Bandai HG 1/100 YF-21 & VF-22

[Convectuoso]

5 minutes ago, Mommar said:

Built Gamlin Saturday.  Very simple. Instructions aren't written nearly as well as the Gundams kits are, however.  Their parts forming solution for Fighter and Gerwalk/Battroid has essentially been my recommendation for the 1/60 toys to get a proper fighter proportion.  Actually looks correct in all three modes.  And next to its 1/60 counterpart makes the DX look like an absolute joke.

Did you paint it or applied the included stickers/ decals?

I'm still trying to understand why, if the set comes with black and gray pieces, there's a black part that needs to be covered with gray decals.

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, Convectuoso said:

Did you paint it or applied the included stickers/ decals?

I'm still trying to understand why, if the set comes with black and gray pieces, there's a black part that needs to be covered with gray decals.

I don't understand where you're going with this.

[Chronocidal]

It is kind of a dumb issue to have, but it really comes down to how the part arrangement on the different sprues works out.

So for instance, the YF-21 comes with the jagged yellow markings over the intakes molded in yellow.  That's a separate piece.  That's great to not have to paint that part.

But then you get to the M&M VF-22s, and suddenly that part needs to be the same color as the main body.  Whoops.

You're left with two options here.  Either you're going to include alternate sprues of the correct color for that part with each version, or you're going to take the cheap way out and tell the customer to paint it, or include a sticker to cover it up.

Bandai has done both in various kits, and I have to assume it just comes down to what makes the most financial sense.

The HG Fire Valkyrie kit includes several sprues lifted straight from the YF-19 release for some of the joints, and even includes parts that won't be used until they make a normal VF-19F/S.  You get a ton of spare parts, but that's something that works into the price.  The Mirage Sv-262 was hilarious for this, because the dual white and magenta scheme basically meant you had another half a kit's worth of unused parts when you were done.

In the VF-22's case, I'm just guessing it didn't make any financial sense for them to include an entire sprue in gray, rather than letting the modeler paint or decal over a single black part that needed to be gray.

Edit: Just opened my kit to look, and I'm assuming this is about the upper arms.  Yeah, they're the color of the main body, because the upper arms on the YF-21 are blue, and each of those two parts are spread across two of the larger sprues containing a large amount of the main body of the valk.  Including a spare copy of those sprues molded in gray would be been incredibly excessive, and very likely increased the cost of the kit substantially.  Otherwise they would have had to make a dedicated sprue mold of just that part for this release.

This one was already a massive price hike over the YF-21, so the extra cost to include those parts in their proper color just wouldn't have made any sense.

Although... I'm really curious why they included the barrier punch effect in gray.  That's just really strange.  

This won't be a problem on the M&M versions, since they have their upper arms molded in their main body color like the YF-21.  However, like I said above, they don't have the upper intake zig-zags, so we're getting stickers for them the same way.

Edited Monday at 10:49 PM by Chronocidal