Bandai 1/60 DX Chogokin Macross Plus YF-21

[MikeRoz]

44 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

So I originally bought two YF-21s from Japan. One arrived intact, the other with a broken head laser.

Since Bandai considers it a "quality variance" and refuses to provide any support to replace this one piece (it would be pretty easy to just mail some replacement head lasers out), I went and bought one off Amazon US.

The first unit I got from Amazon had a broken head laser too. I immediately exchanged it for a replacement. The replacement unit had an intact laser. So I am sending the broken unit I originally got from Japan in its place and getting a full refund.

This is the kind of crap I have to resort to for a simple fix on a pretty expensive toy because Bandai ultimately is a shitty & anti-consumer company.

2 out of 4 units arrived broken. A 50% failure rate is absolutely unacceptable in any product line. (Yes I know this is a tiny sample size but this is a widespread issue and I would not be surprised if the real failure rate is actually pretty close to 50%.)

So you received a unit with a Bluefin sticker from Amazon, and you're sending them back one without?

[m0n5t3r]

1 hour ago, Lolicon said:

So I originally bought two YF-21s from Japan. One arrived intact, the other with a broken head laser.

Since Bandai considers it a "quality variance" and refuses to provide any support to replace this one piece (it would be pretty easy to just mail some replacement head lasers out), I went and bought one off Amazon US.

The first unit I got from Amazon had a broken head laser too. I immediately exchanged it for a replacement. The replacement unit had an intact laser. So I am sending the broken unit I originally got from Japan in its place and getting a full refund.

This is the kind of crap I have to resort to for a simple fix on a pretty expensive toy because Bandai ultimately is a shitty & anti-consumer company.

2 out of 4 units arrived broken. A 50% failure rate is absolutely unacceptable in any product line. (Yes I know this is a tiny sample size but this is a widespread issue and I would not be surprised if the real failure rate is actually pretty close to 50%.)

Lol, F them coz they basically said F off to you first, right... and let the two billionaire companies sort it out themselves. That's just chump change to them after all. 

Edited October 14 by m0n5t3r

[m0n5t3r]

46 minutes ago, MikeRoz said:

So you received a unit with a Bluefin sticker from Amazon, and you're sending them back one without?

Nah, just swap the good head laser with the broken one. 

[Lolicon]

32 minutes ago, m0n5t3r said:

Lol, F them coz they basically said F off to you first, right... and let the two billionaire companies sort it out themselves. That's just chump change to them after all. 

Absolutely. If I accidentally dropped a penny down a sewer grate, that would be a bigger financial loss to me than this is to them.

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

So you received a unit with a Bluefin sticker from Amazon, and you're sending them back one without?

30 minutes ago, m0n5t3r said:

Nah, just swap the good head laser with the broken one. 

Yeah they're getting their Bluefin sticker back. 

[PointBlankSniper]

The fun part is when amazon sells both of those bendy units to the next customer as new. This is apparently not uncommon with stuff like graphic cards, where people swap in lower models, only to be caught by the next customer, because they don't insepct returns and ship them out as new stock.

While I don't condone sneakily offloading problems to someone else, both those corportate giants deserve their bad rap out of this lol

[David Hingtgen]

Yeah, don't buy PC parts from Amazon, they don't check at all---I've gotten "new" parts with brown dirt and crud on them...

[locidm]

Has anybody gotten replacement parts from Bluefin yet? It's been two months and absolute silence on my front.

[Angesdad]

I ended up fixing the bent fin myself, do be careful with the amount of time and heat you apply to the fin because it tends to curl up in different places that you don’t want.😂 I filed and sanded a bit to fix the wonky curvature, after a coat of top coat it was good enough for me to ignore it and keep the toy.

Edited October 15 by Angesdad

[kajnrig]

On 10/14/2024 at 5:04 PM, locidm said:

Has anybody gotten replacement parts from Bluefin yet? It's been two months and absolute silence on my front.

Got this email from Bluefin about an hour ago (edit: well, mobile deciding to play weird and not let me quote tag):

------

Quote

 

Hello kajnrig,

 

Thank you for your continued patience with this process.

 

We are happy to inform you that your request has been approved by the manufacturer to fulfill.

 

We anticipate that this replacement part will arrive and ship out within the next month. Once again, thank you very much for your patience and understanding.

Thank you,

BNTCA Customer Service

 

 

Edited October 17 by kajnrig

[locidm]

Thank you. I just got the same email.

[Chronocidal]

Someone mark this down as a first in history: Bandai actually theoretically responding to a replacement part request!  

