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Seems like everyone finally got Mixmaster. I did have the knee mods ready to go. here's some before and after. these are with the new knee joints installed that now center the lower limbs. The color shade is barely noticeable to the naked eye.

Yeah it’s interesting. I want to try other underpainting variations and see how they look.

It’s full of empty hope and Bandai is going to be Bandai @davidwhangchoi and you know that. Bandai is like Hot Toys and Mezco: Full of teases and NOTHING gets done. They pull the rug under everyone’s feet and just sweep it under the rug: “Don’t know anything about what you’re talking about or have seen it”.

I got all six. Devastator review tomorrow.

I see DHL is now an option at HLJ. I put together an order of some hasegawa stuff. After duties and handling fees on top of shipping, I cancelled. Way too much..

Strange New Worlds season 3 finale is out... "New Life and New Civilizations". We're telegraphing this outcome so hard that Samuel Morse is demanding a writing credit. On the plus side, Scotty is the latest victim of the dress uniform prank and came fully kitted out in his kilt. It's even, quite appropriately, Scott clan tartan. The same pattern that the TOS producers deliberately sought out for Scotty's dress uniform in "The Savage Curtain". In all honesty, this is supposed to be the season's Big Bad and I am absolutely failing to take it the slightest bit seriously. This is some of the worst wardrobe work since Praetor Shinzon's oil-sheen pleather onesie in Star Trek: Nemesis. This was supposed to be a serious dramatic moment. Like, it even comes with its own musical sting to emphasize the drama... but I am on the f***ing floor busting a gut laughing because this MFer's out here dressing like its first free act was to hit up a tailor shop and say "What can you do to make me look more like a Power Rangers villain?" This costume doesn't say "I am an existential threat to the galaxy". It says "I'm going to get my *ss beat by five teenagers with attitude". Oh for pity's sake, now we have space ley lines... Can someone please remind the writers this is neither Hellraiser nor Event Horizon, and that regardless of the euphemisms the crew might use there is no reason for this alien to be speaking (bad) Church Latin on an alien world. Does Clara see the dooms? I don't know, let's ask her. "Do you believe in destiny?" Let's get Cher in here and find out if you believe in life after love, doc. Or better yet, do you believe in confirmation bias? Our gimmick is a space door that generates random fortune cookie dialog specific to the person standing next to it. What is it with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds's writing team and the desire to make an alien race that is capital emphasis Pure Evil? Seriously. That's not a thing in Star Trek. "Good" and "Evil" are relative. They depend on subjective morality. One culture's Good is another culture's Evil. There's no such thing as a universal definition of "Evil", never mind a universal origin of "Evil". This is turning into the plot of the 2005 Doom movie with The Rock and Karl Urban. 25 minutes exactly in this mess, and I am ready to be done. I should not have to pause an episode this many times to vent my dismay at the quality of the writing. Now now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything. It wouldn't be an end-of-season episode if we didn't dick around with Pike's predestination paradox a bit more, would it? Was this episode a product of the writers strike? Seriously. That was awful. No one aspect of it is truly horrible on its own, but somehow a series of bad decisions came together to make an audiovisual mess worse than the sum of its parts.

The red gives a more painting looking highlight. Reminds me more of some of the box art kinda look

I want a weathering special I want also a Zentran suit for tv Max

Can you form Voyager class Devastator, do you have all the pieces now?

Damn that looks amazing!

Going for TV VF-1S Hikaru. I laid down some more color to see the parts (and defects) better. The intakes are the original size, but painting them this way makes them look huge!

Hey thanks so much! Yeah the decals broke at the recessed area so I went in with paint to touch it up after. I did however do what you are planning on a similar kit and it worked out way better. I just used the decal as a guide and cut out a couple thin circles of .3mm and glued them down before priming etc… decal went down without disaster 👍 Not sure why I didn’t do it this time. Amnesia I guess. Lol

@Papa Rat Very nice work! That reminds me of one of the flaws on the ARII Valks. The UN Spacy insignia on the fastpaks needs to have a support put in. There shouldn't be that bad gap. When the time comes when I build my ARII S-Valk, I'll want to putty that detail in so that the decal can sit flush. I can imagine it was a nightmare getting the decal to conform to those deep contours.

