All Activity

@Mommar seems BBTS has an opening for a Tread as I'm writing this: https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/299018 A $32 USD no refundable down payment tho.

I think they did announce there was a SS86 Rodimus in the works. Though honestly if it's going to be like the SS86 Galvatron release, chances are it's just gonna be a repaint. I don't know what kind of mold tweaks they could do to it, and I would sure hate an entirely new mold on something that works pretty well as it is. Though my only complaint about the Kingdom Rodimus was his atrocious vehicle mode outside of his trailer extension. I mean sure, they gotta come up with something as you don't want a repeat of 1986 going from a really neat sporty sedan to a half of a car with legs hanging out plugged with a trailer that transforms in 3 steps. But both POTP and Kingdom had very odd rather ugly looking vehicle modes without his trailer. They really really REALLY nailed his vehicle mode in the SS86, but it just isn't exactly there quite yet for Rodimus. The overpriced MP variant was pretty close for vehicle mode except that it was a shell over a mangled up hot rod mode. Okay I'm rambling....

Today 23rd Nov is Sheryl's B-Day! Her artist friend did another potrait!

I’m in a bit of a pickle. I want to complete my Super Street Fighter 2: The new Challengers roster. Bandai seems to have no plans to finish their line (even if they release a Guile out of nowhere last year) and I like the style of the Storm Arena ones better than the Jada ones. However, I don’t know if they are planning to release a T Hawk, Deejay, Fei Long, Dhalsim or E. Honda in the line (which are the ones I’m missing, Storm showed prototypes for Zangief and Balrog). Jada has announced or released all of these so I wonder if I should get them now and if Storm releases their version (and I like the hand feel of the Storm Arena ones) try to sell them again. I hate the Jada Fei Long sculpt and I despise the gummy hand feel of Marvel Legends-style figures so I don’t know if I would like the Jada toys. I have the Storm Arena Charly Nash and Dan on preorder but it will take a while until they are released. Maybe I should just buy the Jada Deejay and Dhalsim to see how I feel about them.

Thank you for inquiring. Found what I was looking for.

What kind of detail in particular are you looking for? Markings? Equipment placement?

I've been taking a break from collecting, but I just happened upon a couple of good deals that were just too good to pass up. didn't preorder the VF-19P cuz I balked at the TWE preorder prices esp. compared to how much the HMR Kai was selling for, but I'm happy to finally have a 19P in my collection, even at a smaller scale. I also got a second VF-0D to display in battroid for a relatively cheap price. The VF-2SS I got a few months ago... still a great addition to my small but ever growing HMR collection.

Hi All, I am positive there is lineart of this picture with much more detail. Anyone out there have it? I would greatly appreciate it.

Mine just had capybaras chillin and groovin

Yeah, she made some odd decisions career wise. She’s done some lesser than may stuff, but nothing that really stood out, now she’s on to b movies and probably will soon be forgotten

Awesome, @Thom this is going to be cool. Managed to get the frame color down. I’m digging the silver with some subtle purple shine to it. Once dry I will just brush paint the small details and avoid masking. Shouldn’t take too much more. Just lots of down time between painting and top coating etc…

Mirage doesn't even get to be on the box of her own valk?

