All Activity

I gave up on HLJ. TOo much in the end, and wait times... nuff said.

This leads me to question the use of plastic parts in the joints at particularly high-stress points: many of them are supporting quite a bit of mass/ weight or are under considerable tension/ strain when moved. As for the dyes being used on plastics: it depends upon the dye and the process. Some dyes can inherently weaken the plastic based on their composition, while heat and other processes can disrupt the polymerization chains in the plastics. Even dye concentration in the wrong amount can be an issue, as dyes are a chemical and plastic is a complex mix of chemicals based on the polymerization of petroleum products. For any dye attempt, I would recommend trying to test it first to see if it will create an issue later on.

So is it a limited version that’s going to be available for preorder at the event or is the event the only way to obtain one?

Since he's been peppered sprayed on Mezco's Instagram, Sparky is most definitely a Wednesday drop. Edit: Here's the load out

Well, if the dye is darkening it (white or grey to maroon), I'd imagine it would pass. Dye weakening nylon is new to me though. It does that? Again, in my case, it would be a light grey turned maroon surrounded by either the same color or black parts. I think we're good if dyeing would work. Anyhow, if anyone here has done it to Bandai nylon parts, I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks so much. I appreciate your suggestion and will be doing some light chipping with sponges. Since this has a matte finish, a more reflective chipping like you mentioned “silvery” would look really nice and give it some visual interest. I also love these old kits with all their charm and interesting challenges they present. Also, wow! That TOS Phaser is absolutely beautiful. 🤩 Thanks for all the info and process images. It wouldn’t be a proper build without some sort of disaster. Hahaha. I had some major paint issues where MR color lacquer did not like the Rusto rattle can primer. It bubbled and was also a gummy mess to sand off. Yuck! Anyway, you have some major skills, and persistence pays off for you. Very inspiring, I really need to try out a 3d print one of these days. Edit* For Alclad have you used their Aqua Gloss Clear ALC 600? It plays nicely with their gloss black base and metal colors. I love their black chrome! I used it on the Bellows on the Volks Daccas VSMS kit.

I think almost all of mine are in car mode right now, but again, car guy. My (Chinese) wife jokes that when we watch Chinese dramas on Netflix together that she's always looking to see what the characters are eating, I'm always looking to see what they're driving.

I abhor the Bayverse films and I make no bones about it. However, I like a good Transformers toy, I like a cool alt mode, and sometimes a robot mode just looks cool to me. Check all three with this figure. While Takara can be hit or miss on some of these SS figs, in this case I think they did a pretty good job taking a bit of concept art, a beautiful car that apparently was in a single scene (haven't seen the film), and married the two into a figure that, IMHO, looks good and turned out at least standard relative to other figs in the line. I really like the reuse of the Vehicon's roof and windshield folding technique, one of Takara's best for compressing a lot of car into a compact kibble-less form. I can't stress enough how much I love the integrated weapon storage, a feature that, at this point in the franchise's history, should be standard practice. I like how the front fenders form her shoulders, and finally, the 12C is indeed a lovely car, and despite my feelings about the live action films, Bay and Co have an excellent eye for beautiful or interesting vehicles to use as alt modes and Has/Tak do the line proud by securing the licenses in most cases. Fortunately, they do far more justice with the cars than with jets. I've got a PO in for this fig. I don't buy many Bayverse figs anymore, but every now and again, one strikes my fancy for one reason or another. If nothing else, I can always leave them in car mode, but I seldom do. Appreciate the comprehensive look, Mike.

Yeah you have to actually look at the listings carefully on some of them on Ali Express. A seller on there has what looks like a DYRL non weathered VF-1S Max, and the first couple of pictures look like it would be what you'd get, but the last two pics show a v1 Yamato VF-1A. It's rather click baity...

I have heard of dyes working, but sometimes having a bleeding affect on lighter colored parts around them

Knowing Bandai's love of hollow expanding pins in their joints, I imagine almost all DX's have some degree of cracking (even on a microscopic level), and dyes will immediately soak in and make the cracks more visible. (and possibly exacerbate/weaken them).

Oh yes! You did a good job. That's what I will need to do.

