ComicKaze

It was a Dodge Interceptor. Wicked movie.

I understand you SO WELL!!! Same thing happens to me with my employees! I cant receive my toys at my house because of the wife... so I get them at my office. It is a real torture to stop yourself from opening the box and play with it. Is good to know I am not the only one! Hehe ! Glad to see I'm not alone... I actualy receive them at the office to avoid customs (my lil trick...) and because there is always someone home to receive the goods. Montorvillois! I'm also in Canada and wondering how that works. If packages are sent to an office, you can avoid Canada Customs from opening it and charging you?

Believe me, I watched Eva in and out and read all the commentaries and the manga. At the end of it all, trying to make sense of it, I found it was totally senseless and time I can never get back. A traumatic experience I can never erase, I can only conclude this is the worst anime ever created (besides the beautiful girls and great music!). There is absolutely nothing appealing to me in Eva either interlectually or visually and I am the person that has watched American Psycho over 100 times and counts that as my favorite movie of all time. Fine, take wonderful characters and put them in hopeless, nightmarish situations. Torture them, tear them apart limb from limb, and murder the entire population of the world turning everybody into a giant uni-conscious sea entity of LCL except for Shinji whos pathetic-child fantasies and neuroses are finally realized with Asuka being his victim. GREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAT. Sure makes me want to slaughter my parents and everybody that treated me badly in school. Heck, if I controlled the fate of the world, the very existence of everybody woukdn't I love to lock msyelf in a girl's hospital room and masturbate to her bandaged body? Oh, just for kicks, everybody will die except for us, except we'll suffer a lot pain but that won't matter anymore. Becuase I am the bringer of apocalypse and the genesis of the new world will be based on me - the traumatized kid whose father abused him and cloned my mother, who I have a crush on, so that he could fondle her to bring about the 3rd impact. Did I mention everybody would suffer my pain?

No, despite what you all say, I completely agree. EVANGELION IS TRASH written by a maniac depressant. It is a horrible, horrible, cruel, demeaning, and inhumane anime which, to my chagrin, is incredibly popular for reasons unbeknownst to me. Hell, I'm all for insane violence but there has to be a message, there has to be human compassion and experience - like Battle Royale for example. Eva is just the bloody stuff of nightmares and insane asylums.

The EZF and EZF-2 (different companies) contain more features than the xg2 or flash advance. Plus they are more compatible and have built-in clocks.

Get the EZF Flash 256MBit flash cart. It's the price of 5-6 games but absolutely irreplacable. I don't even use regular GBA games anymore. This thing can fit about 3-4 GBA games or maybe 140 NES roms (or many other emulators for GBA) as well as music and videos and E-Books! Right now the contents of my Flast Cart are: Solar Striker TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan Golden Sun Goldun Sun: FAQ (yes there are text readers) A bunch of mpeg movie clips I made from American Psycho DVD Some mp3s and MODs for music Double Dragon Advance (w/trainer) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams And about 20 NES roms. BUT if you are going to buy regular games, the ones I bought because I couldn't be without are: IRIDION II - By far the best shooter there is for GBA, awesome music, great graphics, great price ($15 retail). King of Fighters EX2 - Hasn't been released in the US yet but maybe soon. Best fighter on the GBA. I don't like the ports of the Street Fighter games but the second KOF game is excellent. Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend - Great platformer, lotsa fun. Many moves. Stuntman - The 3D graphics are awesome! About on par with early 1995 Playstation 3D graphics. Great driving game. Mario & Luigi RPG - Just released, great hilarious game. Golden Sun - Best RPG on GBA and many systems period. Puzzle Fighter - Who doesn't like puzzle fighter? GT Advance Racing 3 - Awesome JDM racing game. BTW, because I just bought a flash cart ($150 yikes!) I am selling cheaply if anybody is interested: Wario Ware - very fun, hundreds of minigames, wacky style Zelda: Link to the Past - classic port of SNES rpg with updated graphics and sounds and new multiplayer quest

Have you built you Bandai VF-2SS William? As for this kit, you guys are lucky now. I paid $80 for mine.

It looks fantastic. Did you give it a wash? What are your panel lines done with? As for the culture shock, this is great artwork done by Bob in the old Macrossworld forum. Where did he goto? I'm not sure if I still have the original. He drew the Millia but I added the Zentradi's and made their heads blow up as well as censoring it.

