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Admittedly, they look good. However, I retain a rather vehement prejudice against Transformers that don't transform, as, in my mind, it's rather like a pitcher who, for whatever reason, can't throw, to employ a simple analogy. I remind myself that it's a big fandom with many niches to fill, and if they bring you joy, then mission accomplished (and to hell with my bias). I do get a chuckle over your "Sunbow accuracy" statement, however, when the toon is notorious for its blatant and constant inconsistencies. For off-brand transforming toys, those don't look half bad. I see a lot of limb recycling, not unlike a certain company in Rhode Island is wont to do ad nauseum. I was waiting to see if anyone else was going to post a review, but since I haven't seen anyone post any pics here, I'll do the honors. I'm not a practiced reviewer like @mikeszekely, so I beg some forbearance, if you please. I love cassette bots; they're essentially wafers, but I've always been captivated by the ingenuity of turning those little rectangles into robotic dudes, animals, and vehicles, some even combining to form mini-gestalts. While they filled a minimal minion role to the larger cassette player bots, there has always been an inherently cool factor that Takara took the time and effort to make those cassettes transform as well as the larger bots when they didn't have to, at least not to the degree that they did. After all, they could have just formed guns, or some sort of computer gear for them, but no, they turned into articulated animals and robots, even if the articulation was minimal. The point was made, though, and the Sunbow toon utilized those designs to great effect, giving them unforgettable scenes, personalities, and dialogue to really make an impression. One of the more under-utilized was Ramhorn, an Autobot cassette that transforms into a rhinoceros (not sure if they were going for a particular species thereof). However, I've long had a soft spot for the red rhino and I was quite pleased when MMC announced their upscaled take a number of years ago. the wait is over, and without further ado, here's RMX-13 Forte: Cassette mode. As with all of MMC's RMX versions, they reimagined Forte, or Ramhorn as I'll call him henceforth, as a full-sized cassette, which offers more real-estate in which they can work their engineering magic to far greater effect than the old mico-cassettes of the 80s toys. notably, Ramhorn is completely bare of any cassette livery, unlike the G1 toys, and in one respect, it looks nice for his rhino mode, but IMHO, there just seems to be something lost in not having that deco. Anyway, he's neither the best nor the worst cassette mode I've seen, although the obvious head in the center and the legs on the upper surface spoil the illusion somewhat. The backside shares a similar fate as the front, especially with his golden weapons immediately catching the eye. Still, it's a close facsimile, and rather impressive considering the rhinoceros that unfolds out of this wafer. The bot mode: I kinda wish they'd given his toenails a light greyish paintjob to pick them out, but they didn't. Still, I think, overall, he's phenomenal. He's my second favorite of their cassettes next to Jaguar (Ravage), perhaps only due to Ravage being my favorite of all the cassettes. Articulation wise, his head is on a ball joint with little clearance which can rotate minimally left to right (you can see the extent in the next pic), up and down, and rotate longitudinally 360 degrees if you want to reenact that iconic scene from The Exorcist with him. His neck can also rotate up and down approx 10 degrees of arc, not much but better than nothing. His mouth can open and close. His ears are on ball joints as well and can be rotated independently. His hips and shoulders are on stiff double hinges which allow for some nice height adjustments of the legs when posing. It's an excellent addition, as they could have just put them on ball joints with minimal clearance, but they put in the extra effort, and it makes posing him that much more of a treat. The shoulders can rotate through about 30 degrees of arc fore and aft in-line before the edges of the body stop them. More forward movement can be achieved if the legs are spread, although it looks awkward. All four legs can do the full Van Damme, to borrow a reference. I've never seen a pic of a real rhino doing the splits, but if that's your fancy, this guy can do it. The front and aft forelegs can also rotate through a 90+ arc on nicely tensioned rivet joints. The feet are mounted on ball pegs which offer a great range of movement fore, aft, as well as tilt. There's a tension hinge just behind his shoulder humps that allows his entire rear end to rotate back and up in a nice arc for a slightly more aggressive stance. It also helps to elongate the body somewhat so he doesn't look as scrunched in profile. The above pic shows the extent of head rotation to the side. I wish that ball joint could extend out of the neck a little for addition rotation, but it's fine. MMC did a nice job of trying to fill, or at least obscure, the hollow space between his side panels. You can still see through the gaps but given the nature of his alt mode and transformation, it's forgivable, especially for how well the final rhino mode turned out. I forgot to mention that the tail can be raised and lowered. although it has no side-to-side movement. His weapon packs are also mounted on hinges, and the lower two pics illustrate the full extremities of their ranges, a nice feature that, once again, MMC didn't have to do but it's appreciated. Here he is with two other third party Ramhorns: Fans Toys's version in the middle with KFC's most recent take on the right. Until I had MMC's in-hand, I felt that KFC's was the definitive version of this guy, and really, at if we're only looking at micro-cassette scale, he is, IMHO. I had high hopes for the Fans Toys' version, but it left me feeling a little disappointed. Regardless, it's ultimately an unfair comparison given the amount of real-estate MMC had to work with compared to the micro-cassette scaled figures. I just thought it'd make for an interesting pic. Here he is with MMC's other quadruped cassette bots: Considering that Jaguar was their first model in this series and released nine years ago, I think he still holds up marvelously well compared to his more recent Autobot compatriots. That said, I think Forte (Ramhorn) looks excellent next to Tempo (Steeljaw), and Jaguar (Ravage). These figures exemplify the term "masterpiece" in terms of their engineering and aesthetics. For now, MMC own this market exclusively, and I hope they continue to expend the roster of cassettes. I, for one, would love to see their takes on Ratbat (of which I believe a prototype has been shown), Sugfest, Overkill, Squawk Talk and Beast Box, Grand Slam and Raindance, Dile and Zaur, Graphy and Noise. Except for the drone, which sucks comparatively, I'll take all the cassettes MMC is willing to make, and I hope they do continue. This concludes my look at MMC's RMX-13 Forte. Without any reservations, I highly recommend him.