@F18LEGIOSS2 That is some amazing craftmanship there, mind if I ask what band or type of styrene you used & where you can get it? I definitely have some scratch building to attempt myself. @nightmareB4macross I get more of my paint delivered tomorrow, so one step closer to being completed. Your 1/55 "Ultra custom" also looks like it's nearing completion. Will you be going with a Roy or Hikaru color scheme?

Just to add onto the list @Graham, there’s others that want a DX 1s DYRL Max (that was short lived) as well. Like I mentioned as always, Bandai always half a** completes a lineup for the Macross lineup, it’s a rare treat for us if a complete series of a line is fully done (like Frontier for the renewal lineup)

Finally! He's only a little over a month behind the rest of his wave, but I finally got my hands on Studio Series 86 Voyager-class Mixmaster. Mixmaster's one of the tougher Constructicons to do if you wanna go full on Sunbow. And, I think that Hasbro got closer than last time, as SS86 Mixmaster's got that all-purple torso and thighs, with just the single red rectangle and a few cartoon-accurate dark gray spots breaking it up. There's molded details suggestive of the little nozzles on his hood, and it really looks like Hasbro did their best to give his shins the flat, feet-free look. That said, his shins don't quite have that shape that looks like he's wearing booties, and he doesn't have the protrusions from his hips. Of course, all the wheels are showing... they don't magically turn into green lumps. I'll note that his shoulders kind sit higher than his torso; I wonder if they could have got them to sit lower, if they could have put the elbow between the wheels instead of below them to be more like the cartoon. Big props for having the mixing drum on his back, though, instead of hanging off his butt like an insect abdomen the way the Combiner Wars version does. One area where he differs from the G1 toy, but not necessarily with the Sunbow model (since it was so oversimplified), the roof the cab isn't his shins, and the front of the cab isn't in his knees. Instead, the cab is on the back of his feet. This will simplify things later when it comes to transformation. Mixmaster's sole accessory is this pistol. There's a definite sense that the team needed the budget of two Voyagers, two Deluxes, and a Commander to realize their vision for Devastator, so that's how they packaged them, but there isn't a lot here that makes Mixmaster specifically more Voyager than Scavenger or Bonecrusher. Mixmaster's head is a little hard to get at, but it is on a ball joint with limited up/down/sideways tilt in addition to swiveling. His shoulders swivel, but lateral movement is a bit limited by the bit that sticks above his torso. Straight from his side it's just a bit under 90 degrees, but if you rotate the shoulder at all it's realistically more like 45 degrees. He has bicep swivels, which is an improvement over the CW version, and elbows that bend 90 degrees. No wrist or waist swivel. His hips can move forward, backward, and laterally 90 degrees, and he's got thigh swivels. His knees bend about 90 degrees. His "foot-less" design means no real up/down tilt, but he does have 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Mixmaster can hold his pistol in either hand, or plug it into the 5mm ports on his forearms. There's no other robot-mode weapon storage. Mixmaster's transformation is very simple, and mostly in the legs. Fold flaps out from under his feet, then tuck his heels in and open his shins. Tab his legs and feet together, then bend first the wrong way at the knees. Swing his hips backward, then use the transformation joint under his knees to fold the cab down into place. Grab the bottom of his chest, lift up halfway up, then straighten his arms and lift his shoulders up. Slots near under his hands should grab onto the sides of the cab, then fold the chest the rest of the way up to cover his face and tab into his shoulders. Lastly, pull open the mixing drum where it tabs into the back of his hood, fold out the spout, then close it back up. This time around, Mixmaster's a much more cartoon-accurate cement mixer than whatever they were thinking when they did Combiner Wars Mixmaster. I think by having the correct alt mode Mixmaster's competing with Long Haul for the "most improved" award in the set. I don't have any major gripes with his alt mode... I do have a few minor ones, though. Both the G1 toy and the animation model left a gap between the cab and the rear, here though the forearm and fist bridge that gap. The G1 toy and animation also had some rectangular panels on the roof of the cab that this toy doesn't. Like I said, though, minor gripes. I'll take this truck all day every day over the Combiner Wars one. He doesn't do much in truck mode. He rolls. There's a 5mm port on the roof for storing his gun. That's about it. Kind of shame; I feel like they could have engineered the mixing drum to spin if they really wanted to, but it 100% doesn't. Mixmaster continues the trend established by the other figures in this set... it's definitely an improvement over the Combiner Wars toy, but the not-quite-Sunbow design, limited articulation in spots, and overly-simplistic engineering makes you think that they probably could have done better. The fact that they got his alt mode right this time is a big win in my book, though, so I'd recommend him.