Yes, I do realize I was overreacting before and this all works out for the better since I was trying for a more cartoon accurate Screamer anyway It just looked a little odd to me. If only there was a way to get rid of the nosecone and to mount the wings a little higher...

How did you confirm this was a Takatoku? Taka's usually have underneath that make it easier to identify than by the kana. It looks to be in okay condition, missing most of it's decals though, antenna aren't broken, that's a good thing. I can't really comment on the value of unboxed Takas. A big chunk of their value was eaten up by the Bandai reissues and all the new Macross toys that have come out from Yamato have also sucked up most of the market for these. I personally have a Taka VF-1J and in the past, they could go from $150-$300.

I fear dearly that the trend is going otherwise. They are turning more and more to CG and with that, the human element is increasingly lost in the process. Sadly, I don't think we'll see 80s style animation ever again. Boohoo. :-( (breaks out his Gall Force and Saber Rider and even American cartoons like MASK and Centurions) Animation is becoming an uncharismatic bore like Soundwave No, nevermind, Soundwave is cool. 21st Century animation is not.

Everything just had an awesome wax job in the 80s And there were pulsating strobes lighting them up from all angles! Gorgeous! The energy effects are also wonderful, being so spastic and flying all over the place. They don't draw lasers and explosions like they used to.

LOL Destroid's Rage, I've been trying for years to put together something that could describe that glinty-shininess instead of shading in 80s anime and that's the most concrete thing I've gotten so far. But other studios also used that technique as it was proliferant in the 80s for almost all animes. Heck, even the Transformers uses it. I hate how they've moved to boring 2-tone shading and CG cel-animation these days. Everything looks so flat and boring. The shapes are too rigid.

Oh no! A scantily dressed Valkyrie girl! Culture shock is best defense against a Zentradi attack!

Man, I really miss that 80s animation. Even in such low-quality middle frames, you get the classic 80s viceral speed lines and feel the energy from the thrusters and lava because they are just drawn so stylishly.

Has anybody tried goo-gone?

Wheeljack as the LeMans Mazda 787B? That's a little too old for an Alternator. Wheeljack has to be a Lancia vehicle. He's clearly italian, not Japanese and rotary powered . In my opinion, Hound SHOULD have been a hummer. The WWII jeep G1 Hound was based on was long enough to give him decent looking legs. This current civilian Jeep TJ or whatever that the new Alternators Hound is made of is too short and Hound ends up for little stick legs. Sideswipe should have been a Diable/Murcialago. Smokescreen should have been a Z. And Skids would be... I guess a CR-V

Umm, Area Seven, actually Hasbro registered all the Machine Robo related trademarks they could think of in order to prevent Bandai from bringing them over with that name. Hasbro is trying to run the monopoly on transforming toys again. Here's a size comparison pick.

I bought the Hyper Police Set from HLJ because it was only 750 Yen (on sale). That's about $6 US. All in all, I have to say it's very cool. The combined version sure kicks the ass of any Power Ranger Megazord or Energon/Powerlinx Optimus Prime. Brings back lotsa GoBot memories. The leader feels like Turbo and the bikes all look a bit like Cy-Kill. Very cool set but hardly any posability. It's a brick like the G1 Gestalts. All plastic though, no die-cast. Cool if you can find it for $6. They are small, the size of normal GoBots. Not cool for regular price of $22US + crazy shipping from Japan. Vehicles Robots Combined

Viewpoint! That's an awesome game MilkMan! I was lucky and found copies of Garou and Last Blade 2 in the DC bargain bin. Too bad they spurt milk but oh well...still it's the only affordable SNK goodness I can get. I already blew my $500 on NGPC

Yeah, I read Insert Credit too. Brandon's a cool guy. Neo-Geo is just awesome, but I have to say that I prefer Garou over KOF and Last Blade over Samurai Shodown. Then again, I'm a Neo-Geo Pocket Color fan at heart. Anybody have any NGPC items they're looking to sell or trade?

They only released the combiner sets. www.tfkenkon.com

Yeah, I sanded and filed them down as best I could so they would sit flush with the body.