The ads keep getting better. Hopefully a good sign. Even better is it comes out when I'll be visiting back home with a really great Imax theater nearby.

@505thAirborne Cool $25 plus shipping and handling! Just kidding!! PM your address and I'll get them out.

Steven can keep trying to outdo himself but he'll never make an alien encounter film as good as his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Really? The official writeup of the Destroid Works is very blunt that it's literally just a Cheyenne II that's been stripped of its military hardware and given a coat of hi-viz orange paint. The Cheyenne II is a barely-there presence in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta because Destroids in general are pretty useless in a post-First Space War world. Destroids as a whole were designed around the idea of fighting a land war in a conventional alien invasion scenario. Something that just does not happen in Macross. They're land warfare weapons in a space war setting. Making it transform would defeat the other key attribute of a Destroid... being cheaper than a Valkyrie so that they can be fielded in larger numbers. Not that a transforming tank would be any less useless in a space war than a regular non-transforming ground-bound robot. The main reason the Frontier fleet uses them is because they wanted mobile AA defenses they could deploy inside the dome. Outside the dome is protected by more cost-effective static beam CIWS and missile phalanx systems. So... that's not quite how it works. Let me explain. It's not as simple as just "Destroids don't need to split power so they should be a lot tougher." You're assuming that all things are equal, and they're not. Valkyries are aircraft as much as they are giant robots. Their armor has to be kept thin and lightweight in order to preserve their flight performance and leave room for the internally carried fuel and other vital stores and systems. As such, they have to rely on more advanced and expensive composite armor reinforced by energy conversion armor driven by their pair of high-output thermonuclear reactors to achieve the required defensive performance. Those reactors HAVE to be high-output in order to meet the needs of the various other energy-hungry systems on a Valkyrie too, like thrust generation and active stealth, which makes them incredibly expensive. Destroids are walking AFVs and artillery built for land and surface warfare. They don't need to fly, and that means they don't need to make the same design compromises that the Valkyries did. They can achieve the required defensive performance by just having thicker composite armor. Not needing to provide plasma for thrust production or feed energy-intensive systems like active stealth and energy conversion armor means they can get by with a single, much cheaper and lower-output reactor instead of a pair of expensive high-end thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. At the end of the day, this makes them much cheaper than a Valkyrie. The early Destroids were about 1/20th the cost of a VF-1 back before the First Space War. Of course, this also means they don't have tons of extra power to throw around because their systems are tailored to their needs not the far greater needs of a Valkyrie. Because Destroids are inherently groundbound in a world where most combat is in the aerospace domain, keeping Destroids as cheap as possible is the only thing keeping them going as a supplement to even less expensive conventional anti-aircraft defenses like beam CIWS guns and missile phalanxes. If you were to give a destroid all the same tech as a Valkyrie, you'd have just made a Valkyrie mode-locked in Battroid mode and gotten rid of most of the cost advantage.

