MacrossJunkie

Anime-Export still has it for pre-order. http://www.anime-export.com/product/7428 I'm not sure it's worth it for the price, but these are web exclusives and web exclusives have always cost a ton when retail stores sell them because I think they include an extra service fee in addition to whatever was the regular price for the extra work of making a web exclusive available to you.

Dang, I was actually sort of looking forward to the delay. I think Yamato and Bandai need to get together to work out spacing their releases a bit more It's not so bad with the Bandai DX's since they have a lower price tag, but the Yamato ones are killer.

An Fz-109 would be nice, but I can't imagine it selling well due to the price likely being very high, possibly more than the VF-17, in addition to being an enemy mecha. Not a design I particularly favor, but I'd still get one if it was well engineered and because of the fact that there are too few enemy mecha.

Especially true in this case. It makes me wonder if Bandai is using one of the cheap Chinese factories like one Yamato used before moving to the more expensive one for better quality. Oh well, at least it seems that most of the problems are fixable for both Yamato and Bandai stuff. A little repainting here, a little modification there and they're good to go. Fixed the paint chips on mine and even painted over the edges so that the white plastic doesn't show from the spaces in between the pieces for the black and red stripes in fighter mode. The red and black Gundam paint markers seem to match the colors perfectly. Took a few pics in battroid, but trying to avoid transforming it until I can start getting some clear coat on it to avoid rubbing off the weathering.

If I had those chips in the plastic itself on mine, I'd probably try to fill them in with putty, sand it a bit and then give it a coat of flat black... or at least just paint the chipped areas with black so that the chips are not so apparent. They must train monkeys to assemble these things with so many apparently coming out of the box all dinged up.

I would say it's either my weathered Max VF-22S or my still-incomplete-because-my-airbrush-broke-again 1/3000 SDF-1. Right now I'd say my Max VF-22S edges it out.

That sucks. I wonder if you could locally heat that area and bend the antenna back. The paint chips and sloppy paint apps seem par for the course. The right shoulder block on mine looks like someone had scratched off the paint by accident and then got a paint brush and brushed some red paint back on. It's clumpy and uneven and went over onto the black stripe area. I put mine all the way back too since it keeps the neck base locked in place and helps to cover more of the cockpit, otherwise, if the shoulder blades are more level like it is shown in the CG models, the back plate doesn't cover the entire canopy and the neck base flops around.

Oh, I wasn't even thinking about the ebay prices. Just the prices for the past sets that were available in stores that were selling the web exclusive stuff like the galia IV and ghost sets. Those were something like 9000+ yen in places like anime-export and overdrive. I'm definitely in for a group buy of the armor when it becomes available.

In the case of the renewal version, they say it is a separate web-exclusive release and not a bundle which is why there is a scramble to pre-order the 25S now. What will suck is if they later go "we changed our mind, we will release it as a bundle too!" after people have bought the stand-alone 25S and then paid the overly inflated price for the separate web-exclusive armor with shipping for that as well. At this point, though, I wouldn't be overly surprised if they went and did that. Pissed off? Yes, but not surprised. I hate that there is no rhyme or reason to their releases.

Thanks for the heads up. Put in my pre-order. Was contemplating putting in a pre-order at Anime-Export over the past few days, but they require the payment immediately and I didn't want to pay that just yet.

Nice, I didn't know they were using diecast for the elbow joints now. What's the purpose of the extending arm in the second image? Is it just for the transformation to fighter mode?

I'm not disagreeing. I was just trying to say that both you and ATLMYK have a point. The bulbs produce a lot of UV from the mercury in them, but most of it gets turned into visible light. No doubt some UV still gets through as the conversion from UV to visible light is not 100% efficient. And even a minute of exposure to sunlight at a time done repeatedly over long period of time will still add up. That's why I will not use CFL's inside my display cases and keep them enclosed in glass cabinets. I'll only go with LEDs for lighting for inside the cabinet since they produce no significant UV or heat.

Technically, CFLs do produce a lot of UV light. But it gets converted to the visible light we see coming from them when they react with the phosphor layer. So I wouldn't expect to get a tan sitting next to one all day. That said, I'm still paranoid about using them too close to plastic toys. With all this talk about the Bandai stuff yellowing quickly, I do plan on putting a clear coat on my VF-25F so there's less actual surface area directly exposed to air and causing oxidation which I suspect may be related to yellowing as well. Future is supposed to be UV resistant also. On another note, if you have the toys in a glass display enclosure, the glass should prevent a lot of the UV light from getting to the toys. Thus far, I've not experienced any yellowing on any of the Macross stuff I have. Most of it is in the detolf cabinets and the room is lit by a couple 100w equivalent CFL's. My bright white 1/48 VF-1J is still as pristine as ever and even the white plastic parts on the VF-25G shows no signs of yellowing either.

