Macross World

This kit has been controversial from the beginning and now that I’ve finished this kit, I figured I’d give my own viewpoint.  I’ll try to be fair and balanced.

I built this kit without painting much.  The parts I painted were –

– the tailfins

– the foot thrusters

– the gunpod

– some minor details here and there

– the black stripes on the arms, legs, and wings

I had to paint the black stripes because the Bandai decals were terrible and generally a pain to work with.  Those areas are also heavily touched during construction.  Decals can be easily scratched even with a clear coat on top. Paint is a bit tougher (esp the lacquer & enamels I use). Painting them was also much easier.

About 2 years ago, Nel2012 AKA neldorwen (on deviant art) started a thread in our fan art section that featured a lot of her past works. I’ve seen a lot of these pieces myself when perusing the web for Macross art and it was a pleasure to see the artist finally showcase her work on our forum. She stated on that thread that she is planning a huge anniversary piece that featured major characters from all the Macross shows. This instantly piqued my interest. Her art is very detailed and exquisitely colored, so I was wondering how far off she was from finishing this tribute to our favorite show. I couldn’t wait to see the final piece. But the fact that she announced her plans in April and didn’t post the first sketched until September had me worried. Will this be another big project that becomes vaporware on Macross World? We’ve all seen people start threads with ambitious goals and then just die out. The great thing about Nel’s project was that she was posting individual pieces that by themselves were finished works. Seeing these illustrations get posted month after month assured me that she was determined to get it done.

About halfway thru September in the midst of preparing for Macross World Convention 2014, I received a package sent by the folks from lunartoystore.com. This package was actually mistakenly sent to me by a previous reviewer and it was suppose to go to someone else. But I contacted lunartoystore and they said to go ahead and hold on to it until MWCon, which I was happy to. Because inside wasn’t just another toy to be curious about. It’s the first at an attempt for someone to make a “third party” figure based on the series that this site is dedicated to. Now third party is in quotation because, this isn’t exactly the first time a third party made a Macross toy, but what it insinuates. A “Third Party” product is what a unlicensed toy has been dubbed in the Transformers collector’s world. I’m not sure if it’s been adopted by other toy collectors but to me, it’s most prevalent in that line. I’d love to skip that explanation but if I do, then all the emails and comments will be based on that misnomer and not on the toy itself.