MacrossJunkie

That's probably because they are charging in USD. Due to exchange rates constantly changing, since they are charging in USD, if they charge now then they are protected if the dollar's value against the yen drops more. Actually this is the reason I just buy from them now since it protects me as well. I used to have the Ozma and Alto VF-25 pre-ordered with HLJ and at the time, it would have cost me $105 (not including shippping), but with the sinking dollar value, it would probably cost me $135 or so by the time it ships out at the rate things are going. I know how much I'm paying when I buy from Over-Drive. I had cancelled my HLJ pre-orders but unfortunately at the time I did that, over-drive had just put a stop to orders on the 25S and F. Just as well since I think I will be waiting to see if the super packs and full armor will be out at some point. I have a G pre-ordered with over-drive and I'm debating on the RVF. On another note, it seems that an increasing number of the US importers have stopped selling any new Macross stuff. I used to get my Macross stuff from TMPanime but it took increasingly longer times for items to arrive and now no new products are being listed for pre-order anymore. The same with Lost and Found Toys and now BBTS as well. That has pretty much forced me to go to Over-drive if I want a competitive price.

Darn, I really like going the extra mile and having those little "No Step", "Beware of Blast", etc. stickers on my valks. After looking around more, I think your guess is correct as even the 1/72 model's decal sheet doesn't have anything more than what is already tampo printed on the DX and it's not likely that Bandai will have more little details to put on their toys than on their models.

Yeah, yeah, I know I've seen his pics using the stands before and it is pretty good with what poses he managed with the flexis. Still, the way they were posed on the stands are good for taking shots as he intended to do, but it seems too precarious for me to risk displaying my valks like that long term, especially on a high shelf. Fighter mode or even gerwalk is ok since you can set up a pretty stable platform with the flexidisplays, but battroid seems to be a different story. I'll have to try Jenius' suggestion about swapping around rods of different lengths and see how that works out one day. I don't actually have a Yamato launch arm stand as I find the price to be a rip off for what it is. I assumed that since it has more pivot points than the stands that come with the SV-51 and YF-21 that it would work even better. If that isn't the case, then oh well. Still, it's a shame the VF-11B won't come with a stand, but on the other hand, I guess it's probably a good thing since it would bump up the cost and with the USD to Yen conversion rate being so crappy right now, the savings is appreciated. I just plan on getting one at the moment since money is getting tight and will display it in fighter mode so using a spare flexi will suit me just fine.

It doesn't look like it will come with a stand =/ You can see in the pic that it comes with the connectors for the Yamato launch arm stand. But I agree. I feel spoiled now that Yamato included stands with the SV-51 and YF-21 and wish all their releases had some. Especially since it's hard to find the launch arm stands and they cost over $40-50 each. The flexidisplays are the next best thing but the poses you can do on those in battroid and gerwalk are limited in comparison. If Yamato would sell the clear stand that came with the Yf-21 for a relatively cheap price with connectors for some of the more recent VFs, I'd be pretty happy.

So is this pretty much confirmation that the legs can't be raised properly above the shield in fighter mode like they should be? Or did the person not even try? If it can't, then that is pretty piss poor design for it not to be able to do something so basic like that, IMO. If it can, then that is one main concern I can cross off my list. The other is the Ozma neck that everyone else wants to see as well.

So basically the pics show nothing new?

1. There is a line going down the canopy where the two halves of it were put together, but it's not too bad. If you wanted to, you could always sand the canopy and buff it to make it shiny again to get rid of the line. 2. There is a line only in the "face mask " area of the VF-0S, but it's about as visible as it was on the 1/48 VF-1S. I wouldn't say it's unsightly and I don't even notice it most of the time.

It never works for me either. They must be blocking certain IP ranges or something. I just get a network timeout in firefox. Could someone who can access the site please put up the pics?

I don't recall that he ever posted up a finished review of the SV-51. Searching the forums pulled up nothing for me either.

Nope. No intake covers.

What's that old saying? There are no bad valkyries, just bad pilots? Maybe the Macross 7 fleet had several squadrons of pilots trained specifically to be cannon fodder and they just happened to be REALLY good at their job. Or maybe it's just one guy that's good at that and they cloned him many times for this purpose... because I could swear the varautan forces spiritia drain the same guy over and over again throughout the various episodes.

I wouldn't suggest doing that here. Here is their policy regarding chargebacks or disputes: Sounds like they would like the customer to contact them and try to work it out with them first. Trying to get the credit card company to stop payment may make things more difficult to get a problem with the order resolved.

My problems were few: - 1/72 VF-11B non-FP - self destructing left hip. (was fine out of the box. had it displayed standing up and after a month, it fell over under its own weight due to osteoporosis) - VF-1 TV fast packs - can't attach the gunpod to the arm armor due to the pegs being too big to fit into the gunpod hole. I guess I could widen the hole on the gunpod, but I never bothered to. - VF-0A cannon fodder - plastic where the shoulder goes over the ball joint was cracked and split open. Wasn't like this when I first got it and I had left it in fighter mode so I never knew, but after all the horror stories about the shoulder piece, I removed the shoulder armor and sure enough, it was broken like everyone else's. Epoxied it together and then put the arm armor back on. Left it in fighter mode again so I don't know if my fix is lasting or not. - SV-51 Nora - the part of the leg that has the joint that allows the twisting of the leg had a weak peg or something and split on its own accord. I just epoxied the two halves together instead and it's better than new now. - YF-19 - uncommon problem, the surface above upper left intake has a stress mark/crack. Not sure how it happened, but I saw it there one day. Also crooked gunpod. Edit: blah, I just remembered the title was about good experiences but with people listing their problems it threw me off. I also have a couple 1/72 YF-21 FP, another 2 VF-11B FP, 11 1/48 VF-1s, 2 VF-0S, an SV-51 Ivanov, Q-Rau Milia, Koenig Monster, 2 1/60 YF-21, another YF-19 (no problems with this one... yet) and a Tomahawk. No problems with these other than looseness in some joints for the VF-0 and Koenig Monster. I think I've had a great deal of luck with my purchases and most things that were bad were easily fixable.