Well, a first for Macross DX releases, anyhow.  I have no idea what their track record for any of their other franchises is like, but given the mentality they seem to follow (essentially a minimalist approach involving as little spare inventory as possible), I'd be surprised if anything else was different.

Kind of incredible that it takes a failure of this magnitude before they actually give anything like what should be considered a reasonable response.

Edited October 16 by Chronocidal

[MacrossJunkie]

5 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Got this email from Bluefin about an hour ago (edit: well, mobile deciding to play weird and not let me quote tag):

------

 

Got mine around the same time as well.

[davidwhangchoi]

8 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Got this email from Bluefin about an hour ago (edit: well, mobile deciding to play weird and not let me quote tag):

------

 

that's awesome.

i have the bandai namco usa stickers on both of mine for peace of mind.

(though no bent lasers or bitten off canopy)

[PointBlankSniper]

9 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Someone mark this down as a first in history: Bandai actually theoretically responding to a replacement part request!  

Well, a first for Macross DX releases, anyhow.  I have no idea what their track record for any of their other franchises is like, but given the mentality they seem to follow (essentially a minimalist approach involving as little spare inventory as possible), I'd be surprised if anything else was different.

Kind of incredible that it takes a failure of this magnitude before they actually give anything like what should be considered a reasonable response.

That's not entirely fair. To their credit, they recently do seem to have been RMAing or sending replacements directly to individuals in Japan. Both for this and the new 31J revival.

It just seems like relailers or maybe even just exporters get second priority. It may still be due to minimal spares.

In the case of gunpla, I think they used to even come with little order forms for you to buy spare parts in Japan, so I think there is inventory for replacements. At some point, Bluefin stated doing it for them in NA on and off. IDK if that service is still available now. Long ago, before that was a thing, I even emailed them from overseas and gotten replacements for free before. It was over some long months of correspondence, because they seem to only answer my emails quarterly. But due to some miscommunication, I didn't get everything I needed, and then they stopped responding after that lmao.

[Chronocidal]

Just now, PointBlankSniper said:

That's not entirely fair. To their credit, they recently do seem to have been RMAing or sending replacements directly to individuals in Japan. Both for this and the new 31J revival.

It just seems like relailers or maybe even just exporters get second priority. It may still be due to minimal spares.

In the case of gunpla, I think they used to even come with little order forms for you to buy spare parts in Japan, so I think there is inventory for replacements. At some point, Bluefin stated doing it for them in NA on and off. IDK if that service is still available now. Long ago, before that was a thing, I even emailed them from overseas and gotten replacements for free before. It was over some long months of correspondence, because they seem to only answer my emails quarterly. But due to some miscommunication, I didn't get everything I needed, and then they stopped responding after that lmao.

Yeah, I'm being at least partly sarcastic about it, but in my personal experience with every request I made for a replacement of anything broken or missing from any of the DX releases I've ordered going back to the VF-25, every single request was either outright denied, or I was told to send the entire item back at my own expense.

My VF-25G Michael came missing his crotch plate, and I was basically turned down flat for any help.  Bandai was just completely unwilling (or unable) to send me that missing part, and the best I've ever gotten until now was the vendor telling me to send them back the whole item for a replacement.  Given how insane the demand has been for pretty much every DX release, I never saw that as a viable option, because I was not going to bet on there ever being any stock available to even exchange it for.

That VF-25 purchase was the point where I started ordering two of everything, just to ensure better odds of getting at least one whole item.  Even in the case of something like the VF-171s, that gave me pretty good odds of at least being able to combine two broken ones into one whole one.  

[jenius]

@Anasazi37 turned me onto 3D printed replacement head lasers and all the details necessary for anyone with a 3D printer to make their own. I made a quick video about it and also included the information in my review on anymoon for people years from now who buy one 'New in box' and discover this issue. Thanks Anasazi!

Here's the link to the cults3d page:

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/replacement-antenna-laser-for-the-bandai-dx-yf-21

Edited October 20 by jenius

[Anasazi37]

2 hours ago, jenius said:

@Anasazi37 turned me onto 3D printed replacement head lasers and all the details necessary for anyone with a 3D printer to make their own. I made a quick video about it and also included the information in my review on anymoon for people years from now who buy one 'New in box' and discover this issue. Thanks Anasazi!

