Bandai 1/55 hi-metal r vf-1s

[TWC]

Hi guys, 

I dug our my old toys and found my macross vf-1s , not in great condition coz it was played with heaps.

however I noticed the booster and armour is in red as opposed to grey/navy as on the box art. 
 

were there error productions? Ie boosters meant for transformer jetfire but ended up in macross boxes that sort of thing

cheers guys

 

[DewPoint]

Read the following:  Takatoku & Bandai 1/55 VF-1 Toys from jenius' site.  You may have a later Takatoku or Matsushiro release.

And welcome to Macross World!

Edited June 5, 2020 by DewPoint
Typos

[nightmareB4macross]

31 minutes ago, TWC said:

Hi guys, 

I dug our my old toys and found my macross vf-1s , not in great condition coz it was played with heaps.

however I noticed the booster and armour is in red as opposed to grey/navy as on the box art. 
 

were there error productions? Ie boosters meant for transformer jetfire but ended up in macross boxes that sort of thing

cheers guys

 

Post a picture.

Let’s see what we can do to figure out your mysterious parts.

[jenius]

30 minutes ago, TWC said:

Hi guys, 

I dug our my old toys and found my macross vf-1s , not in great condition coz it was played with heaps.

however I noticed the booster and armour is in red as opposed to grey/navy as on the box art. 
 

were there error productions? Ie boosters meant for transformer jetfire but ended up in macross boxes that sort of thing

cheers guys

 

This sounds like the Taiwan KO, they also did a half box version with just the valk, no supers. @xstoys or @glane21 could help.

[TWC]

[TWC]

Thanks for the warm welcome! 
mysterious boosters and armour.

proper Japan made toy back then. 
a pity never took care of it as a kid.. I’ll try to restore it if not a good clean

cheers

[TheLoneWolf]

That's an interesting find! Did your family buy this brand new from a retailer back in the 80's or was it second-hand from something like a yard sale?

My first reaction when I saw it was to say that someone lost or kept the original gray strike armor and replaced it with Jetfire's red armor (which was released the same year as the Strike Valkyrie). But then I noticed that it's missing the Big West copyright sticker on the box. It's also got a 50th Nissan Anniversary sticker, which I've never seen before on any 1/55 Strike Valkyries (1984 is indeed the 50th anniversary of the Nissan Motor Co.). Inexplicably, it also includes the green instruction booklet from Takatoku's 1/55 VF-1S.

My guess is that this is a (unlicensed?) variant that Bandai produced for Nissan near the end of the Strike Valkyrie's 1984 production run, in which they Frankensteined leftovers from Jetfire and Takatoku booklets, figuring Japanese kids and Nissan wouldn't notice or care.

Or, whoever you bought this from, Frankensteined the Jetfire armor and booklet themselves and slapped an age-approriate Nissan 50th Anniversary sticker on it to boot.

edit: Just to add some context, there's an urban myth that Bandai ran out of FAST Packs during production of the 1/55 Elintseeker and Super Ostrich toys and just shoved Jetfire armor inside to save money. Some fans swear that they bought brand new Elintseekers and Ostriches back in the 1980's only to find Jetfire armor instead of the correct ones. Maybe the same thing happened with the Strike Valkyrie? While these are all clearly unsubstantiated stories, we do know for a fact that Jetfire had multiple production runs due to its popularity in America, so it's possible that Bandai had a glut of leftover Jetfire armor.

Edited June 5, 2020 by TheLoneWolf

[crackpot]

It's obviously a Frankensteined set. Original DYRL VF-1S with Transformers Jetfire fast packs.

[Bad Larry]

This doesn't help at all, but in the late '90s in Boston I bought a 1/55 Strike Valk in an Elintseeker box from a brick & mortar shop that specialized in Japanese toys. It came in a big batch of stuff the owner had just imported. There were a couple other 1/55s and the owner had no idea why the Strike toy was in the VE box.

 

Thank you

[DewPoint]

Did Jetfire fast packs come with stickers applied?  I've never owned one.  So its either used with Jetfire parts or a very early Bandai release?

[jenius]

Where's that price tag from?

[easnoddy]

Could be Jetfire boosters, but the box looks like a bootleg (no Bandai logo).  So its possibly a bootleg packaged with Jetfire armor.

[crackpot]

3 minutes ago, easnoddy said:

Could be Jetfire boosters, but the box looks like a bootleg (no Bandai logo).  So its possibly a bootleg packaged with Jetfire armor.

