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.
What was sent was not the final production version but a test shot, but I wouldn’t be able tell unless was told. By the time I received it, there were already two reviews posted on the forums, so I informed the people at Lunar Toys that I was just slammed with MWCon preparations to even begin to think putting together a proper review. We did promote them in our social media circuits in return for their sponsorship of the con. More on that later.
While I’m not into the unboxing section of many video reviews online, it was almost a shame not to experience that part of it when I first took out the toy amidst newspaper wrappings and plastic bags. Because as soon as I saw the toy, I was impressed by the premium look and feel. The plastic did not feel cheap in any way. Seeing the pictures online, you’d think that you would miss the heft of a die-cast framed toy. But the lightness did not take away from the handling at all. And as a Macross fan, having lived thru many bootleg versions of toys when the real versions were scarce, it’s really surprising to get to play with something that you can proudly display next to the current toys in my collection. I even put it next to the 1/3000 version of the SDF-1 because visually, that’s where it belonged. Again, check out the videos by Peaugh and Gakken85 posted in this section.
Macross Toy Review Section
During the transformation of the toy, I did feel it was difficult to rotate the midsection from Fortress mode to Cruiser mode. I thought this was going to be a common problem, but a couple of days later I received the second sample. This was the one meant for me. I didn’t open it because I didn’t think it was necessary to have two open and I didn’t want to responsible for both toys. As I was displaying it for the con, I realized that this one had no problems rotating the middle part. So I’m hoping that issue is unique to the first toy I got to handle. It was mentioned in the reviews that there are some parts that have to be removed during transformation. The head, because of it’s sheer size for that SD look, absolutely had no way to go in between the small space between the main cannons. And then the shoulder cannons have to be replaced to a lower part of the shoulders when in cruiser mode. Despite that, transforming this toy is quite easy. Partly by design of the ship in theanime and partly because of the design of the toy itself. Even with the parts removal, the speed that you can go from one mode to the next makes it such a delight to play with. It’s refreshing from all the new toys we’ve been getting that takes forever just to get between modes. Combined with the cuteness of the little guy, I actually found myself picking it up a lot when taking breaks or sitting down to watch some TV.
During the con itself, we put it out to display. The response was pretty positive from the con-goers. Many had already pre-ordered it and many more were convinced to get one when they saw it. It’ll be interesting to find out how it does and what the future is for these type of toys. If this turns out to be the only one “third party” Macross toy made, I’ll be pretty happy that it’s this one. I can’t imagine what other Macross based toy I would like in place if I had to make a choice. I’ve seen the Joke Machine and I even have the Rohby version. The Bandai SD VF-25 is almost a bonus also. Maybe a TV SD SDF-1? That might work. 
The “Makuros” has been released into the wild and Lunar Toy Store has informed me that it is on it’s way to his store at this very moment. Once he has it in hand he’ll be asking for his customers to complete their transaction.
Thanks again to lunartoystore for supporting MWCon ’14.