I think the rectangular piece is most likely the piece that keeps the stabilizers in place on the arm. Check both arms and see if one has come off.

If you look at the fighter mode pic, you can see a bit of orange under the cockpit. My guess for how the heat shield works is that the cockpit pushes in to allow the heat shield to slide up over it. Despite how it looks, it could possibly still be a one piece heat shield that is hidden in the nose cone. I can't see it fitting anywhere else. In any case, it's more ingenious than the SHE model where the heat shield flipped over on a hinge from behind the cockpit and light years better than the cut-it-out-yourself-and find-your-own-damn-way-to-attach-it heatshield of the 1/72.

I think overall it looks pretty decent. The smaller tailfins don't bother me as much. It's still proportionally bigger than the 1/72's. In fact, the first thing I noticed wasn't the tailfins, it was that the top intakes and and back of the legs were very boxy. If you look at the 1/72, the line art, and various other models, those areas are rounded off which fits the style of the rest of the fighter. For that top area to be boxy flat surfaces instead of the smooth curved surfaces that they should be, it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb and spoils the aesthetics. It doesn't even have anything to do with having to compromise due to anime magic like the tail fins. For some reason, they just arbitrarily decided to do it that way which is why it bothers me.

I'm not that optimistic about Yamato being able to obtain the license to do the VF-25 or other Frontier mecha. Just judging from Bandai's past history with the Macross licenses, they'll probably hold on to the rights to produce the toys just so they can re-issue the DX 1/60s every now and then as they have with the 1/55 chunkys and the 1/65 M7 valks with no improvements of substance other than possibly adding some more tampo printing or other minor things. It's a shame that they didn't put a comparative amount of effort as they have with some of the other chogokin toys they have made. Just look at the Aquarion which far surpasses the VF-25 in complexity of design. I'm not particularly a fan of the Aquarion, but I can appreciate the difficulty of designing and making something where not only do the three component parts transform into vehicles on their own, but can be reconfigured into many different robot combinations and also retain some measure of posability as well. Bandai managed to make an awesome looking toy with that. They have the engineering know how and if they had put half that effort into making the DX VF-25, I think we would have had something that more Macross fans would have been happy with.

Interesting. While checking out the pics of the Defender on http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/iam-cybergundam/article?mid=14768, I noticed that the red sensor "eye" can slide up and down along that whole enclosure. I wondered how until I looked closely at that last pic which had the upper body removed and showed what looks like some kind of slide lever on the left hand side. It probably says it right on the blog, but I can't read Japanese. =P I also just now noticed that it has an alternate extended ammo drum that you can plug in that extends past the back. Yes, I'm slow to notice these things >.<

Well, here's one, albeit not fully intact, but you get the idea of what they included. Here's some close-ups of a few stickers applied to the toy. Forgive the quality of the pics. I'm in the process of moving and don't have what I need to do better. I haven't seen any pics with the toy stickered up either so here's a couple as well. It's kinda yellowish due to the crappy incandescent desk lamp I used. I plan on trying to weather this thing like the Yamato one when I get the time to, so hopefully that will turn out well.

I'm not sure how or why Bandai managed to do it, but in many ways the shots of the final versions are worse than the original colored early prototypes. The Ozma version for example doesn't look too shabby in the early prototype picture, but the final looks like it has Down Syndrome. The early version has more of a neck and the head rises above the "shoulder blades". The ankles while being too low on early one are just too high to the point of being comedic. I was impressed with all the detail Bandai etched into the toy shown in some of the close up prototype pics, but without the supporting proportions that capture the essence of the valk, all that detail becomes moot. I mean you can say Yamato's YF-21 is not perfectly proportioned, but I don't think people were really expecting "perfect". The battroid mode's proportions do well in capturing the essence of the valkyrie as portrayed in the anime and line art in all the key places from the front and back. Bandai's 1/60 VF-25 however just doesn't seem to manage to do that, imo. Which is made even more disappointing in the knowledge that many of the compromises in proportions didn't not have to be that way as evidenced by the 1/72 model. The height of the legs with respect to the crotch piece in the model can be adjusted due to the U-shaped swing bar it appears to be using. If this was made of die-cast, there's no reason it couldn't have been used on the toy while keeping the durability aspect. Instead, they just have a straight rod coming out of the upper part of the crotch piece itself to attach the legs to.

Hi. Pseudo first-time poster here (Used to post here back before the forum software was changed a few years back and then stopped when I fell in with the evil that is MMOs). Has anyone mentioned that the stickers that come with Tomahawk are a vast improvement over their previous releases or at least up to the YF-21 (I never picked up a v2 1/60 VF-1 so I have no clue how the stickers are on those)? I was very surprised when I started cutting the stickers to put on my Toma. They are akin to the takatoys stickers in that they are very thin and are a single layer, but not as shiny as the takatoys stickers. I hope they continue to make their stickers this way as our options for good alternative decals/stickers for new valks is pretty much dwindling or nil at the moment.