The logo is on the lower right corner. 

[jvmacross]

15 hours ago, TWC said:

Hi guys, 

I dug our my old toys and found my macross vf-1s , not in great condition coz it was played with heaps.

however I noticed the booster and armour is in red as opposed to grey/navy as on the box art. 
 

were there error productions? Ie boosters meant for transformer jetfire but ended up in macross boxes that sort of thing

cheers guys

 

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/topic/16592-155s-revisited/?do=findComment&comment=337630

 

[jenius]

And solved.. final release of what was lying around.

[crackpot]

Lol! Bandai actually had the gall to release it with left over Jetfire parts? 

[Anasazi37]

2 hours ago, crackpot said:

Lol! Bandai actually had the gall to release it with left over Jetfire parts? 

As a kid, that would have made me so incredibly sad to finally get my hands on a Strike Valkyrie or VE-1 and find Jetfire armor inside the box.

[nightmareB4macross]

Here is an interesting bit for everyone.

At the end of the Strike VF-1S/Elintseeker production run there was an uneven production run of VFs to Armour. More VFs were produced and were sold to various retailers through out the US accompanied with Matsushiro armor.

From a story I was told involved Pony Go Round in San Francisco, CA. The owner was given a rare opportunity to buy stock in mismatched VFs with Jetfire Armor. These were sold at a steep discount to the retailer and then these ended up in the common market. So this is why you see VE-1 and VF-1S Valkyries with Jetfire Armor from Matsushiro. 

IIRC, this all took place in mid 1990s.

The source was Ravishing Rick an old MW member on the boards.

I actually have each of the two versions with Jetfire armor. It’s easy to tell when these are real and not a Frankenstein mash up but I won’t give away the tells. 

Hope this cleared up a bit of mystique from Valkyries of our past.

[TWC]

2 hours ago, nightmareB4macross said:

Here is an interesting bit for everyone.

At the end of the Strike VF-1S/Elintseeker production run there was an uneven production run of VFs to Armour. More VFs were produced and were sold to various retailers through out the US accompanied with Matsushiro armor.

From a story I was told involved Pony Go Round in San Francisco, CA. The owner was given a rare opportunity to buy stock in mismatched VFs with Jetfire Armor. These were sold at a steep discount to the retailer and then these ended up in the common market. So this is why you see VE-1 and VF-1S Valkyries with Jetfire Armor from Matsushiro. 

IIRC, this all took place in mid 1990s.

The source was Ravishing Rick an old MW member on the boards.

I actually have each of the two versions with Jetfire armor. It’s easy to tell when these are real and not a Frankenstein mash up but I won’t give away the tells. 

Hope this cleared up a bit of mystique from Valkyries of our past.

 

[TWC]

Wow, thanks guys, lots of possibilities, 

the strike was bought new from a retailer here in Malaysia back in the late 80s early 90s .. the price was in Malaysian Ringgit .. 

the Nissan sticker, could have been stuck on by me as my dad worked at Nissan haha, another senario could also be it was a gift set by Nissan and he brought it back for us kids back then. ! I can’t for the life of me remember the actual senario .. but it had a price tag so that is unlikely.. gifts don’t normally have price tags haha not cool 

in fact I have the elintseeker as well also from the same time but that one is correct parts as far as I can gather

well anyway it’s really an eye opener to explore the possibilities 

thanks chaps! 

 

[glane21]

It’s true, I bought a new VE-1 back in the day that came with the jet fire armor rather than correct domed packs.  Didn’t include the heat shield either if remember correctly.  There was no warning from the seller so I was quite unpleasantly surprised.  This was before internet was ubiquitous - old school mail order - so not much recourse.  I believe it was from The Robot Store in New York.  The same outfit that ran ads in Comico’s Robotech comics.  I still have one of their old photocopy catalogs somewhere.

Edited June 8, 2020 by glane21

[jvmacross]

10 hours ago, glane21 said:

This was before internet was ubiquitous - old school mail order - so not much recourse.  

 

[masarujasu]

On 6/6/2020 at 4:26 PM, nightmareB4macross said:

I actually have each of the two versions with Jetfire armor. It’s easy to tell when these are real and not a Frankenstein mash up but I won’t give away the tells. 

Couple of questions:

Do these have the glossy stickers covering the copyright stamps?

If not, what molded stamp is visible?

Relating this to a question I've asked in another thread: 

Many thanks.