Here's the link to the cults3d page:

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/replacement-antenna-laser-for-the-bandai-dx-yf-21

Thanks for putting together such an awesome video, @jenius! My entire goal was to help collectors who had been burned by Bandai's poor packaging decisions, quality control, and customer service. I was very disappointed when I opened up my box--after waiting so many years for this release--and found...a very bent antenna. HLJ said there were no replacements available from Bandai, which just increased my disappointment. The damage was in such a visually obvious location that I had to do something about it or I would never display the valk, so I quickly got to work on designing a durable replacement that would be easy and inexpensive for people to print and finish themselves (no painting required). Most importantly, I wanted the design to be free. We'd already spent enough money on this toy.

 

[PointBlankSniper]

Mine has finally come in, somehow unopened, even after YYK did an inspection. I guess the only explanation is that those circular seal tapes are applied by retailers.

Everything seems to be in spec as expected, since it was inspected. They put it back together fairly well. Just some minor gaps on one belly plate that seem to need a full transformation to fix, but nothing too far out of ordinary from the usual out of the box slop.

I've only gotten around to putting it in gerwalk so far.

I can't believe after all my efforts at snorting coping, writing off the lock pin and brace as unnecessary, pretending gunpods are landing skis, etc, my delusions of a perfect transformation were dashed by the fast pack's arm pieces. There is just no way to slide the stabilizers forward with those things on, or even just bank them inward to achieve high speed mode. The killer move is that to open the hand covers, you need to fold the rudders, which automatically ejects the fast pack bits no matter what. 😭

If they had just reused those rotating pylon mounts from the Lil Drakens and Super Ghosts, none of this would be a problem. The packs could rotate out of the way for all the transformations, and they wouldn't even need to create a new mold for that peice. A bonus would be that the stabilizer fins could accept other pylon weapons, for added play value, if they ever made any missiles available. 🤡

The uncleaned sprue marks are also indeed kind of horrifying on the exposed top edges of those parts.

Anyway, enough of those fast pack arm parts. My transformable gunpods seem to hold fine in the belly packs. Due to the initial slop, one of the landing gears even reached the floor with the pack and real gunpod mounted. I couldn't tell where the slop really came from, but it almost felt like the correct amount of slop on both sides would already have been enough to solve the miserable landing gears.

The whole thing feels almost as heavy as the Armored Kairos Plus, while the stand is kind of jiggly for me. Not that it's an issue for me yet. Will have to see if that hurts battroid a whole lot.

All in all, it's still generally a decent toy that holds together if you ignore the very derranged design choices. The only real "unintended" issues I have from playing so far are the shoulders unseating from the intakes too easily, and the usual hand tabs wanting to eject weapons, as with most toys and model kits.

A pleasant surprise that I have discovered is that the the random air brake gimmick actually makes the gerwalk reverse thrust pose look a dozen times more aggressive from some angles. I'm starting to think these toys should just be covered in moving wing flaps and brakes if for no other reason than making gerwalk look a lot cooler.

Edited November 2 by PointBlankSniper
deleted a redundant word and added an extra line

[Graham]

Hoping we get an announcement from Bandai soon about a DX VF-22S Max or Milia or Gamlin version.

My personal preference is for the Max VF-22S

[M'Kyuun]

7 hours ago, Graham said:

Hoping we get an announcement from Bandai soon about a DX VF-22S Max or Milia or Gamlin version.

My personal preference is for the Max VF-22S

I'm hoping Arcadia will seize on the opportunity to produce a superior YF-21 toy that addresses all of the DX's weaknesses and looks damned good doing it.

[rematron]

31 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

I'm hoping Arcadia will seize on the opportunity to produce a superior YF-21 toy that addresses all of the DX's weaknesses and looks damned good doing it.

Ditto.  But, at this point, I'm mostly just hoping Arcadia survives.  

[Bolt]

12 minutes ago, rematron said:

But, at this point, I'm mostly just hoping Arcadia survives.  

This !

[PointBlankSniper]

I've now gotten around to putting it into battroid. As someone who still hasn't watched the anime, and only seen screenshots and toy depictions, this still seems very off to me. The thing has got way too much thigh, thigh ring, and knee, just for the sake of staying in proportion with the nose cone, which itself is way too long for the mode.

Ignoring the proportions for a moment, I almost feel like some of the tabs were designed out of pure spite, malice, or mental illness. The backpack to collar plate, and then the collar plate to nape connections, both use a pair of micro pegs each. Tthey don't seem to have any significant latching bumps on them. Just why? There's enough material behind them to continue the shape into mega big latching tabs that could have outright deleted any hint of needing a brace. Instead, the made micro pegs that won't hold.

