MacrossJunkie

Correct, I still call it Future because the pledge stuff has been renamed a couple times already and it's hard to remember. I think Pledge even stopped making it altogether now.

I start off with Future during my weathering process, then finish off with a Matte or Satin clear coat. I do have to mask off clear parts so they don't get hazy. I believe I used this Vallejo Matt Varnish at the time I did my Alto 25s and it works pretty well. I tried out Vallejo Mecha Satin Varnish for a time, but that product is utter garbage and I highly advise to avoid it. It is truly awful and I hate it. I've since switched to Vallejo Satin Varnish Polyurethane as I feel it is more durable after it's fully dried.

I think the plastic must shrink a little over time or something. I've had some VF-25's posed on a stand in the same pose for years, and I think static friction was the only thing keeping the arms and legs in place, because as soon as I moved a limb, it flops down and can't return to its original position. I like the leg joints for the 31 series, particularly at the hips where they're ratcheted. If the VF-25. 27. and 29 had that type of joint, it would be far less problematic. Thus far, even the arms at the shoulder joint have held up pretty well. I just wish I could say the same about the elbows. With Bandai's current QC though, I don't know how long I can say how well the limbs will stay in place for future releases for the 31 variants.

I would actually spring for the armored pack. I've been wanting one for Alto's 25, but they've all been too expensive over the past years. But I'd rather it be sold separately rather than packaged with the 25F. However, I think neither with nor without are likely.

Wow. There are some truly horrific examples of yellowing in this thread. Even for stuff that wasn't made all that long ago. None of my valks have yellowed thus far, but it's made me curious if that is because I clear coat my stuff after weathering or if it's just my environmental conditions are not conducive to yellowing. Has anyone else clear coated a valk only to still have it yellow? If not, how about stuff that wasn't clear coated that were displayed next to things that were?

I have two of Alto's 25F and they're both as white as the day I got them, as far as I can tell anyway. I don't need the matte finish on this new release since I clear coated my own with one. I don't have the supers though and that's the only thing I would gain out of this release, but as @Lolicon said, the QC has been questionable lately and I don't want the supers enough to risk it.

It is. I've done it with mine when I did some custom weathering to it. You'll want to use something that is durable though.

Bad luck and bad QC on that, but I wouldn't say it was something that plagued the 29 series as a whole. Them coming off easily though? Yes. Loose hips, either out of the box or over time? Also yes, and is a problem with with the 25, 27, and 29 variants, but nothing that the Kiki loose joint fixer can't solve. That said, any Bandai Macross release is a gamble. I've had my share (perhaps more than my share) of random and not so random issues with stuff from Bandai. Especially recently with the 31AX problems. I still don't know if my Max 29 issues are more widespread or just my piss poor luck.

Wow, a third release for Alto's 25, but with supers this time. This seems rather random and out of the blue.

I'm curious to hear from other people on how theirs are. It could be I just lost the Bandai gamble and got the crap end of the stick with it having multiple issues and that everyone else's is fine or at least not as problematic. A new thing I noticed while putting on the supers: the port-side booster doesn't clip in securely for mine. There's something wrong with possibly the pegs that makes it not sit in the holes properly. It basically pivots on the back peg on the booster because the front ones don't stay in. It's not an issue with the starboard one. What's incredibly frustrating is that none of these problems were problems with literally every other 29 I have,.. and I have them all except for the Focker colored anniversary 29, including the original and re-issue Alto 29. Edit: Forgot to mention that people must have been handing the canopies before the tinting had dried because there is a permanent fingerprint that isn't mine on the canopy. I'll either have to remove the tinting and add my own or dip it in Future and hope that it hides it.