Well... I still don't know when the Voyagers of this wave are coming, but Scavenger wasn't the only Deluxe. So up next we'll do Age of Extinction Concept Art KSI Widow. As the "concept art" bit suggests, "Widow" (aka Widowmaker) wasn't actually seen (at least not in robot form) in the film, but rather is based on concept art by Steve Jung. There are some pretty major differences, though... she was more red than orange, and the car kibble is quite different, because she was originally going to be the Pagani Huayra that eventually became Stinger. The head design, the fenders forming her shoulder pads, the spikes on her arms, the knee pads, though, all come from Jung's concept art. She technically has high heels like the concept art, too, but it's kind of hard to tell with the mass of car kibble on her lower legs that was decidedly not part of the concept art. That said, I'm not really mad about it. The concept art has a very lithe, almost sexy design with almost no visible car parts that would have very much relied on CGI magic to transform. What I feel we got from Evan and Kunihiro is a robot that still has noticeably feminine proportions in the arms, torso, and thighs that avoids the all-too-common "just fold everything into a backpack" engineering that's prevalent with Bayverse cars. Despite allusions to some kind of chain accessory (seen in some of Jung's concept art), Widow just comes with these two blasters. While I do admire Widow's aesthetics, her articulation leaves a bit to be desired. Her head's on a ball joint that swivels, but has minimal tilt due to the molded "hair". Her shoulders are ball joints that swivel and move 90 degrees laterally. Her biceps swivel, and her elbows bend a tad over 90 degrees. No wrist articulation, though, and no waist articulation. Her hips are more ball joints that move 90-ish degrees forward and backward, but only about 75 degrees laterally. Her thighs swivel, and her knees bend 90 degrees IF you make sure the kibble on her thighs is out of the way first. Her feet tilt up, due to how they transform, but not downward, and she doesn't have ankle pivots. Her blasters clip over her forearms. I don't think it's immediately obvious how they go on (pro tip: try to align the curve near the barrel with the back of her hand). When not mounted to her forearms, tabs on the top rear can plug into slots under her door wings on her back. Her transformation actually gives me flashbacks to the Transformers Prime Vehicon. Her head and spine fold back from her torso, tabbing into her butt. Her shoulders shift down and back slightly, so that her arms lay along side her head. Her kneepads and toes fold flat. and the thigh kibble slides out, spins to align with the car kibble on her lower legs, then slides back into place. Then (and this is really where the Vehicon thing comes in) her calves open up, and you fold out the insides on three hinges to form the top of the car, from the hood all the way to the rear. Flip up her wings, fold her shoulder pads down to line up with her chest, then rock her chest up so the wings line up with the thigh kibble on the sides of the car. Then all you have to do is close her thighs, lining up all the kibble you folded out along the way, and fold her heels in to finish off the rear. I'm a car guy, and for all the faults both objective and subjective I might have with Bayverse robots both as both concept designs and physical toys, the one thing you're not going to here me complain about is the cars. The people making the movies have an eye for cool cars, and for their part Hasbro's been doing for the Studio Series line what they often didn't do for the individual movie lines- licensing those cool cars. So what we have here is a McLaren MP4-12C (or just 12C for short). The 12C actually was in a highway scene with Galvatron, it just didn't transform. I guess Hasbro retroactively decided that the 12C could be Widow, since the Huayra became Stinger. Regardless, Hasbro did an excellent job here, as all the little details are accurate to the real car; I think the only thing I can find to nitpick is that the side mirrors stick out further on the real car, but that's about it. Of course, you don't want to mar a gorgeous alt mode like this by plugging weapons on top of it, or even having the requisite tabs to attempt to plug the weapons on top. Instead, mid-transformation, you'll find slots below her knees on the inside of her shins after you fold the car kibble out. Plug the guns in there before you close her up and you're golden. To recommend, or not recommend, is tricky. On the on hand, I don't think most of you even bother with the Bayverse stuff. And, for the few that do, maybe you're sticking to characters that actually get screen time. It's definitely a bummer that her articulation is a little sub-par... ankle pivots have been part of the Generations lines since Siege; Bayverse characters deserve working ankles, too! Despite her flaws, though, I do think that the team did a pretty good job taking Jung's concept art and translating it into a toy that still manages to be maintain a feminine figure on a Deluxe budget, and I'm tempted to say that her alt mode alone is worth the purchase price. Truthfully, there have been worse-executed Bayverse characters, so I think I'd give her a tentative recommend if you collect Bayverse characters.

I used some .5mm to close up the bottoms. No details though since I’ll never look at the bottoms. Lol

I am surprised. The bottoms of the feet segments of the old Imai Glaug kit are hollow. I was looking for pieces that would fit on the bottoms, but there are no such pieces. I'm compelled to cut some Tamiya Pla-Plate to make my own bottoms of those pieces. I've built other Imai Macross models and they all had proper bottoms, complete with molded detail. This is weird.