My DX 1/48 VF-1 Wishlist. DYRL VF-1A Hikaru Super. DYRL VF-1A Max Super. DYRL VE-1. TV VF-1A Cannon Fodder.

Nice try @Morgen Black. Bandai doesn’t care if nothing else done to the Macross lineup as they half a** leave everything else up in the air with long teasers and nothing else. Us collectors that have been here for a very long time knows this well: “Any hope for a certain complete Macross lineup ain’t going to happen”

So international customers that purchased from a Japanese based store are screwed then?

Almost finished with this little bugger. Besides the absolutely awful disintegrating old decals this Arii 1/100 scale VF-1S looks alright. I think that added parts like the simple sprue scraps drilled out for verniers and that reddish purple undertone came through in an interesting way. I still need to do some tiny paint details but I am ready to move along.

As mentioned above, If Bandai wanted to grab attention of fans and collectors it would release a 1/48 TV version of Kakizaki's VF-1A or 1/48 cannon fodder VF-1A. One can only hope. MB

I have bought a few items from Luna Park over the years. They are legit, you will get what you ordered. They are an expensive option compared to many alternatives. Some of my items came unprotected in soft shipping bags (damaged box, contents were fine), other items were bubble wrapped and in multiple cardboard boxes (great packaging). The one thing that I have found is that shipping takes a while. If you have patience and you make sure to email their Customer Service with expectations, then it works out. It is not the best option, but if you want something that is hard to find then Luna Park may be your only option. Good luck. MB

It’s definitely a tough time to try and acquire Japanese kits, especially for those of us in the U.S., but if you’re not here, then it will be significantly easier to find them. I would check the toy section, I think I’ve seen Luna park come up over there in discussions about Bandai’s dx line

Not silent, but quieter... mainly as a product of more efficient engine designs driven by tighter regulations on tailpipe emissions and fuel economy. That's a pure vanity feature introduced in the early 2010s intended to replicate the driving experience of older cars with worse sound insulation. Those systems either amplify the existing engine noise or generate fake engine noise and mainly pipe it into the cabin. The fake engine noise isn't... but I can understand how people might make that connection. EVs are required to have an Acoustic Vehicle Alert System that plays an audible tone at around ~70dBA in low speed operation so that pedestrians can hear the otherwise actually silent EV coming. Similar versions of the same requirement all came into effect in the 2010s around the same time that the purely-for-vanity's-sake fake engine notes were being added to cars with combustion engines. It's not the companies... or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that it's not just the companies. The issue is that there are many different governmental and non-governmental bodies developing, publishing, and enforcing/certifying standards. Those organizations which are developing those standards are often (but not always) independent of the corporations that are using those standards in their products. Those standards are usually developed by committee, and the committee can be made up of representatives from multiple rival OEMs, suppliers, research institutions, government regulators, etc. These organizations that develop the standards are often localized to one country or region and don't necessarily come to the same conclusion as another standards body in another country or region. To give an example, there are nominally five different major electric vehicle charging standards in play, maintained by four different organizations: SAE J1772, the main/oldest US-based charging standard developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers SAE J3400, the newest US-based charging standard developed by Tesla and formalized by the Society of Automotive Engineers because nobody trusts or likes Tesla IEC 62196, the European Union's charging standard developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission GB/T 20234, the People's Republic of China's charging standard developed by the Standardization Administration of China CHAdeMO, Japan's domestic charging standard developed by the CHAdeMO Association None of them are compatible with each other at the hardware level, and there is at least some degree of incompatibility at the software/protocol level too. As the comic suggests, any attempt to create one standard that covers everyone's use cases just means you have another competing standard in the wild with all the others you were trying to get rid of. Most of the manufacturers would love to converge on a single standard so we can stop pissing about with having to develop half a dozen variants of a single function or have half a dozen different port hardware variants. It's just that nobody can agree what standard to converge on.