MacrossJunkie

You guys must have gotten good ones then. There was a post a few pages back about how a guy looked at 3 RVFs and how they had color variations compared to each other where one was not so noticable and the other was. I swear to God that mine looks pretty much like my pics. I immediately saw the color differences when I took it out of the box long before I took any pics and the difference was quite stark in contrast. If anyone wants to trade their hardly-detectable-color-difference Luca with mine, I'd be happy to trade

I don't mean to stray further off topic, but what is the purpose of that white thing that makes it look like it's wearing a panty on its head?

That looks great. Did you use any decals from somewhere else or were they all ones that came with the toy? The reason I ask is the decal/sticker between the upper "INTAKE" arrow and the maneuvering thrust nozzle doesn't show up on the 1/48 version of the sticker sheet and I've only seen it on Hasegawa models or Anasazi decal sheets.

I find that the flexi's still work pretty decently for me. I have a row of my fighters angled down like so: For the RVF, I flipped out the peg used for locking the crotch piece in battroid and butt it up against the rubber tip so that it helps prevent any forward slide as well as add more surface contact. For the rear, I just find any nooks to plant the rod tips into. The way it is right now, it's not going anywhere. For up angles, I guess it'd be easier to have two of the rods shorter while the front rod is longer and put the front rod tip behind the crotch peg instead of in front so that the very tip of it is situated in the hole and uses the peg as extra security against any down sliding.

Yeah, it is officially stated as 1/60 scale. Unfortunately, it is a tad shorter than it should be. I partly attribute it to the hips being attached too high up so it loses a couple cm in height. Otherwise it would be closer to the stated scale, height-wise. It probably also looks small because it's a thinner VF overall than prior designs. Blobular as the pilot may be, it still doesn't beat the blobiness of candy corn Guld that came with the 1/72 YF-21 w/ FP

And finally some pics of the same toy with the super packs attached. It definitely looks better with the packs on to both hide miscolored areas and to break up the colors so that the mismatching greens are not directly adjacent to each other. Even under normal lighting, the difference in greens seems much smaller and definitely tolerable with the super packs on.

I had pushed it up more because I couldn't stand it being so low. More observations: Shoulders are much tighter than my 25G. Left foot guard is really loose and just flops down. It won't stay up. I'll have to inject some glue or nail polish to get it to stay better. Unless I'm not doing something right, I can't actually fold the wings back as far as you're supposed to in battroid because the radome gets in the way. Crotch lock is still pretty good on this one. Legs feel a bit tighter than my 25G. Head antennae seem pretty straight and evenly shaped despite being made of pvc. Hip armor seems even tighter than my 25G which was pretty good already. Crotch armor stays on pretty good like my 25G as well. There's an even greater gap between the shield and arm to make room for the ELINT Antenna. The shield is pretty loose on the arm and have had it fall off a couple times already.

I would if I could, but I live in the US and it was shipped to me overseas from Overdrive. It would cost me another $30-40 just to send it back. Anyway, here are some other findings. I experimented viewing it under different lights. Under normal incandescent lights of soft white variety, it looks as I described. Under fluorescent bulbs of 3500k color temperature or lower, it also looks as I described. Under fluorescent lights of 5500k color temp (closer to daylight), the colors magically become much more similar. More like the best case scenario pics seen so far on the net. I'll post pics after I take some to show the difference. Edit: Just to clarify. I don't really mean I can't ship it back. Just that I'd be out $70-80 in shipping with it being shipped here and then shipping it back just to have nothing in the end. Here are some comparison pics. I don't think anyone has shown the same toy under different lighting yet so maybe this will help. The camera actually still caught more difference even in the 5500k color temp lighting, but it still looks improved over other lights. These pics were taken with no white balancing, contrast adjustments, or any other edits other than resizing. 3500k lighting 5500k lighting

Well, I just got home from work and opened up the box for Luca. I think I got one of the truly bad ones. I immediately saw that mine had 4 shades of green. The nose/cockpit area and main backplate were the brightest shade of green. The two wing root pieces connected to the backplate are a different slightly less bright shade of green. The wings, chest and shield were a grayish green. Finally, the back part of the legs were a touch more green than the the shield. Also, the left side LERX paint came pre-chipped in two areas, and the ELINT antenna is bent a bit at the tip. That's what I saw within the first minute of holding it. I'll update here when I have time to mess with it more. On an higher note, the radome is fun to spin and spins very well.