The neck to chest tab on the other hand, demonstrates they are willing to make such mega fat tabs. Except, over at the neck, it just gets in the way of transformation. The rear neck joint was tight as can be for me. The tab was so thick that I couldn't cheat a little with flex and let it guide itself in. The whole setup resulting in needing to wrangle the neck joint with the head popped off, so I could properly extend it all the way for the tab to clear the chest slot.

Back to the proportions. The angle of the intakes and collar are very wrong when with all the correct connections and brace in place. It's way too high in the back, causing a steep slope towards the front. It seems way more anime and line art accurate to just let the back sag and flop as it pleases without being connected. This whole thing just adds to the number of derranged design decisions.

From what I can tell, if they didnt have so much thigh length, they could have shaved that length from fighter mode. That would allow the leading edge of the wings to come in at a more perpendicular angle and be more proportionate to line art. Shortening that section would also mean cutting down the absurdly large collar plate for battroid. That would cause the nose cone to proportionately become longer compared to the rest of the plane, without actually being altered. That section including wings being longitudinally shorter should also mean lighter, stiffer, and less torque for gerwalk to keep from wanting to split open at the battroid joints.

The best I can say so far is, in a vacuum, this toy functions as "intended" by bandai's designers. I still have to try delimiter mode for a complete judgement I guess. And I forgot to swoosh in the proper high speed mode after being obstructed by trying to do it with the fast packs on. Contemplating transforming the YF-19 to see how they match up in the same forms too, but it feels like a lot of work.

At this point, I think I've pretty much given enough ideas to make this to way more anime and art accurate than bandai, simultaneously in all 3 forms. I haven't even spilled my solution for keeping close to the canonical leg transformation while still leaving the engine space alone and not cheating with it as a hollow shell lol

[M'Kyuun]

@PointBlankSniper Looks like you're a relatively new here, so welcome to MacrossWorld! ( just in case no one else bid you a proper greeting.🙂)

Do yourself a favor and take the time to watch Macross Plus. I prefer the OVA, but the movie's really good, too. It was my proper gateway into anime and Macross in general, and I consider it still one of the best anime I've ever watched. 

You've dissected this toy with the eye of a designer or perhaps an engineer, perhaps with a background in aviation. Your use of "longitudinal" perked my ears. I'm a retired Air Force aircraft mechanic, so I know a term or two.

I like the toy ok, but you're certainly not wrong regarding your critiques; this thing could and should have been better, especially for the asking price. Bandai definitely put more thought and effort into their VF/YF-19 toys, but Guld's ride seems like a first pass and then done; as you say, enough to be functional, but little beyond. It's a shame because it's a cool design; however, I think it's always going to be a difficult one to bring to fruition as Kawamori san was quite liberal with his use of "anime magic", to borrow an oft used phrase, to adjust the proportions of various aspects of the design to fit each mode. The result is a nigh impossible thing to recreate in three dimensions without concessions and fudging. I'm not excusing Bandai; there are plenty of poor or questionable decisions in the DX YF-21's design, but my point is that any toy maker is somewhat hamstrung at the offset by Kawamori's art and its liberal use of artistic license.

As I mentioned previously, despite its shortcomings, I still like the DX, as it presents well, IMHO (perhaps my bias overrides my better judgement), and it fixed the primary issues I had with the old Yamato: the too-skinny legs and wobbly hip joints. It has much improved stability over the old toy and the legs look so much better, more proportionately "right" relative to the whole. Battroid is my preferred mode for display, but as an aviation fan, the veracity of the jet mode matters. In the case of the YF-21, I can excuse a foreshortened forward fuselage to better accentuate the proportions of the battroid so long as the concession is reasonable. Yamato had a better solution which Bandai chose not to mimic. However, I think the DX's nose looks ok; not everyone shares that assessment, and if you're more of a fighter mode fan, as most Macross fans are, you're entitled to disagree. I think the compromise works for both modes without detrimentally affecting either. Again, Kawamori drew the nose far too small in battroid and drew the limbs quite large by comparison necessitating compromise on the part of the toy designers. On any YF-21 toy that eschews partsforming to achieve 'perfect' accuracy to the line art, the nose is always going to be too large in battroid if it is made to be reasonably proportional to the rest of the aircraft. In the case of the DX, it may be slightly undersized to benefit the battroid, but the fact remains that it will nigh invariably be larger than drawn.

