Anasazi37

After the really big showing at last year's event because of 40th anniversary of Macross, where more than 30 new items were previewed, this year was disappointing. Just a small handful of items, some of which were already previewed last year or have been teased for several years. Apart from the Super Ostrich prototype, which was a genuine surprise, it seems like they phoned it in this time. I'd like to think that Bandai's designers and engineers are hard at work on toys like the 1/2000 SDF-1 and the remaining HM-R Destroids, so they couldn't put much time or energy into the event, but we're talking about Bandai. They're focused on other, more lucrative properties. At this point I'm just hoping that most of what they showed last year gets released...eventually.

Saving my money for the DX Super Ostrich...and I had to prepay for my PO of the RIOBOT Voltron Legendary Defender. It set me back ¥92120. That hurt. A lot. But it's the first decent version anyone's made. The Playmates version sucked.

If you are willing to send me files to work with (STL is fine), I'll see what I can do. Not difficult to convert the can mesh back to a set of parametric objects so I can do more with them.

I might be able to help with decals for it, too, if you weren't already thinking about making them yourself. The yellow and white banner wouldn't take too long to design, and based on how you made the top piece, all you really need is the white text since the rest can be painted yellow. The red and blue artwork with the black lines on it, that spans the six cans, would be a little more challenging due to the curved surfaces and how everything has to line up, but is feasible. I'd need the print files for the machine to do everything correctly. You could include the decal artwork file with your print files. I wouldn't want any compensation, just offering to help another fan. I could probably print a few decal sets for folks who are interested.

Every time I look at my plush gunpod, it makes me smile because of how patently ridiculous and fun it is. Still one of my all-time favorite Macross purchases. I'd very much like to see an Sv-303 release, too.

Heads up: release date for Alto has moved from October to December. Just noticed the change on Good Smile's web site. I'd been holding off on shipping items in my HLJ Private Warehouse until this released, putting up with their seemingly endless onslaught of "SHIP NOW" emails, but it could be another two months....

Tamashii site says "November 2023" for Max: https://tamashiiweb.com/item/14457/?wovn=en I hope it's closer to the beginning of November, or even 10/31. Don't want to wait too long to complete the squadron.

Got an email from my proxy service this morning that my Kakizaki is ready to ship. I'm going to have them hold onto it until the Max releases next month. They went up for PO at the same time, as Tamashii Web Exclusive (TWE) items, but their release dates are about a month apart. You can keep track of the latest announcements using this site: https://tamashiiweb.com/item_character/macross_series/?wovn=en (be sure to select "Japan" for the region, using the floating button in the lower right corner of your screen) There's also a well-maintained PO announcement thread: A few stores like Anime Export are still willing to take POs for TWE items and then act as proxies for you, but Bandai is really starting to crack down on proxies. The proxy service I like to use recently had to switch to a process where orders are shipped to a third party and then shipped to their warehouse, to get around Bandai's latest "defenses." Not a huge additional cost, maybe $4 in postage and a bit longer wait time for me, but this whole situation is beyond ridiculous.

He's been restocking pretty regularly. Recommend you 1) check the site often as @starkiller239 recommended, 2) join the Macross Fan Central group on Facebook (he announces restocks there), or 3) message him here and request an update on restocking (his username is BroTaku79). When I need stands...and I keep finding reasons to buy more of them...I tend to check the site a few times a week. That way I don't have to sort through a bunch of "sorry if someone already posted this or already asked this question" noise in the Facebook group to find his updates. With that said, when an update does show up in the group, he sometimes includes a discount code.

It's definitely a partsformer

I've continued to refine my Yamato 1/48 adapters for the Archi Stands. Battroid is done now, but I'm still tweaking the ones for Gerwalk, Fighter, and Armored Fighter. As mentioned above, the gunpod sits lower in Armored Fighter, and it's a lot heavier when displayed, so I made a separate adapter just for that case. Required some reinforcement. Here's the result. Printed in PLA for rapid prototyping, not ABS, but it's still very strong. You can do some extreme banking poses. The adapters are really cradles, no clipping on to anything. The valk just sits in them and gravity does the rest. I'm avoiding the clip-on approach because that is more difficult to print reliably, but also because I plan to use these adapters on 1/48 customs I'm creating and don't want to scratch the paint jobs.

If it released in Japan in late August, it could arrive at BBTS right before the end of October. That would be two months. As others have said, BBTS is responsive to inquires about arrival times, so I'm sure they'll give you the best estimate they have right now. I'd prepare to hand over $200 before the end of next month, just to be safe.

BBTS estimates for release are usually pretty good, since they've been doing this import thing for a long time. However, they are at the mercy of when the manufacturer puts the items on a ship, how long the ship takes to arrive in the US port, how long it takes to unload the ship and get the items through customs, etc. Assuming 2 months after release in Japan is usually a safe bet. You could try looking at release estimates on other sites like Amazon US (assuming it's being sold there). Odds are good that Amazon will get the item earlier or at the same time as BBTS. For example, Tamashii Nations lists the VF-25G release as 23 September in Japan, Amazon US lists it as 15 November, and BBTS just says November. So, likely sometime in November.

