MacrossJunkie

The heatshield looks a little different from the prototype pics. The bottom half of the heatshield in the yamato pic has that bump at the top of it. In Graham's pic, the top half of the heat shield has a similar bump extending from the bottom. Is the bottom bump still there in the production version and if so, does that top half bump lock in underneath the bottom half's bump?

Sweet. So was there something in particular you had to do to get the lower half of the heatshield to lock in place?

Is the shield level with the shoulder plates in fighter mode now? The prototypes all had the shield too low which made it not level and also created a bit of a gap underneath the upper intake between it and the shield (I'm not talking about the gap that's also in the line art).

Seriously! I keep checking my mail to see if there's a shipping notification yet. My 19 and 21 want a new friend. I'm gonna have a hard time deciding what mode to put it in since both fighter and battroid look good and I only got one for now. With so many new things coming this year, it may be a while before I get a second one.

Isamu really needs to slim down. He's getting so fat, he can't even fit into a VF-1 anymore. Your Isamu looks kinda fuzzy. Do you have your 19 normally displayed with the cockpit open?

The scan is just too blurry to see it. You can at least see it in the frame at the top of the scan next to the illustration of the gunpod. On a different note, I hope the VF-22 will come with connectors that are compatible with the new stands since it won't be coming with one and including connectors for the type of stand that comes with the 21 and SV-51 are worthless unless they plan on selling those stands separately at some point. Speaking of stands, I found it kind of funny or odd that for the VF-22 and repaint 19 pics they chose to use glass(?) blocks instead of one of their actual stands.

At closer inspection, it looks like the lines from the heat shield is still there over the windows, it's just the same red color as the canopy now. Retcon or not, I think the color scheme as depicted in the Chronicle looks better.

I think someone needs to call off sick for the rest of the day so they can get us some pics

I wonder who colored that in the chronicle. Even the Macross Design Works book shows it has a heat shield covering each of the canopy windows or maybe they just decided to make the heat shields the same color as the canopy now?

Hey it could happen. Luca just needs to focus a PPB along the leading edge of the fin.

Hypothetically speaking, if Yamato went ahead and coughed up the cash to get the license to make M7 valks, I think it wouldn't make much sense for them NOT to get as much out of it as they can. Particularly since they have/can make molds to milk for VFs with variants and existing canon schemes. That would mean M&M VF-22s, a new VF-17 mold for D & S and possibly T with some small changes (including repaints like Milia's VF-17 and green smuggler version), and a new VF-19 mold for F/S/P/Kai (also P with whale blood recolor ). At least with the 19, even though they have to make new molds, they don't have to figure out the engineering and transformation all over again, so that would be time and money saved. Maybe a tiny, tiny possibility for an Fz-109A and F, though probably not worth the effort still.

The main hinderance I see with Yamato putting out a VF-19 past the A (F,S,P or Kai) is that pretty much the entire thing would have to be new molds. Unlike the YF-21 -> VF-22 which only had mostly minor changes to a select few parts, the VF-19F and others feature changes throughout the entire VF from head to toe, nose to tail. I think the only thing they could recycle would be the hands On the other hand, this would be a good opportunity for them to try to slim down the VF further. They also could milk a VF-19 mold a lot more than the YF-19 mold due to all the different variants. So I guess we'll have to see if Yamato wants to put the effort into creating a whole new 19. Though I'm not a big fan of the 19F and S with the clipped wings and lack of canards, I for one wouldn't mind getting a 19S with super packs.

Well, it kind of looks like the new part on the bay doors are clipped on or something so it's possible you could take them off and attach the gunpods in the same way the YF-21 does, but you wouldn't be able to put the covers back over them as there's no way it would fit over the gun pods. Also as mentioned in several posts throughout the thread, no, there won't be any FAST packs with the VF-22.

I don't know if there's really any data concerning the canopy specifically. But it doesn't really avoid having a heatshield as mini-heatshields pop out of who knows where to cover the dome and the viewports in battroid mode. I don't think there would have been any way for even yamato to come up with something to incorporate that as something integrated.

1. 2 guns 2. The guns are supposed to be that color for Gamlin's VF-22. A sort of grayish blue with a lighter color trim. I think the lighting makes the gun look lighter colored. 3. No fast packs were designed for the VF-22s. The integrated gun pod mount takes the place of the bay cover packs. The only possible thing they could probably include would be the sound boosters like the ones Milia snuck off with in her VF-22 to do a little solo singing.