Concerning your observations about the back and neck, specifically the pegs and tabs thereof, I haven't handled my copy since receiving it, and my memory fails. I do remember that the backpack is massive as well as the so-called "shelf" ('collar plate' in your words) which attaches it to the battroid's back to form the shoulder plane. The inexplicable enormity of the shelf also causes the large gap between back and backpack, one of a number of issues with this toy in that area. The weak joints that cause the backpack to droop are another issue, and Bandai's terrible decision to use a partsforming bracket to shore the thing up was most egregious; for the price and for the pedigree of Bandai's capabilities, this thing should not have had any partsforming whatsoever-the very idea should have been absolutely verboten. Alas, decisions like this that ended up in the final product manifest Bandai's lack of caring. They knew it would sell regardless and simply rested on their laurels. 

Concerning your observation that the shoulder plane inclines too steeply; according to the line art, it should angle downward slightly from back to front. IIRC, the Yamato 1/60's intakes inclined as well. That's actually one of the design features I like about the YF-21's battroid. The design aspect I absolutely hate is the method of storing the legs in a shell-forming manner rather than utilizing them as the primary or even secondary powerplant as with the vast majority of Kawamori's valks. A lot of grief and concessions could have been avoided had he simply designed the legs to, like the Legioss from Mospeada, rotate and lie flat forming the vast majority of the fuselage behind the intake section minus the accursed belly plates. Ah, perchance to dream.

Anyway, it sounds as if you have a project in mind to address all these issues. It's my hope that you'll share your progress or at least the fruits of your ruminations and labor with us. The YF-21 is an interesting and unique beastie amongst the menagerie of valks, and to see different solutions to the various challenges it presents is always fascinating and enjoyable. If indeed you're working on something, I wish you every success. Cheers!

Credit to anymoon.com for the pic.

Credit to macross2.net for pic

[PointBlankSniper]

You are giving me too much credit. I'm not qualified or skilled in anything. I'm just a pedantic critic, and bandai's negligence on so many fronts is triggering all my 'tisms lol

For the collar, I get that there is supposed to be a slight incline, but I think bandai has way gone too far. With how deep towards that back the collar stretches, it just looks like there is that much more of a slope. Then the top of the backpack towers over the battroid's hood, when it should be lower than the hood. Maybe my desk height and eye level gives me a view that makes the worst of it.

I'll admit I actually think the art accurate fighter nose length is a bit goofy, so whatever bandai did for fighter nose is actually fine to me. It's just that in principle, since they went through with all the changes just to have the fat calves, they should have commited all the way and gone for the correct battroid torso length. The same holds true for the thigh to knee sections. Ignoring the torso, if you just compare how low the knee cap ends on the DX, to where it is in the anime art in that anymoon image, you will see that the fat calves did not get the correct length of accompanying shins because the thighs took up all the height.

 

Anyway, as I said, I'm not skilled in anything, so there is no big project. I'll try to depict my idea sometime, either in text, or very crudely edited images in MS paint. I should add that I've even thought of a way to shorten the nose even more than yamato. There is definitely mix and matching from bandai and yamato's designs, and even some cheating in how the line art is interpreted, but I don't think the results will irk anyone. There might even be a side effect of having room for chunkier forearms, but that is gonna be hard to verify. Maybe if I make enough sense, someone else can make something of it all.

First, I still need to get the DX into delimiter mode and high speed mode at least once, so I have a grasp on all the features before I go on and speak of fancy ideas out the bum.

[M'Kyuun]

