MacrossJunkie

Have you tried pushing down on the bottom end of the cover plate? The top edge is hinged. I only accidentally discovered it during the first time I transformed it. My thumb was on the piece and accidentally pushed it in and the piece came off.

Just got mine today. My thoughts: The good (likes and improvements over the VF-25): - The crotch piece now locks into place at the correct angle. I originally thought they had some sort of bar that would fold out to prop it out, but that's not the case. It just locks into the proper angle once you pull it out all the way. - The clips on the top of the intakes are a huge improvement over the rounded pegs used in the v1 VF-25. They are so strong that it is actually difficult to detach the legs. - The hip guns are now attached via a ball and socket joint so they don't keep falling off. For the VF-25 and 27, it was a ball joint going in a tube and came of pretty easily during transformation attempts. - I like that they used a lot more clear plastic pieces instead of painting them in areas such as the sensor arrays. - The new posable hands are very tight and hold the weapons well. - The reversal of the ball and socket joint for the wrists is an improvement over that of the VF-25 and 27. The larger ball joints seem to be tighter and hold more weight... for now. - The knife slides into the shield very securely and doesn't rattle around. - The front landing gear is practically double the length of the VF-25's. - There is a whole lot more panel detail on the surface compared to the 25. - It actually has a neck this time. - The mechanism for the shoulder block has changed over the way the VF-25 and 27 handled it and I find it works a lot better and keeps the shoulders closer to the main body as well. The bad (could use improvement): - The new method to keep the crotch folded and locked into place using the hip swing bars is still not very strong and disengaged a few times while trying to move the legs. - The crappy pvc head lasers are hard to position because the material firsts twists around before it actually starts to move in the socket so unless you move it a good amount, it will just untwist back to its original position. - The "C" clips that attach the shoulder armor to the arms are pretty wimpy and the shoulders fall off easily, especially during transformation. - The shield in fighter mode doesn't clip on very securely and it falls off fairly easily. The part of the shield that slides out is pulled out all the way, so it's just the connection itself that is fairly poor. - May not be a bad, but the front landing gear seems to stop a very strange angle as it angles so far back that it looks strange and doesn't seem like it would be structurally sound for landing. - The bar that attaches the beam turret could stand to be metal instead of plastic. It twists when you try to turn the tightly attached turret and I fear breaking it. The ugly (QC issues): - The hinge that attaches the left wing to the back plate had stress marks at the corners right out of the box. - The diamond shaped area on left wing engine is missing half that shiny pink paint while the other side's engine is fully painted. - A bit of sloppy paint application here and there. Paint scuff marks and chips out of the box. - The beam turret might be a little warped. It's not noticeable unless you look at the fighter from the back and look at the spacing between the bottom of the beam guns and the top of the legs. No amount of fiddling with it could make it even. The strange: The cover plate for the crotch piece for some reason is designed to act like a button to pop the cover plate off. Underneath is a little bar or clip that doesn't stick into the cover plate itself. I wonder what it's for. My first thought was it's possibly for a swappable part for a future armor pack of some sort, but I find that unlikely.

I wonder if gray colored plastic is just inherently weaker and prone to self destructing. It seems that the majority of the breaks and cracks on my valks that occur without hardly any interaction are mostly on gray plastic pieces. - Original 1/72 VF-11B, gray plastic connecting the legs broke under its own weight. - Left hip of my Gamlin VF-22S: cracked on its own. - Lower swiveling portion of both thighs on Ivanov's SV-51, internal connecting pieces where the screw goes into crumbled over time and the thighs split in half, forcing me to glue the two halves back together for both legs. - Gray shoulder socket pieces for VF-0A, both shoulders split on their own. - Ozma's VF-25S wing hinge split at the corner. - Other people have reported the gray portion of the YF-19's arm also breaking seeming fairly commonly. The only other cracks or breaks I've had with my valks that didn't involve gray pieces were a self destructing left thigh on Nora's SV-51 in a similar fashion to Ivanov's and the cracked shoulder hinge on the VT-1 which is the fault of the pin used.

I had floppy wing issues with my Milia version. I put a couple drops of liquid cement for plastic models onto the exposed ends of the metal rod shown in your pic and moved it around to work it into the gaps. Now it's decently tight enough to stay in place.

Actually, that's not red plastic. It's just coated with a clear red paint and I guess the silicone reacted with the paint. For the most part, it seems that bare plastic parts are fine when in contact with the tips.

I really like the YF-29's gunpod. It's large and looks neat with the split halves but not huge and unwieldy like the VF-27's. Hopefully the toy version is more stable and not so flimsy feeling like the VF-25's and 27's when opened.

I hope they give this another small run sometime in the future. I missed out on it the first time due to some expenses preventing me from being able to buy it on the initial release.

