on all sides to be more maneuverable for quick turns while the cruiser is for more straight forward / long distance travel.

I gauge my emotions on whether or not I would want to show another adult sci-fi fan something. I would want to avoid the MQ. I can just hear them saying - "You mean the ship they're in turns into a robot too?" I know the original series featured this but it came off as more by chance, without such a distinct samurai looking robot mode.

Have I yet to see a MF clip where the hands are useful and combat realistic? Seems kind of silly to have it holding the aircraft carrier portion to me.

No Poo-Pooing those who love this - just sharing thoughts for feedback . . .

[eriku]

I'm a MF newbie but I can't get over this design. I like much of what we call Macross designs but not this one.

Not sure a full robot mode is realistic or mildly practical. Maybe more of a Gerwalk mode with thrusters on all sides to be more maneuverable for quick turns while the cruiser is for more straight forward / long distance travel.

I gauge my emotions on whether or not I would want to show another adult sci-fi fan something. I would want to avoid the MQ. I can just hear them saying - "You mean the ship they're in turns into a robot too?" I know the original series featured this but it came off as more by chance, without such a distinct samurai looking robot mode.

Have I yet to see a MF clip where the hands are useful and combat realistic? Seems kind of silly to have it holding the aircraft carrier portion to me.

No Poo-Pooing those who love this - just sharing thoughts for feedback . . .

Oh it's a totally and completely ridiculous design. Consequentially that is why I love it.

[anubis20]

I'm a MF newbie but I can't get over this design. I like much of what we call Macross designs but not this one.

Not sure a full robot mode is realistic or mildly practical. Maybe more of a Gerwalk mode with thrusters on all sides to be more maneuverable for quick turns while the cruiser is for more straight forward / long distance travel.

I gauge my emotions on whether or not I would want to show another adult sci-fi fan something. I would want to avoid the MQ. I can just hear them saying - "You mean the ship they're in turns into a robot too?" I know the original series featured this but it came off as more by chance, without such a distinct samurai looking robot mode.

Have I yet to see a MF clip where the hands are useful and combat realistic? Seems kind of silly to have it holding the aircraft carrier portion to me.

No Poo-Pooing those who love this - just sharing thoughts for feedback . . .

Macross Quarter rocks!!! Watch this

[kanedaestes]

the quarter is actually the most useful Macross class ship seen to date. It has the maneuverability of a valk yet is a carrier. It had some great fights in MacF

[Lolicon]

Why does eveyone forget that Kawamori never intended for Macross to be a serious war story? Where did this myth that the original Macross is some kind of serious, mature war story and all its sequels are kiddy fluff come from?

And why would an adult sci-fi fan dislike the Quarter? Hey did you know the Yamato looks like an ocean-going vessel from World War II? Guess what many sci-fi fans love Space Cruiser Yamato (or its English bastardization Starblazers). A lot of sci-fi fans also love Gundam, and there's way more unrealistic stuff in that.

I'm an adult sci-fi fan and I love the Quarter, despite and because of its completely impractical design.

It's also not practical to build a gigantic space station the size of a moon, especially with an open exhaust port that some nutcase could drop a torpedo down. Any race that can actually build such a thing would be so advanced that they wouldn't need to.

Sorry, there I go again into "serious" sci-fi mode.

[holytoledo69]

Im still waiting on a definitive review of this baby before I ever decide to pick it up.. CollectionDx does great reviews.

Edited January 6, 2010 by holytoledo69

[kanedaestes]

Uh yeah get it, it is worth it and I am sure Collection DX will say the same.

[mph2501]

that looks... really awesome. I'm kind of sad that's not what it looked like in the show.

the one thing that really bugs me about the quarter is that it has a very gundam-esque "robot lying on it's stomach" look in ship mode. the early design it actually looks like a SHIP in ship mode.

I know, right? The MQ's ship mode always seemed like an afterthought whenever I saw it; like, "Oh yeah, it also has this cruise mode...". The early-early design (spread 1, which I didn't scan, so sorry) looked more like a classic oblong vessel (in fact, it looked more like the Valhalla series from the Digital Mission games), although I couldn't tell from looking where the damn carrier deck went; it just sort of disappeared under the center-line cannon.

As versatile and zippy as the MQ is, does that mean we're going to see squadrons of them escorting colony ships now? Those non-trans frigates and ARMD carriers aren't worth a damn, now. If I were the NUN-SPACY, I'd order a dozen of them and replace the older crap ships.

Of course, the YF-19 still would have blown right past them....

[mph2501]

It's also not practical to build a gigantic space station the size of a moon, especially with an open exhaust port that some nutcase could drop a torpedo down. Any race that can actually build such a thing would be so advanced that they wouldn't need to.

Sorry, there I go again into "serious" sci-fi mode.

The Death Stars were the result of a government make-work project, anyway (see: Clerks).

Speaking of Gundam, the MQ does sorta share the same look as the White Base-class.... One wonders if this is another cross-series tip of the hat, the same way Strike Gundam (Gundam Seed) and its armor sets were of the Liger Zero (Zoids New Century) and its armors. Hmmmmm....

[DarrinG]

Why does eveyone forget that Kawamori never intended for Macross to be a serious war story? Where did this myth that the original Macross is some kind of serious, mature war story and all its sequels are kiddy fluff come from?

Not sure about 'serious and mature' but when I compare the original Destroid Monster to the new transforming MF Monster I find myself liking the original so much more.

There was something more tank-like and as strange-as-it-might-sound, 'realistic' about the original. With the new one my gut feeling (something I can't get around) says there would be no need for such a giant robot mode when you have the much faster super valks. They wouldn't spend the money or whatever to make it a variable fighter. And the design looks like a Go-bot from the 80s which doesn't help me like it either.

I don't really like the original giant SDF but I can rationalize it a bit since it was more of an accidental appearance rather that a purposeful giant robot that they ended up making use of. That's a stretch though I know.

BUT -- I don't want to be one of those guys thinking too hard about this stuff and taking all the fun out of it either . . .

[Kelsain]

The early-early design (spread 1, which I didn't scan, so sorry)

Please?

Edited January 7, 2010 by Kelsain