It's just really hard to get anything Bandai from HLJ now. I have a big list of items I pre-ordered super early and never got. And wound up canceling pre-order when I got the item at a local store. This goes for Gundam (never got RG Shining or MGSD Wing or MG Vidar or MG Narrative C-Packs and many others), this goes for Macross (have pre-ordered every HG 1/100 valk and I think I only got one YF-21 and one Fire Valkyrie - my VF-22 Max and Miria pre-orders are still sitting unfulfilled, and my older pre-orders are canceled), and this goes for Armored Core (I pre-ordered everything from the 30mm ACVI line, and the only ones ever fulfilled were the quad leg unit and one of the weapon sets).

Since I have a bit of time in between shows now, after the VT-1 I decided I would try my hand at a 3D printed prop. Just before we finished my last gig, I had a little time to learn how to 3D print with our printer at work and downloaded and printed a Star Trek TOS Phaser. I just got the amazing Wand Tricorder and I had their Communicator from before, but I didn't learn about them till after their Phaser was sold out and now they are going for crazy prices on eBay. So I thought I could learn 3D Printing and get some decent metal aftermarket upgrades for $150 and get a half-way decent finish to my landing party toys. Unfortunately they don't light up and I have to supply all the pew pew pew sounds Someone mentioned earlier about 3D prints - this is my first try and its a PLA printer that I used (A decent one) but not a Resin with are much better but much more involving in the finishing and drying of the print. Unfortunately, with PLA prints, there are very fine print lines / kind of like stepping which you have to sand away. I HATE SANDING - its the worst part of modeling for me. But I have enough experience to know that the final paint job is all about surface prep - the more time you spend prepping the surface, the better it turns out in the end painting stage. So here are the bits and pieces... Even though the print looks great to the naked eye, I know there's a tone of sanding to be down even before the primer! I find PLA material harder to sand than modeling Styrene plastic, it needs a harder bite and goes through more sandpaper than the softer Styrene/ABS plastics. It does leave a fine dust everywhere that you need to vacuum up (or you'll get killed spraying and having it pick up onto the paint surface) and you should wear a respirator paint mask to make sure you're not breathing this (probably toxic) stuff into your lungs. Here it is primed, I used a Krylon spray can hoping to get something more substantial and robust than my modeling primers because I'm probably going to be handling this more like a toy and looking at it like a model. I would spray, then sand down any blemishes with 2000 and working my way up to 6-8000 grit to get a nice smooth finish and spray again. Hardest part is leaving it alone overnight or a few days to make sure the primer cures before touching it again. Unfortunately, there was another painting disaster where my final clear coat (Mr. Color lacquer) went over top of my Aclad metalizer (phaser handle) which was over an Aclad enamel black gloss which was over Krylon grey primer where the final clear coat, reacted to the enamel black gloss under the Aclad metalizer (I though the Aclad metalizer lacquer was enough of a barrier but it wasn't). I tried to sand it all off to start again, but someone the grey primer underneath it all also was affected and turned gummy and clogged up all my sandpapers and couldn't be removed. I spent days at it and it was still a gummy mess. I ended up starting from scratch on the phaser handle again with another one of my 3D PLA prints, but this time I didn't use the enamel gloss black undercoat! What a mess!!! The weird thing is I used the same colour and when I re-sprayed it without the black gloss undercoat, it turned out too dark. I put in magnets to hold the P1 phaser onto the P2 body and magnets at the base of the stand and base of the phaser handle to I can take it off the base. Here is where it is for now, I am going to have to re-spray the handle with a lighter steel Aclad metalizer colour and I'm missing the top jewel in the watch crown and the acrylic half-moon until I print a scale with power settings graphics to glue on top. It's also missing the darkened plexiglas front which I have to find somewhere and cut into place, but its 80% there after 2 weeks. Oh, I didn't work on the base at all, that's just a straight PLA print and I just sprayed directly onto it without primer or sanding.

Wow that looks amazing @Papa Rat! Congrats. You might want to do a bit of a lighter dry brushing around the edges of the plates/panels and a silvery chipping in the edges to compliment your excellent darker weathering. (The Zentradis weren't known for their upkeep :P) I love the look of these old kits and they really captured what was in my mind as a kid. I love Interstellar @Thom - can't wait to see what you do with that kit! It looks to be a bit of a bear - American kits tend to be gappy (I think we've been spoiled with Japanese kits)

Very possible that this will be the next drop Want it? Then be prepared for the eventual pre-order to go live.

Same, same and same. It’d be disappointing if to get that set as preordered early and at the same time. Oh well we’ll see what happens. I ordered the hguc Gallus J as soon as it popped up from hlj and noticed that it looks like I somehow missed it!

@Shawn That's cool predicting the box art.

HG 1/100 VF-31J.

Batman Returns.

And that there... is a Lego Death Star!!!