You know... if that is the worst of what mine ends up looking like, I think with the super packs on I won't mind so much. I just hope by the time they re-release Alto's VF, that it has the fixes with the legs and wings and doesn't suddenly develop new color issues. I want a 25 that I can display without needing fast packs to hide deficiencies. I'm tempted to see what would happen if I sprayed Future on to the less glossy parts of Luca to see if that might bring the color back to being similar to the color of the glossier plastic parts.

Surprisingly, not me. I was pretty abusive with those and bending them in ways I shouldn't trying to position them when at the time I had the boosters attached incorrectly and couldn't figure out why everyone else had so much space between the boosters to the shoulders. Then I read the warning by other people that they were getting stress marks near the ball joint and I was like, "Oh, err... oops"

Got my notice that my Luca has shipped. Hopefully, it will arrive either tomorrow or the day after. I'm both anticipating and dreading it. Mostly just hoping for the best that I get one of the ones that have less noticeable variation in color...

Here's about as many 1/60 scale humanoid macross mecha as I could get on one of the shelves in my home office (without being too crowded).

Wow, you did a fantastic job on that. Great work! If it weren't for the fact that Yamato doesn't have the M7 license, you might be able to fool people if you said that was an actual product.

Good catch. Crap! They're all like that. Look at the ones from other links posted in this thread. They have 004 on both shoulders as well >.< http://lange.exblog.jp/8118495/ http://www.toysdaily.com/discuz/thread-90392-2-1.html EDIT: LOL, it's right there on the box art too! EDIT Part 2: Ok, I can see how that came about. Look at the large view of battroid on the M3 site. Macross Mecha Manual link It shows 004 on both shoulders. Whereas the one with super packs has it correct with the "SMS" on the left shoulder. M3 link to RVF with Super Packs

So will Overdrive do replacement parts for the helmet too in case the visor cracks or the helmet splits in half? I'm kidding!

As far as recent QC goes, has there even been any reported breakages with any of the destroid line or the release of the VF-1D? If not, I hope the trend continues. They did fairly well with the SV-51 and extremely well with the YF-21 and then they slipped up some with the initial releases of the v2 VF-1s, but after that, I haven't really heard much else regarding any QC problems.

Honestly, Yamato should make and sell some ground crew sets. They don't have even to be Macross specific. They could probably be displayed with their other stuff too, like those hyper armored blocks or whatever they're called. I can't imagine they would be expensive to make or package (although with the way Yamato packages things...).

I'm going to have to get more flexistands to use with the vf-25s. I dislike the ones that come with the DX. They are fixed position so you can't adjust them in any way, the connector and support parts for gerwalk and fighter with those thick, black support beams and such make it look obtrusive and ugly, and doesn't work very well for battroid if you want to use the waist joint. How are the new yamato stands, btw, for those of you that have them?

I could totally see Bandai doing a Soul of Soft Vinyl series of vajra like they did with the angels from Evangelion.

Wow, that's an awesome deal. I told myself that I wouldn't get anymore 1/48 VF-1s, but at that price it is really tempting.

I realized that part of the color difference on my 25G is from a slightly different "finish" on the plastic. The plastic that makes up the back plate of the fighter, the shoulder piece that you connect the missile pods to, the thigh, the part that holds the cockpit, and the piece on the leg with the "U" shaped hole that connects the leg armor are all much glossier than the plastic that make up the other blue parts. The other parts have a duller finish and the blue doesn't look as deep, possibly due to the finish itself. While I have no doubt that Bandai is having some problems with varying colors of green with the differences being more apparent on one toy than the next, I think part of the basic color difference is due to this difference in finish. So even when the colors are pretty close, they can look different because one part is just that much glossier than another. Looking at the various Luca photos, the parts that have a deeper green are the same parts on my 25G that are glossy.

No raping here. I ordered back in November and December respectively for Michael and Luca and paid $185 and $195 shipped from Overdrive. I'm sure you'll enjoy the 25G. Despite any complaints with I have with the toy, I am fairly happy with it and have no regrets getting it.

I think the color and type of light may have something to do with it. Under The 2700k color bulbs I use for normal lighting in the house, I can discern the difference, but under the 5500k color bulbs, which are closer to daylight, that I use for photographing stuff like my valks, the difference is much harder to spot.