Got mine today from FedEx. My initial impression while handling it is that while it looks gorgeous, the toy overall feels kind of loose. Particularly the outward swing of the arms at the shoulders, hip ball joints, and the ankles. The ankles are particularly problematic by not being stiff enough and makes the toy want to fall backwards when trying to stand it up. Even worse with the supers on. QC continues to slip at Bandai. The ankles, at the very least, have never been a problem for me until now for the VF-25s and YF-29s which use the same parts there. It's also the first time that the entire gun came out of the turret housing when extending it out. I was pulling on the barrel when the whole extending arm of the gun came out fairly easily. It was easy to put back in, but I never had to worry about pulling the whole thing off before.

The base plate should be slid back, yes. The backplate does not click into anything. it's more or less free floating, but I've never had issues with it flopping around.

This. I usually end up taking the pauldrons off the 29 to avoid scratching the finish off them when transforming them and either leaving them off in fighter mode or snapping them back on after everything else is done.

Maybe it's the combination of colors and the shade of blue they chose to use, but I feel like this one looks a lot better than the other 29's, except for Ozma's (after I fixed it to match the game's which it did not look like out of the box). They even managed to get the tampo printing for the crest on the black swing bar for the turret. It's got that deep blue that looks similar to the blue that Yamato used on the VF-19S and F.

The D'stance YF-21 had a pretty good balance of proportions overall. The only issues I had with it was that the neck in fighter mode was just way too long and could have used some covers over the arms. That Hi-metal prototype that was shown years ago also looked pretty good. While I really want a new YF-21 designed to today's standards, I didn't feel like the one they showed early in this thread was it. To me, it didn't look good in any mode. D'stance YF-21 The fighter is still sleek but why this? Hi-Metal prototype. This seems pretty good too. There was a lot of anime magic in the YF-19 also, but both Yamato/Arcadia and Bandai found a good balance and made them look good in all modes. It would be nice if that same sort of engineering skill could be put toward a DX YF-21.

😁 I guess that would still exclude some adults though.

I was just being silly. I assumed it was months as 180/12 = 15 which is much more reasonable than any other option. Still what a weird way to state the recommended age. 😄

I just noticed this on the Amazon page. What does that even mean? The minimum age of the manufacturer before it's allowed to make the toy? The manufacturer's recommended age of the person getting it? What's the 180.0? Seconds? Minutes? Days? Years? The amount of time it takes Usain Bolt to do that many 200m dashes? 😛

February? Must be getting shipped on a giant raft with two people clinging onto the back and paddleboarding it across the Pacific. 😄

At 20 cm, does that make it even bigger than the QF-2200D? My impression was that the QF-2200D was big for a ghost drone, but not as big as that. I don't feel like digging mine out to measure.

Yeah, after they ADD'd and forgot about finishing the rest of the Delta stuff and went to the VF-1's before the shiny new Delta movies brought their attention back and made them forget about finishing the VF-1's 😁

It's unfortunate that things haven't really seemed to improve in the two subsequent releases and that the QC issues that a range of people experience seem to vary quite a bit. Other than the wing pegs that go into the legs, which I fixed myself, everything else on my Hayate pegs in pretty well and I don't have the low hanging arm guns. My Mirage was a bit more of a mess. A part of the right wing was separated out of the box and won't stay together. The arm block that the guns are attached to won't stay pegged-in in fighter mode, The wing pegs still won't stay pegged into the legs. Probably more issues that I'm not thinking of at the moment. They need to tighten the arms more also. They can't hold up the weight of the gunpod... not that I would try to have it held in hand since the shape of the gunpod and the handle doesn't work with the design of the hands and arms and even the fixed pose hand barely works. Even then, it can't physically hold the gun straight because the gunpod and the arm would have to physically occupy the same space. Such a bad gunpod design, but not truly Bandai's fault for that.

Personally, I have been really tempted to get a PF and possibly just sell the standard one I have now due to the current conversion rate of US dollar to yen. I say go for it!

Bandai: 31, eh? Oh look! A shiny new 1/48 VF-1! That was my impression of where things went.

I was assuming at the time that "Mr. Banana Split’s 29" was referring to the anniversary 29 in Roy colors as it was yellow, black, and white like a banana. So I wasn't making the connection there.