Although I pointed out a number of issues with which I take a certain bit of umbrage, I watched progress, or the lack thereof, on this toy over the span of about 5 years, as it was first revealed in 2019 and the criticisms on this board came hard and fast. As the years passed and the DX YF-21 looked like it was going to become vaporware, suddenly Bandai started showing it off again and announced it'd be going up for sale at such and such time. Once again, folks here piled on with their varied nitpicks and niggles. The backpack requiring an external brace was a later revelation which also sparked ire (for good reason). Anyway, By the time the PO window came around, I think most of us knew what we were getting, as little had changed over the intervening years, and stuff like the backpack brace and heavily partsforming delimiter mode only added fuel to the fire. Still, many of us preordered our copies. The bent head lasers and other reported breakages only added more fuel to the fire for those who got bad copies. But as far as the core toy went, we knew what we were getting. As such, I'm not as 'triggered' by its numerous faults. I'm not happy about them, and I vehemently wish Bandai had fixed a few things before going into production, but I knew and I bought it anyway. Fortunately, my copy arrived with a straight head laser and no breakages. I'm one of the lucky ones. In hand, I found the transformation to be fairly accommodating (sliding the backpack bits was a sticky affair initially, but with persistence, I got it), and overall, I rather like the look of the battroid. Don't get me wrong; I absolutely despise the use of an external brace to hold up all that backpack, and that big gap between back and pack beggars how it ever got beyond the drawing board, but proportionately, including the length of the thighs, it looks fine to me. Note that in Kawamori's art, the thighs are bent forward slightly and that angle could serve to foreshorten the thigh somewhat. That art, too, compared to two practical models of the YF-21 illustrates just how much license is at play. Some variance in the practical models is to be expected, especially the length of the forward fuselage forming the torso, and we definitely see that in comparison. We have similar issues in the Transformers world, where the old G1 Sunbow show leaves much to be desired in terms of toys based off of such inconsistent and variously (dis)proportionate animation. If the YF-21's thighs bother you, Transformers will give you apoplexy! 😄 Anyway, there's no doubt it's a mixed bag and various things about it resonate differently with each of us, probably more towards the negative inclination; however, from my perspective, I wanted a YF-21 that looked proportionate in battroid, at least better than the old Yamato, and that enjoyed some stability while standing. Bandai delivered that and I'm happy to have it in my display. It's certainly not perfect and one hopes Arcadia is still with us and have designs for a new improved YF-21, but their silence has been dismayingly deafening. 

Whatever your ideas, share them in the best way you can muster. One need not be an engineer or a designer to create. For my part, I always thought an interesting idea for compacting the legs sideways would be to have the outer calf bulges be separate hinged panels that fold into the fighter's interior when the legs are stowed. Even shaving 4 or 5 mm from the width of the legs in such manner would help thin them out a bit for a shallower fighter profile. I will add, however, that I always thought it a monumental waste of space to have those nacelles above the legs and not use them for leg storage. I like that solution, even if it did increase the width of the nacelles on the DX thus making the gap between them shallower, which is inaccurate to the line art. I can live with it; I prefer the practical solution, as well as Bandai's using the calves to hide the feet- pretty brilliant innovation, that.

Good luck getting your copy into delimiter mode. I have zero interest in doing so, in fact I only made a half-hearted attempt to attach the FAST packs. Mine went from fighter to battroid and right into the Detolf next to my DX VF-19 Advance, also sans FAST packs. I generally prefer my valks unadorned. Again, good luck and I look forward to your thoughts.

Edited November 7 by M'Kyuun

[Mommar]

On 10/17/2024 at 2:03 AM, Chronocidal said:

Yeah, I'm being at least partly sarcastic about it, but in my personal experience with every request I made for a replacement of anything broken or missing from any of the DX releases I've ordered going back to the VF-25, every single request was either outright denied, or I was told to send the entire item back at my own expense.

My VF-25G Michael came missing his crotch plate, and I was basically turned down flat for any help.  Bandai was just completely unwilling (or unable) to send me that missing part, and the best I've ever gotten until now was the vendor telling me to send them back the whole item for a replacement.  Given how insane the demand has been for pretty much every DX release, I never saw that as a viable option, because I was not going to bet on there ever being any stock available to even exchange it for.

That VF-25 purchase was the point where I started ordering two of everything, just to ensure better odds of getting at least one whole item.  Even in the case of something like the VF-171s, that gave me pretty good odds of at least being able to combine two broken ones into one whole one.  

I missed this message.  I had the neck peg for the Mk V Gundam snap and Bluefin got me a replacement for that.

[Mommar]

On 11/5/2024 at 1:44 AM, PointBlankSniper said:

I've now gotten around to putting it into battroid. As someone who still hasn't watched the anime, and only seen screenshots and toy depictions, this still seems very off to me. The thing has got way too much thigh, thigh ring, and knee, just for the sake of staying in proportion with the nose cone, which itself is way too long for the mode.

Ignoring the proportions for a moment, I almost feel like some of the tabs were designed out of pure spite, malice, or mental illness. The backpack to collar plate, and then the collar plate to nape connections, both use a pair of micro pegs each. Tthey don't seem to have any significant latching bumps on them. Just why? There's enough material behind them to continue the shape into mega big latching tabs that could have outright deleted any hint of needing a brace. Instead, the made micro pegs that won't hold.

The neck to chest tab on the other hand, demonstrates they are willing to make such mega fat tabs. Except, over at the neck, it just gets in the way of transformation. The rear neck joint was tight as can be for me. The tab was so thick that I couldn't cheat a little with flex and let it guide itself in. The whole setup resulting in needing to wrangle the neck joint with the head popped off, so I could properly extend it all the way for the tab to clear the chest slot.