The Hasegawa kits usually cost around ¥3000, so ¥13,000 for an add-on is pretty steep. Experten does great work, so I'm in no way criticizing the quality of it. It's just likely priced out of reach of a lot of people. If what they're selling are the digital files, so you can resin print four copies for the four variants (Regular, Scout, Light Missile, Heavy Missile), that makes the price a bit more reasonable, but most companies don't offer them for sale. It's risky to do that.

I need to get back to this project. I'm a lot smarter about 3D design now and should rework these a bit. The RMS-1 is almost 100% ready to go, but the UUM-7 still needs some tweaking. It mainly comes down to tolerances between parts that have to fit together after printing, but I'd also like to make a pylon to hold two RMS-1, like what we see on Yamato, Arcadia, and Bandai valks.

So far these releases have a much higher production quality standard than I expected. They're nicer than the HMR VF-0S, which I found disappointing. I hope the standard stays high. Lots more valks to make!

And it's not like they don't know how to make it easier. Just look at the all Gundam stuff they produce. Yes, that franchise is orders of magnitude more popular than Macross, so they care about it orders of magnitude more, but they should be able to apply the same business logic to producing Macross stuff. It seems like there's clearly unmet demand that they could meet without flooding the market and making it unprofitable for them. I'm not a fan of artificial scarcity. I buy these toys to enjoy them, not as investments, so I don't need their value to go up over time due to limited supply.

That's my initial reaction to the news as well. The upside is potentially no bots. The downside is potentially entering multiple lotteries across multiple sites in a semi-futile effort to secure a PO. What if you end up "winning" on more than one site? I guess you'd have to buy all of them? In that case, if you limit yourself to one site, you might miss out entirely and then have to deal with the secondary market after release. As much as some folks might not like the following idea, I'm okay with all sites charging the full purchase price up front for POs. The few times I've seen stores do that, their POs were available for a lot longer. Having to put a lot of money on the table seems to be a big discouragement for scalpers.

Usually takes about a week after the domestic PO in Japan for a WWM item to show up on sites like BBTS. Amazon US generally takes longer for some reason.

I'll add the recent DX Angel Birds release to the pile of evidence that points to Bandai consistently making poor design decisions with respect to markings on valks. That gigantic AB logo they created, which isn't canon, stamped all over the valk, is the main reason why I didn't buy one. I was very much looking forward to owning a DX AB, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend money on that atrocity. I personally find it to be a massive eyesore and it destroys what is otherwise a clean and attractive color scheme. Hasegawa and Yamato/Arcadia respected the original scheme in their releases, Bandai did not...for the sake of originality? I'm sure if they were asked, they'd somehow double down on the design decision as being in the best interest of fans. It's not at the same level as the reversed modex numbers and associated gaslighting about how it was done intentionally to maintain visual symmetry, but I'm still disappointed.

It's starting to feel like I wasted a substantial amount of my limited free time on the Yamato 1/48 adapter project to help fellow MW members who have been asking for adapters for several years now, but more intensely since Archi Stands came on the scene. I'm now glad that I hadn't designed or printed anything beyond the prototypes. If Yeti makes his adapters available again in some form, great. He clearly put a ton of thought and effort into those and the community will benefit from having access to them. I'm going to pause my project and wait to see how all of this plays out.

It comes down to how you can print them and what materials you use. It's not hard to design adapters that will snap in place so you can hold the valk upside down (which I did), it's another to be able to print them without going to a commercial provider. Consumer grade additive manufacturing options are more limited and because of how the material is laid down during printing, there is a "grain" to it. Introduce too much stress along the grain, which would happen if you start pushing adapters onto valks, and the adapters break. I went through multiple prototypes that suffered this fate. I also wanted to limit how much the adapters might scratch up paint jobs on custom 1/48s, so I increased tolerances to create cradles instead of snap-on adapters. I still need to complete my Minmay Guard and Blue Roses 002 customs and don't want them getting messed up by display adapters.

Margins? Much like the waterslide decals that I've produced for this community over the past 22 years, I'd be taking a loss if I offered my adapters for sale at a price that collectors would find acceptable (which is what I do). Especially when you factor in the amount of time required to design them, print them, clean them up, and ship them out. Big chunk of the design time was getting everything dialed in, to include recalibrating my printer for the filament I wanted to use and then making tweaks to the designs in order to ensure the prints were as close to the drafted dimensions as possible. I would care enough to print your adapters correctly, but it might be more than I can take on. My day job is...intense. I feel this way about the adapters I just designed for the Yamato 1/48, since they are cradles that don't "clip" onto the valk. Do anything too crazy with them, like a close-to-90-degree banking pose, and the valk might fall out.

Yes, even just selling personal use versions of the designs through a site like Cults 3D and letting people print them as needed would be extremely helpful to this community. I just spent several weekends designing new adapters for the Yamato 1/48. It was a time consuming and frustrating process. I was working on a plan to make the adapters available to people, but now maybe I'll stop....

It might require some modifications. Good thing I have a VF-1J suited up and ready for testing.