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FIGHTER
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GERWALK
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BATTROID
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COMPARISONS
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BOX/INSTRUCTIONS
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Introduction
Yamato's 1/60 scale
transformable Roy Focker type VF-1S toy is due to be released around December
15th 2001, in Japan. However, I was lucky enough to receive an
early sample last week for review on Macross World.
Yamato received a
lot of comments from consumers that the ABS plastic used on the Hikaru VF-1A
was too bright. So for the Focker type VF-1S they choose an ABS plastic
that has a very slight greyish tint to it. Personally, I think this color
looks great. Unfortunately, due to lighting problems when I was shooting the
photos for this review, the color may not show up too well.
The Head
It will be interesting
to see Macross World fans comments on Yamato's VF-1S head sculpt. Personally,
I like it a lot, especially the translucent green eye-piece.
Please bear in mind
that all Yamato VF-1 heads are designed to be optimised for fighter mode so
that they hang down the least.
However, I can anticipate
some people perhaps saying the head is a little too squat and the head lasers
a little too big. However, before you all be too critical and bash the head
sculpt, please consider that the VF-1S head is one of the most difficult shapes
to correctly sculpt in 3D. In fact, the Yamato VF-1S head has gone through
3 or 4 different generations of sculpts to try to find the best compromise.
Improvements
The VF-1S uses basically
the same body as the earlier VF-1A toys, but Yamato have made a number of
small but important improvements in response to fan feedback as follows: -
- Both the clear cockpit canopy
and heatshield are now much easier to remove and attach by hand.
- The UN Spacy logo and squadron
number on the wing are now printed on using 'Tampo Printing' instead of
stickers.
- In battriod mode the backpack
has been redesigned to sit about 4mm higher as many people complained
that on the VF-1A the backpack was too low.
- In fighter mode, the gap between
the backpack and back plate has been reduced This has had the effect of
tightening up the fit of the back pack, which means that you can now do
barrel rolls in fighter mode and the back pack will not flop down when
the toy is held inverted (upside down). However, if you give the toy a
really hard shake, the back pack will still flop down, but with normal
barrel rolls it says in place. Actually when designing the VF-1 series
toys, Yamato never considered that people would try to do barrel rolls
with the toys, but I told the don't underestimate fans! Actually, I was
told that some Japanese fans even take their toys into the shower with
them!
- The paint has been changed so
that it is not completely matte and now has a slight gloss finish, especially
on the lower legs.
- The instruction manual has been
revised so that it now features a sticker placement guide and some new
photos for the transformation guide. Please note that the instruction
manual in this review is a pre-printing sample which is why it is grey.
The manuals t that come with the toys will be printed on white paper.
- The sticker sheet has been revised
so that the UN Spacy symbol stickers do not have such a thick black line
around them.
The Future?
Expect more improvements
from Yamato, especially in terms of quality as they have a hot new person
responsible for QC/QA, who really knows his stuff and will be very tough with
the factory.
Also, with future
VF-1 variants (probably starting with the FAST pack versions), we can expect
to see the low-hanging gunpod problem resolved. Also, the shoulder rotation
issue will also be improved in future.
Unfortunately, one
fan complaint that can't be handled is the issue of having the legs more firmly
attached in Gerwalk mode. As the heavy die-cast legs only have one attachment
point in this mode, it is difficult to improve the attachment without a radical
redesign.
Conclusion
The Yamato VF-1S is
a great toy and I can highly recommend it.
Graham