Back to the proportions. The angle of the intakes and collar are very wrong when with all the correct connections and brace in place. It's way too high in the back, causing a steep slope towards the front. It seems way more anime and line art accurate to just let the back sag and flop as it pleases without being connected. This whole thing just adds to the number of derranged design decisions.

From what I can tell, if they didnt have so much thigh length, they could have shaved that length from fighter mode. That would allow the leading edge of the wings to come in at a more perpendicular angle and be more proportionate to line art. Shortening that section would also mean cutting down the absurdly large collar plate for battroid. That would cause the nose cone to proportionately become longer compared to the rest of the plane, without actually being altered. That section including wings being longitudinally shorter should also mean lighter, stiffer, and less torque for gerwalk to keep from wanting to split open at the battroid joints.

The best I can say so far is, in a vacuum, this toy functions as "intended" by bandai's designers. I still have to try delimiter mode for a complete judgement I guess. And I forgot to swoosh in the proper high speed mode after being obstructed by trying to do it with the fast packs on. Contemplating transforming the YF-19 to see how they match up in the same forms too, but it feels like a lot of work.

At this point, I think I've pretty much given enough ideas to make this to way more anime and art accurate than bandai, simultaneously in all 3 forms. I haven't even spilled my solution for keeping close to the canonical leg transformation while still leaving the engine space alone and not cheating with it as a hollow shell lol

You're hired.

[davidwhangchoi]

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

I missed this message.  I had the neck peg for the Mk V Gundam snap and Bluefin got me a replacement for that.

most likely Chronocidal imported his Michael which at the time was not a WWM release in the US.

Gundams were licensed to sell in the US so bluefin  covered yours as they have been sending replacement for bent antenna's for the USA brought YF-21s.

 

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, this was at the original release, not the more recent re-issue.

That was basically the only attempt I ever made to get Bandai to replace a missing or broken part, so I don't know if things ever changed, or if it was possibly just the vendor I used that didn't try very hard.

[Shawn]

Can I just say, I hate the YF-21 transformation.

Its been in battroid mode since the release, and today thought I'd go to fighter

Unless all the special steps are fresh in your memory you are hosed. I'd use a youtube saver to save off all of @genius's videos, put them on a thumb drive and stick them in the box for future generations to know what the hell you need to do.

Many of the panels are just slightly askew, even after multiple multiple 'back it out again and try again' steps. Still missing one of the folder booster mount plugins, so glad those can pop out and get lost. Only do any transformation on a clean taught white sheet.

For something this complicated I'd consider more a parts former, or at least have things that can be detached-like the leg covers. 

That is my old man vent for tonight, its in fighter mode and I doubt it will ever get out of that whilst in my possession.

Looks great, feels hefty, transformation horrible. I'd say its a tie between this and the DX SV-262, which I thought nothing could ever top in complexity and frustration.

[PointBlankSniper]

Just got it to delimiter mode. Popped the legs out, checked the instuctins for the arms to find the disconnecting point. Too lazy for instructions and just went back to the fighter shell blind with only a vague understanding of the mechanisms from going into battroid from days ago.

5 hours ago, Shawn said:

Unless all the special steps are fresh in your memory you are hosed. I'd use a youtube saver to save off all of @genius's videos, put them on a thumb drive and stick them in the box for future generations to know what the hell you need to do.

Dunno what gaps you may have, but I think the most confusing part going blind is the intakes. You gotta wiggle them in any and all directions while straightening the fuselage. But then you can't forget about that hump between the cowl and air brake that needs to thread through the collar.

The neck is on a really stiff S bend with a fat neck tab that I complained about before. It needs to pull back properly for the tab to clear the back of the cockpit. I'm not even sure where the correct stopping point of pulling the cowl back is. My cockpit tabs back into it very weakly too, and IDK if its because that tab is still touching and pushing it out.

The engines have 2 stages of telescoping. Once over the back surface, and then another for the round humps to get out of the engine blocks. Don't forget to unsink the engine humps from the middle of the blocks. Then theres the 1 click of unsinking the underside to get the lock pin back in.