[i originally posted this at Allspark but I was hoping some MWers would know how I could take off the factory applied decals - what are these called actually?] So off I went to a family dinner thinking that it would be mundane when lo and behold, my aunt who lives in Asia brought me Starscream! (And yes, it was 2003, not 1984). Because I was unhappy with a lot of it, I made it into a custom with some paint and some parts so Starscream would actually look more like his G1 cartoon counterpart. What do you think? Can you spot the differences? I would like to ask something about the Megatron that comes with the toy. It also includes a modified Prime fist so he can hold Megatron (this doesn't matter for us as the North American TRU reissue uses the modified Prime fist). The strange thing is that there is a wierd blue clip on the side of the grip and I can't figure out what it's supposed to clip onto. It looks gharish and out of place. You can see it in the fighter-mode pic aways down. What is it for? Also, the box shows that I can connect the gun to the bottom of the fighter but it's in a wierd way - connected via the scope. The instructions simply have a reproduction of this picture and there isn't anything that shows me how to connect Megs to the bottom of Scream (hehe). How do I do this? So, back to my story... I was actually quite excited because this was my first actual Japanese G1 Reissue Collection toy. All my others had been TRU Commemoratives and I had missed out on Starscream because he had a limited run in Canada. At first I was really happy then I noticed some things that were wrong. First I noticed that it was the odd version that doesn't include the TF DVD. That's okay, I can live without 3min of TF CG. But then I looked at the actual toy colors and stickers! Noooo Takara! Bad! Yes, the Megatron gun is cool and that is the clip I was talking about but first things firsts. The Decepticon Logos are backwards and crooked! Takara decided to use factory applied decals for the Decepticon logos and trim on the wings and stabilizers. Unfortuantely, they are in the wrong direction and look very silly. THe point of the Decepticon chin usually faces forward and makes Starscream looks faster like when he's diving at Springer & Arcee in the movie. Now it looks like his two halfs are flying in opposite directions. Compare it with the decal on his nose. In all the TF we've ever seen, these decals are also facing in the same direction as the wing. This leads to more problems later on in robot mode because then they really are upside down when you transform and stand Starscream up. See, here the original toy and they are in the right direction. Compare it to my custom where the logos are upside-down in robot mode (I want to change this but I don't know how to remove them) and in opposite direction in fighter mode. Like all the pics on the package, they are a wierd mix of the G1, the first-run reissue, and the collection version. See the fighter has the double-angled stripes but the robot has the solid red stripe. Also! They altered the stripes on the wing so it's no-longer the classic large red stripe that Starscream has but angled white&red stripes more like the ones on Skywarp. Finally, the blue parts have been changed from navy blue to a light blue and the canopy is orange with silver stripes. Perhaps these changes were made so he would look more like his cartoon version but he's also a darker grey so he looks less like the animated SS which is close to white. These changes inevitibly made me turn in into a cartoon custom instead of displaying it as a classic G1 toy for nostalgia. Here are scanned pictures from it and the original toy as well as both first-run reissues from Takara and Hasbro. You can see that they have user applied Decepticon logos, the red wing-stripe, and darker blue. This is always how I saw SS in the catalogue and always how I wanted him. Yes, cheesy but nostalgic. From Ben's: So now HOW DO I REMOVE THOSE FACTORY DECALS? Thankfully, Starscream still comes with a sheet of his normal stickers which has foil Decepticon logos but I have to take the ones off his wings first. Does anybody have any ideas? I'm not going to sand them off because that would damage the wings. Maybe some kind of paint thinner or something? An eraser? Brake fluid? Has anybody done this before? Any clues? Maybe I should buy a cheap TF:Universe toy and experiment with ways to get their factory decals off without damaging the plastic. This is still a great toy, and I'm glad I have it. I never realized how cool the boolet inserts that are in the Japanese collection series are. There are like 10 pages and a fold-out seekers poster from Dreamwave as well as other things. I'm also glad I have the Japanese version as the missiles fire very hard and aren't modified for child safety. I guess Japanese kids are smarter. Make sure when you buy it that you check if it has the DVD or not if that's important to you. There is a big sticker on the front that tells you. As my only other Seeker toy as a kid was a 2nd-hand Thrust that I eventually sold, I'm loving ol'Screamer clutching Meg's handle in his fist (hehe). It took some work to make him look decent though. His normal foil stickers seem out of place and make him look a little cheesy. And as with all Seekers, it's a little annoying having so many parts that must be changed or replaced when transforming. Does anyboy know why there is a gap between the wing and the fuselage? I filed it down a bit so it would be more flush but it just seems like a strange design like this whole toy. Another strange thing is that his weapons have a slot to slide into the side of the arm but it doesn't fit and they sit out a bit.