That Roy scheme along with the shading done looks really tight. I hope Yamato seriously takes that scheme into consideration.

I have to agree that the market may not be there to release a spartan and Yamato still be able to recoup the costs, much less make a profit out of it. Some people say to price it higher to make up the difference, but there's already a lot of people who feel that destroids are too expensive as it is and more who think that how much they are right now pretty much the max they would pay or at least are willing to pay but still feel they overpaid for what they're getting. Bumping the price up by another $10 or more would likely cause the number of spartans sold to drop drastically. Far more would be lost in lowered sales than the amount gained per unit. An interesting interview with Brad Wardell of Stardock came up recently and some of the talking points regarding game sales actually seems to pertain quite well here. Full interview here. A couple relevant snippets here: The relevant idea here is that if you charge too much, you won't get very much in units sold. What is different with the Spartan and macross toys in general from the video game market is that Yamato can't really charge much lower because unlike video games, the market for macross toys and especially something like the Spartan is much much smaller, so they probably wouldn't be able to make back the cost if they sold it for very low and every person with even a remote interest in the spartan or completionists bought one (maybe more than one for some people, but still).

If you use a color picker in a photo editing program, the colors, depending on the shading, range from a sea green to a dark green to a dark blue-green in some areas. In most areas I select, green is the dominant color with a higher value than blue or red.

While I thought the VF-2SS battroid looked decent enough, I'm not sure I ever liked the fighter mode that much. To tell the truth, I don't know why, but I actually liked the VF-XX design better. Also, am I the only person that thinks the metal siren is second only to the VA-3 Invader in ugliness? >.>

Ok, I'll bite. Madness? THIS...IS...A SPARTAN!!

Here's some screen caps of Gamlin's VF-22S in D7. Whether or not it officially is supposed to be a dark greenish color, it does seem to have it in the animation.

I find the MP seekers look really good in fighter mode while looking at them from the top or the side. They are also far more detailed in terms of panel lining and markings as you can even see the individual rivets on them. Where they start to fail is from the front, the intakes don't look right as it's just a solid piece covering most of where the intake should be and then part of the fan juts out below it. The cockpit detail is pretty much an after thought. Also, you can see the robot parts like the arms and hands and such from the bottom. But that's not too much the fault of the toy since Macross fighters were designed from the start to be transformable while the seekers had to be adapted from existing planes. Kawamori wanted to make those parts covered, but decided it took too much away from the robot mode. The landing gears are nothing to speak of as they are far worse than even the DX's. The null ray guns seem like they were just kind of done with far less care compared to the toy itself and the included missiles are cheesy. I think overall, the look of the valkyries when everything is considered is a much better toy and design. As someone else said, the robot's lower articulation is very low. This is due to the way they implemented the hip kibble. You can't spread the legs out as much as they should be able to unless you take the hip kibble off. I actually take mine off and reattach them to the legs themselves which also has the double benefit of allowing better articulation and also making the legs seem thicker. Problem is you have to use the stand because they can't stand up on their own that way. One nice thing though is that the seekers are exactly 1/60 scale so you could display them next to your 1/60 valks if you wanted to put a real world fighter in the same scale next to them.

There's barely enough room as it is to get the bay doors over the legs. Making the legs thicker would make the fighter mode fatter which ruins one of the best features of the YF-21/VF-22, its sexy sleekness. Actually, in person, the legs of the toy don't look so bad.

Wow! I never thought Yamato would be able to make the VF-22S. I definitely like the gray used here instead of the ugly dark green color that it should be. One of the few times I'm glad the color is different from the canon scheme. I'm not too convinced with the modified pod covers though. It kinda looks like someone cut some strips of styrene and glued them to the bay covers as they have no detail or anything and just don't look quite right in shape either. I hope it's just because they weren't done with the bay doors yet. Will be a must buy for me. Definitely hoping they include more appropriately colored stickers as well as use the same thinner sticker types that came with the destroids. Couldn't really care less about the YF-19 repaints unless they made some improvements to the mold like improving the fit of various parts and reducing the gullet size to about 75%-80% of current size (nothing as drastic as how the hasegawa models depicts it). It's just way too thick on the 19 from the profile view and even blocks the gunpod.

LIES! That's a Roy imposter. The real Roy would have beer missiles exclusively. He would first shoot one at himself to get himself respectably drunk if he wasn't already, then he would shoot them at his enemies so they wouldn't be at a disadvantage. After all, how can you fight without some booze?