 

Anyway, back to my own scheduled complaining. I tried to skip the lock pin for delimiter, but it just gets pressed in with how stiff the delimiter tub's connections are. Also had to check what funny angles the engine panels had to be at to let the engine panel area of the tub seat in. TBH, knowing what delimiter mode is, seeing it fill so much space feels so wrong. I thought I would have felt better about the toy seeing one form look kind of good, but I really didn't. As a depiction of a barebones form, the size of partsforming required to reach it, kind of makes it disappointing. Once again, I also gotta complain about how a chunk of the tub is there to replace most of the shape that is already there under it... And the lock pin really didn't need to exist. A rotating block could have been on one side and held the height of the gap, and then rolled a shorter face towards the other side to allow collapsing.

I also played with the landing gears again. The rear gears are even more frustrating than I thought. It's encased in a way that has protrusions to block any sort of imagined solution to their lack of length. You absolutely need to rotate it in that needless inward facing orientation when there is room to just not spin it if that hadn't blocked it off with a weird bump. It even blocks the animation accurate orientation with that thick door and fake struts when they absolutely had the space for it. I have seen a clip of what is probably its first takeoff, so I know the wheel hub faces down.

[M'Kyuun]

I decided to transform mine to fighter and back today, and gotta say, @PointBlankSniper, yours and others' critiques aren't wrong on many counts. The gear is a huge question mark. Of all the issues this thing has, that was the easiest one to fix, as they absolutely had to know that there was no ground clearance with guns or packs installed and with a few design changes, they could have both given the struts enough length for ground clearance regardless of FAST pack configuration/gun installation and proper canon stowage with the wheels facing down. Too, those transformable gunpods are pretty big and I almost wonder if a separate team from the core toy team designed them and, after doing no crosschecking for compatibility, discovered that they prevented the gear from proper ground contact too late into production to make any meaningful changes. Or they knew and just didn't care enough to try. I'm using the molded gun holding hand for my copy's gunpod , so I removed it and flattened the fingers out on the left hand. However, no matter how I moved the left hand, I couldn't get the surrounding panels to secure- the hand was always in the way. So I removed it, and the panels all closed and secured nicely. Not sure why I couldn't get the panels to close with the hand attached as that's how it arrived and the panels were secured just fine out of the box. And yeah, I rotated the little blue bit inside the panel first, but it still wouldn't close. Fishing that blue spine block through is a bit of a pain, but I finally got it. Finally, I had trouble getting the forward pointy bits of the engine nacelles to slide up into their battroid position. After consulting Anymoon's transformation vid, I was able to get it to slide north into place, although I'm still not quite sure what was blocking it from moving initially. Anyway, while it's far from the worst or most difficult thing I've ever transformed, it's not really fun, either. It's a bit finnicky, somewhat unpleasantly so in some places, but not so bad in others. I still love the foot stowage solution and those big bulbous lower legs. I still think it looks pretty good in battroid, even if I feel a pang of disdain over the need for the external brace to keep its saggy backside in place. Regardless, I doubt I'll be transforming it again anytime soon. I have plenty of toys that are much more enjoyable to transform, and I generally don't mess with my larger figs anyway, mostly out of fear that I'll ham-handedly break something. For now, the DX does a respectable job of filling the void next to my DX VF-19 Advance in my Detolf, completing my Macross Plus display. And yeah, I know the Advance was technically in the Macross Frontier movie Sayonara no Tsubasa, but its resemblance to the YF-19 is close enough to function as my YF-19 stand-in in my Bandai valk collection.

[Chronocidal]

For what it's worth, if you're going with fighter displays, the Advance is a better option anyway, since the feet on the YF-19 version are so bad in fighter mode, and the markings are much less excessive.  The benefit of the YF-19 update is mostly the extra knee joint, which doesn't matter in fighter anyhow.

Edited Wednesday at 01:12 AM by Chronocidal

[M'Kyuun]

49 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

For what it's worth, if you're going with fighter displays, the Advance is a better option anyway, since the feet on the YF-19 version are so bad in fighter mode, and the markings are much less excessive.  The benefit of the YF-19 update is mostly the extra knee joint, which doesn't matter in fighter anyhow.

Even more good news for me, as most of my valks see GERWALK only once during their inaugural transformation. After that, I'll on rare occasions go from battroid to fighter and back, but most of the time, my valks are dust collectors in the truest sense. I don't mess with them much, but I sure do love looking at them. GERWALK is my least favorite mode (I consider it a mid-transformation step more than an actual mode, but it's a Kawamori/Macross thing). 

I remember commentary about the DX YF-19's heels being different, and not in a good way. At the time, I was glad I'd bought the Advance, as the only other difference was the dual opening cockpits, which I could live without. When Bandai announced their YF-19, and I saw how similar they were, I remained content with the Advance as my YF-19 placeholder. Lovely beastie, she is.