GALACTICA SITREP, first off, thank you everyone for the suggestion & replies, I appreciate it. My buddy who also knows how to add lighting to model kits stopped by, we got the engine section off and checked the wires/connections, everything looked good, but it comes back to the LED's I chose to use, they just weren't quality lights. We tried an LED strip I had not used yet and it failed to light up. So the wires were good, but the lights were duds. In the end, this Battlestar will be a highly detailed, aged & weathered display. As a backup plan, I'm looking into glow-in-the-dark paints, maybe go for the SDF-1 PF effect. @Thom I absolutely appreciate the offer on the guns & I'll take them!! @derex3592 The USS TEXAS is looking great!! @Papa Rat Those kits & your painting skills are top notch!!

NP 👍 .

Was excited to see Good Smile put up a teaser for their Plamatea model kit. Gonna be fun to dirty up. Also just finished up the season. I thought it was really great. As much as I liked the Bots, I think that Fallout is more for me. In my opinion it’s the best live action show on Amazon and really glad they were able to deliver a great second season of the show. I’m really hoping the next season can keep up the quality of the first two.

Yeah, I feel that way about a few properties lately. If these were more affordable I’d definitely be in for them

Yeah, I think it’s a rerelease, but I may be getting confused with the 1/72

I had seen that paint listed recently and was kinda tempted by it. Might have to give it a try

Not sure if this is a new or a re-release? VF-1 weapons set in 1:48 scale.

The arms are definitely weird on the Delta version. I need to go back and watch the episode clips again to see what each piece is meant to do. I thought I remembered the hands and forks being opposite ends of a reversible arm (like the Cheyenne does with its guns, and has the hands on its elbows until needed), but that line art makes it look like the hands fold down from the upper arms. Will see what I can find in the animation. I actually always had the opposite feeling on Macross designs: if Valks can be made so tough when they're dividing the power between flying and holding themselves together, then a destroid with a dedicated power source should be a lot tougher. Mobility vs sitting duck, I know, but the armor on a Cheyenne should still be an order of magnitude greater than a Valk just because it can afford to throw a lot more power at it. Transforming tanks would be cool, too, though. 😉

Budgetformers.

Final trailer.

R2-D2 looks like a cake decoration in that image. He probably never considered every area of the model should of been broken down into individual sections and meticulously crafted as though it needed close up screen time. All the props to that guy putting in the effort in buildings the X-wing with his own thoughts in mind.

My friend's store is called Moonbase Toys. He mainly sells sofubi figures. He was selling his own personal collection of Macross figures from which I bought both the Bandai 1/55 scale Max and Miriya VF's plus the ARII VF's (Miriya type) figures. https://www.instagram.com/moonbasetoys

Which store? If you don't mind my asking..

Annoying figma or Figuarts aren't making Claymore instead...

More MGS3D images. It's 2026 and this company is still insisting with sh!tty rachet joints and those horrendous double ball point shoulders with just a floaty cover.