I've been using a bit of my vacation time to catch up on some of my translations and chase a few nagging open points in what I've translated about overtechnology. In this case, in the descriptions of energy weapons as part of an effort to provide some in-depth explanations of how they work. Laser weapons in Macross have thus far all been presented as real world laser technology that has simply had its performance enhanced by the inclusion of OTM. Master File has made VF-mounted laser weapons out to be a mix of fiber lasers (mostly on the monitor turret) and free electron lasers (nacelle/body mounts). The VF-1's Strike Pack gets identified as a gas-dynamic laser in Master File, and there's also passing mention of research into a Project Excalibur-style reaction bomb-pumped laser missile. Macross Chronicle has shot down my hypothesis that impact cannons are dimensional weapons. Nothing has been forthcoming as of yet about how the plasma cannons of the setting work (since there's all of one of the bloody things, IIRC, on the Nousjadeul-Ger). Particle beam weapons are where things get a bit contradictory. Macross Chronicle seems to imply that particle beam cannons are just juiced up linear accelerators, with mention of them injecting opposite-charged particles into the beam to neutralize the charge so it doesn't diverge due to repulsion forces. Then again, there are other books that mention using Gravity and Inertia Control for beam focusing and acceleration. There's mention of the beams using ionized heavy metal particles in some books, and plasma drawn from the reactor in others. Some mention both and switch between them situationally. So I have a crazy-ish hypothesis to get these seemingly contradictory explanations aligned. Macross's particle beam weapons may be something like plasma wakefield accelerators. Those work by using lasers to create a charge imbalance in a neutrally-charged plasma that creates an ion channel and "wave" of charge imbalance that pushes the lighter electrons out at high velocities. I think both of the above-described cases can be true if they're using a GIC instead of lasers to manipulate the plasma and create the charge imbalances. That only leaves the question of where the plasma is coming from... be it tapped from the compact thermonuclear reactor, or a "beam cartridge" like those described in the VF-31 Master File.

Fantastic catch! Congratulations.

Wow, that looks almost as good as Arcadia's factory PF release!