I believe heat itself be a cause for yellowing as well, either through accelerating a chemical breakdown or something else. I've seen many instances where plastics that are otherwise away from light have yellowed because they were enclosing or near a source of heat. Anyway... getting way off topic at this point.

Thanks Dobber. I guess so many posts have come in this thread so quickly that I missed a bunch of them. I guess I missed out on HLJ's preorders as well =( Damn you, Bandai! If they would have made their plans clear from the start instead of waiting to announce after preorders were closed, I would have done the preorder instead of waiting for a bundle that will never happen.

I've gone back to using enamel paints mixed with thinner. It allows me to mix the colors I want since I prefer varying shades of gray on different valks depending on their color or sometimes on the same valk, again based its paint scheme. On this one, I started with gunship gray and lightened it a bit and thinned it out. Then rubbed in some gun metal and oil stain powder from the Tamiya weathering kits. Worked on the top half a tiny bit more tonight. Will get around to the bottom half and battroid mode this weekend.

Anyone else having issues when clicking on the image button on the editor? It just puts a grayish overlay over the page and gets stuck like that with no dialog box that pops up. The only way to get out of it is to hit the back button to go to the previous page.

Wow... super lame. And AmiAmi is not taking any more pre-orders on the 25S it seems. HLJ doesn't even seem to be selling the renewal versions at all. They don't have the Alto version listed either. Wonder why they decided to not sell them.

Got mine today after work. The design of this has really impressed me. The locking mechanism between the legs and wing root in fighter mode is so simple and easy. I like it better than how the VF-27 and YF-29 do it. Joints seem to be tighter than the YF-29. I hope it will stay that way, but past history will likely prove that is just wishful thinking. The only thing that really irks me is that it came with sloppy paint applications and chipped paint all over in tiny areas. Did some panel lining and some quick weathering on mine to see how it looks. The toy looks good enough to deserve more effort so I will do more with it over the weekend when I have time. Edit: fixd speeling erors

Or possibly kept in a sealed dark chamber filled with an inert gas?

I always thought the VF-27's tail just added more to the traditional "devil" look it had. With the horns on the head for the squad leader version, sort of a demonic looking face, taloned feet, the wings were sort of bat-like when folded up, and then the tail.

It's funny that they strayed from the anime's colors for Gamlin's 22S in order to have something a bit better looking, but decided to go as accurate as possible with Milia's. I too would have liked hers in a deeper red color like her 1J or DYRL Q-Rau. I did kinda get used to it after a while, but I don't have it displayed next to my max as it just looks too weird. I have it grouped/displayed with other reddish valks so it doesn't look as silly. As for those waiting for the VF-11B or C to go super cheap, I'm just not seeing it happen anytime soon, if ever. I think the best price I've seen it for was on clearance for around 11 or 12k yen, but I could be mistaken. Perhaps some remaining stock will be put on clearance again this holiday season.

Yeah, the seats are rotated upright much like the YF-19 so that the pilot is facing forward relative to the battroid (facing the floor of the cockpit with the canopy behind). There's just no room in the toy itself to accomplish that. At least not without using similar tricks as Yamato's 1/60 VF-19 toys.

Could someone that has this already post up some larger high res pics?

Strangely enough, for a person that prefers an accurate rendition of the fighter mode over battroid, this rendition doesn't bother me at all. It almost feels like that's how it would look if it were to appear in Macross Frontier and rendered as a CG model. After all, they changed a bunch of things on the VB-6 going from hand drawn line art to an actual CG model, why shouldn't this be any different? What does bother me are the large gaps between nearly all the pieces. I'm hoping it's just because it's a resin prototype and that the production toy will have those gaps tightened up. Unfortunately it feels like it may be a repeat of the VF-11 where it is priced way above what people feel it should be worth and thus will not sell well. I hope the S variant sells enough to justify the D because at this price, I can really afford to get only one, and that is the one I want. Sigh, if only the exchange rate were the same as it was when I started collecting Macross stuff. It was something like 1 dollar = 122 yen then. Those were good times. The VF-17at the amiami price of 21,800 yen would have cost only $179 and then another probably $33 for shipping.