Has there been any mention of whether there is any sort of locking mechanism that keeps the crotch piece pointed out as implied by the pics or are they just cheating with that like a lot of people (including me) do?

In my case, mine are stored in detolfs which currently have no lighting in the cases, my home office's blinds are always shut and the only sunlight that gets in is indirect light that leaks in between the blinds but none that shines directly on the cases. The times I checked were during winter and early spring when it was still cold and I keep the heat set at 60F (16C) in the house since I like the cold. So heat and sunlight are not really factors for me.

There was no damage to your X-Wing? I used Testor's Dullcote as well on the valk in my pic above, but you can see the obvious damage the tips did to it. I wonder why.

I'd be up also for buying a PE sheet that someone doesn't plan on using. I hope those glow in the dark decals will be offered up at places like HLJ. I don't understand why they don't offer up all the extras like the sticker sheets and PE parts in a bundle. They're already making them, how hard could it possibly be to make extras and sell them to the people that bought their product early and at nearly double the price only just a relatively short time ago?

Were they contacting plastic or touching painted surfaces? If you had any that were touching painted surfaces, could you specify a few toys and where they were touching? What sort of clear coat did you use on your X-Wing model? Just curious and I think it would be useful to know.

I thought the VF-27 fit together very well and the pieces locked in place very nicely.

Unless you have been doing customizations or weathering to your valks or have one with weathering pre-applied like the low-vis VF-1A, it's doubtful you would run into this problem. The majority of most valks are bare plastic anyway. When I tried using the stands after washing the tips, I checked after two weeks and didn't really see any marring of the finish so I thought it was good. Then after some months, I had looked again while rearranging my cabinet and the stand was pretty much glued to the valk. So it's not a fast chemical reaction, but it does eventually happen. As I have hypothesized, I think it's just an issue with the silicone itself reacting to lacquer based paints. I haven't tried placing one of my valks coated with future to test it, but I really don't want to risk it. Plus I would have to give it a reasonable amount of time before checking, like another few months. If anyone else wants to give it a test or has already, I'd like to hear how the acrylics (or even enamel paints) fare. My guess is it should be okay, but don't hold me to it.

Meh. It wasn't like I soaked it in rubbing alcohol. I just did some wipes with it on a paper towel with a bit of rubbing alcohol. At worst, if it did any reaction, it was unnoticeable. It would have been of benefit if it actually did remove a layer. Afterwards, it was washed with liquid detergent in warm water and dried off. From googling around, I get the impression that silicone is reactive to lacquer based products, which would likely explain the melting clear coats. I'm guessing acrylic based paints and clear coats should be fine. I mean the stands are made of acrylic and there doesn't seem to be any reaction there.

Just so people can see it's not an isolated incident. I had tried reusing the clear tip stand after Carlos has given the advice to wash the tips. So I had both thoroughly cleaned them with rubbing alcohol and used liquid dish washing detergent to remove any chemicals that might still be on the surface of the clear tips. Then I set my VT-1 back on it with the tips contacting new areas. The result after a couple months was that it still melted/at through the clear coat and turned it into a gooey substance. So it seems to be the material that the tips are made of that is causing this. You can see two different sets of marks: Two on the bottom of the left intake. Two on each foot. One set was from before cleaning. One was after. Cleaning them did jack. I got a Yamato stand and have since displayed it on that instead. The flexidisplay stands are still okay on bare plastic, they're just damaging on paints. This doesn't happen with the black tipped versions.

I think that S variant head looks so much better with the "jaw" piece colored the same as the main body. Looks good with the blue stripe instead of yellow too.

If yours are looking up, it sounds like you don't have the upper cockpit section slid down far enough or at all.

This thing practically requires a stand. I don't see how a toy version of this would be able to stay up in GERWALK mode without at least some sort of support up in the front to prop it up.

I hope HLJ will list those glow in the dark stickers as well. Now I'm just paranoid with painting up my SDF-1 further since I don't know what Yamato will or will not release or make available later. Those photo etch parts would still be nice to have. Kinda sucks that those of us who paid more are getting less without even being given the option of paying even more just to get the extras, if that makes any sense.

Counting the 1/48's as well, I would have to say that the largest category of toys I have are from DYRL. However, I have far more toys from the other series combined than I have from DYRL. As for favorites, it's a toss up between M+ for the YF-21, YF-19, and VF-11B and DYRL for the 1/3000 SDF-1.

You should probably ask that in the model kit forum.

Because Yamato can't make the VF-171... yet.

Pretty neat, but how do you tune this thing or attach replacement strings? I'm guessing the head of the guitar can open up or be removed?

If this sells well, I hope Bandai will finally consider making the VF-171. I like the VF-17 enough to get one, but I like the 171 design a whole lot more. Going by the CAD pic, it looks like they are going with the S version first. A shame since I like the D head and blue stripes more.