Over a year ago I covered MMC's Shiftlane, their version a Rollbar, a retool of their version of Swindle. And then... well, nothing for a long time. But I don't really do full reviews for repaints, and I don't buy nearly as much 3P stuff I used to (and when I do, I don't really buy repaints). But... I did get the rest of the set. So the first one after Shiftlane was Chops, the MMC version of Ro-Tor. Now, the animation models for Robots In Disguise were a lot closer to the toys than the G1 Combaticons. MMC cleverly flipped Shiftlane's torso around. For Chops, they remolded the front of his torso. For the most part, that works for him. The new torso is pretty cartoon accurate, and aside from having Vortex's little feet he's accurate enough down through the legs. MMC tucked Vortex's tail and use the engine nacelles to make for more G1 cartoon-accurate, but that actually works against Chops, since Ro-Tor's toy-accurate arms were clearly the helicopter tail. Ro-Tor also shouldn't have the little arm guns that Vortex does, but Chops has all the same accessories that their Vortex did. Transformation is the same as Vortex, which is to say it's still my least favorite of the set. The helicopter mode was designed to walk a fine line between G1 cartoon-accurate and a realistic Seasprite. Again, it's the kind of thing that worked pretty well for the Vortex version, but the RiD animation was much closer to the simplified look of the toy. To that end, I don't think that Chops came out badly, per se. The realistic helicopter is fine, but some details are a bit off. Why isn't the nose red? Where's the gray panel on the side? The third release was Astrolift, aka Movor. Again, MMC made a few modifications to make the mold a bit more RiD-accurate. He's got new feet, and a partly new chest. As with Chops, the new chest is indeed more accurate, but the faux wheels are kind of unnecessary. And while the arms are made from the front of the shuttle, same as Blast-Off, details like the visible pink cockpit windows are missing. I'm not sure why MMC didn't just paint a fake windows onto part of his arm where the actual cockpit could cover over it. As for the shuttle mode, well, Movor always had more realistic colors than Blast-Off, and the realistic look pretty good with MMC's (fairly) realistic design (the engine bells are still wrong). It's worth pointing out, though, that in the cartoon Movor was drawn rather strangely, with small wings, a rectangular fuselage, and sharply angled engine nacelles, so aside from the colors Astrolift isn't exactly cartoon-accurate here. Another thing to note is that Movor was animated with the larger cannons from the toy over the wings/near the rear of the fuselage. Since MMC's Blast-Off didn't include those, neither does Astrolift... just the smaller pistol, which still folds up and tucks into a spot near the top rear of the fuselage. The fourth release was Fortiflex, their Armorhide. Fortiflex has remolded hip skirts, which better resemble the trapezoidal hips of Armorhide's character model. From the waist down, no complaints. From the waist up, though... well, Brawl's animation model was pretty different from the G1 toy, with a much smaller chest and treads for shoulders. Armorhide's animation model, being closer to the toy, kept the big tank chest and the arms where the treads were on the backs of his arms, not the front. The remolded chest does sort of look like the front of the tank, but it's clearly not as protruding, and no changes to the arms means you've got treads and dark browns where we should have tan bits from the top of the tank. Tank mode is still looking sharp, though. Again, MMC likes realistic details so we've got the periscope, mirrors, and working hatches. Although Armorhide didn't use them in the cartoon, he's still go the rear-mounted double-barreled gun that came with Brawl. Megalith, aka Mega-Octane, finishes up the set. I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that Onslaught was the weakest of MMC's Combaticons due to being the most hampered by the all-in-one gimmick, and that's certainly still the case with Megalith. However, MMC's Onslaught, due largely to his transformation, was always a bit more toy-ish than the other four, and this is something that works in Megalith's favor as the wheels on his torso and the extra kibble on the backs of his shoulders are all cartoon-accurate now. Even the large orange pelvis is. You just have to squint and remember that it's all supposed to be pelvis, regardless of where his hips and waist swivel are. As far as mold changes go, the only difference is some minor changes to the molds of his chest panels. Note that he comes with both an orange version of Onslaught's original gun, as well as the gun and boxes from the upgrade kit they did for their Bruticus. Transformation is the same, and the truck mode is basically just Onslaught's in a different color scheme. I suppose the grill could be a little more cartoon-y, but I think it's fine overall. Of course, if you're this far in, you're probably not in because you want the Decepticon Commandos, you're probably in for Ruination, so here's Eversus, the combined mode. Like Megalith on his own, I think Eversus benefits a bit from the toy-style torso. You'll notice that the head and chest are the ones that came with the Bruticus upgrade kit; Eversus does NOT have the Blast-Off chest and G1 cartoon Bruticus head were stock on Onslaught. The chest is painted with details from the Japanese release of Car Robots Dorailer. However, while the torso goes a long way toward the Ruination look, being designed first and foremost as Bruticus does hold him back in a few ways. His left arm lacks the big red guns from the RiD Ro-Tor toy, just the little ones from Vortex. And his elbow bends like Vortex, whereas the cartoon had the side of the helicopter as the front of the arm. Likewise, the front of his left arm was the side of Movor, and presented as white. The biggest difference, though, is that Armorhide connects backward in the cartoon, with the turret on the back of his leg and the front of the tank as his knee. But Brawl was designed to match the G1 cartoon, with the turret on the shin. The other reality is that in RiD Ruination frequently flipped his arms and legs, with Armorhide as the right arm, Rollbar as the left arm, Ro-Tor as the right leg, and Movor as the left. But since Bruticus only had his "standard" configuration in the G1 cartoon, MMC only designed their Bruticus with the single combination, so that's the only one that Eversus gets. So, I guess the question is whether or not the whole set is worth it. And I think that's an interesting question. On the one hand, the strong toy aesthetics and Megaltih and, by extension, the core of Eversus, actually seem to work better for Ruination than they did as Bruticus. Plus, while MMC was competing at the time with Zeta and Unique Toys, there really hasn't been too many takes on Ruination, and certainly not at this scale. I think, despite the compromises that come with being designed as a Bruticus first, this is a solid take on the characters and it goes great with Fans Hobby's Scourge. Top it off with better joint tolerances all around than Bruticus, and I'd say that I'm quite glad to have this set. But, the thing is, there are enough quirks with these designs that I don't really want to own two of each of these molds. And in the years since MMC first released their Bruticus, we've gotten another take on an MP Bruticus from Magic Square. So while this set does satisfy my desire for Ruination, it also makes me want to sell the MMC Bruticus and buy Magic Square's.

After a bit of work and worry about an askew tail, my Sea Vixen has her boom(s)! Thom

HG 1/100 VF-31C.

SS 86 Hot Rod is cool. I think the slightly pinker release coming out later will still be good too. Hope they release a SS 86 Rodimus and give it a new mold.

Happy 30th Anniversary.

Conan the Barbarian.

GI Joe Classified Pythona.