Graham

One of the best Macross box art ever!

So far here in Hong Kong, Disney+ has added the 3 Frontier movies & the 2 Delta movies on 12th July. The Frontier TV series and Delta TV series were just added a day or two ago. Still no sign of Macross 7 TV series though😭

Th Bandai 1/65 VF-17D/S are still one of my all-time favorite Macross toys. I've always loved Macross 7 TV series and the VF-17 design. Gamlin was my favorite character. The Bandai VF-17 toy is super rugged, even more so in my experience than the 1/55 VF-1 Chunky Monkey . I own about 10 Bandai VF-17 since they were first released in what 1995 and I have yet to have one ever break, despite the fact that they are all plastic with no diecast parts. Even with my son throwing them across the room when he was a child, they didn't break. They are super quick and fun to transform and actually look surprisingly good in all modes, apart from the fighter mode side profile which is too thick. (look great from top down view in fighter mode though). Only other downside is he terrible landing gear. I was actually really disappointed with the Yamato VF-17 toy. I really felt it didn't capture the spirit of the VF-17 very well. Sorry for the sidetrack away from the Bandai YF-21 DX.

It's great that they give us a spare for the Super Pack antenna.

Available on Disney+ here in Hong Kong from today.☺️

What happened to the VF-5000? Is it vaporware?

0080 is probably my all-time favourite UC era OVA.

As a huge fan of DYRL and the VT-1 I'm super excited for this DX 1/48 release. Makes me think back to my days in the early-to-mid 90s of trying to track down the Bandai 1/55 VT-1 and really regretting not snagging it when I saw it in a shop in Hong Kong in 86 or 87.

The antenna is easily removable.

Will take and post pics later.....mine only have a slight bend, so not as extreme as some of the other cases posted. As mentioned I can live with it.

So, all 3 of my Bandai DX YF-21 have a very slightly bent (but not broken) head laser. About 5 to 10 degrees of bend at the tip and a slight white stress mark. I'll live with it I guess......I mean it's not like I have choice. It would have been so simple for Bandai to completely avoid this problem by shipping the toys with the head laser unattached, as they did with the thrust vectoring panels, but whatever. And I'm sure it would have not seriously hurt Bandai's profit margin to have included a spare head laser..........but again, whatever!

And yeah, the nose on fighter still looks too short to me. Also, there's an opening air brake on the dorsal spine, that I didn't know about previously. Nice gimmick.

Got it home, took it out of the box. Haven't transformed it yet. Just zoomed it around a bit and deployed the landing gear I also put Guld in the cockpit, attached the thrust vector paddles (they are not attached to the YF-21 as it comes in the box, you have to attach them yourself). I also tried to fit the FAST packs. The belly FAST packs attach fairly easily and securely. The non-transforming gunpods can attach to the fighter mode both with and without the belly FAST packs installed. However, I could not get the arm FAST packs to attach to the vertical stabilisers. At least on my toy the peg on the arm FAST packs that plugs into the hole in the stabilisers seems to be a bit oversize and I couldn't get it to plug into the hole. I didn't want to use excessive force. A word of caution, the tip of the head later was slightly bent on mine in the box and as there is a panel line there, it looks like it would be easy to break off the tip. And there is no spare head laser in the box. The instruction manual even warns you to be careful with the head laser.

And I'm not home yet, won't have chance to actually handle it for several hours or maybe even until tomorrow or the weekend, depending on what chores the wife gives me. 😅 I just quickly opened it now to snap a few pics. So, don't necessarily expect quick first impressions. 😂

A few quick unboxing pics.....