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 Saturday at 06:13 AM 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