Graham

Hmm.....I would have thought that steel wool would have scratched the plastic. Graham

Just average IMO. Nothing special. Graham

Looks nice enough, but yeah I'm with EXO on this. Graham

I've owned and built several of these kits over the past decade. Yes, they are snap-fit, but like most snap-fit kits benefit from the odd dab of glue here and there. The kits are mostly molded in the correct colors and come with foil stickers. Of course they look much better if painted. They are not perfect transformation and the hands, head and lower torso section all have to be removed to transform from Battroid to Fighter mode. They are actually pretty sturdy kits (about the same as Gundam HG kits) as long as you treat them like models and not so much as toys. The only real weak point on the kits are a small tab on each wing, which slots into a hole on the outside of the lower leg in fighter mode. I've had this tab break on me before a couple of times. I'm actually having one built up for me now as a VF-19F by a professional model builder, although it won't be ready for a few months. I'll post pics when it's done. Graham

Probably licensing or royalty issues that prevented Paladium Games from using the original Studio Nue & Studio Artmic lineart. Graham

Mostly hookers at the moment Graham

Well, the store's open, but it's Japanese only. And the only thing they are selling so far is a fixed-pose figure of some chick in a bikini with gigantic breasts. Graham

Pretty cool, but what happened to the head laser on your Doyusha? Graham

Thought Titan AE was a horrid little film. Can't even remember why I rented it. Graham

Better to track down one of the various Japanese books on either Mospeada or Studio Artmic for original Mospeada line-art. Probably Seichi can help find them for you. There are at least 4 Japanese books that I know of and own. If I have time, I'll post some scans. Personally, I avoid using Robotech RPG books as a source of line-art as in the ones I've seen most of the art is not original Japanese line-art, but they use their own artist (IIRC a guy called Duncan Long) and I find his interpretations of the mecha to be pretty dire. Also, there used to be an excellent Mospeada site with lots of art on the MW links page, but I think the link may be dead. Graham

I'm still very curious as to how the Tread is going to attach to the Legioss fighter. Graham

Actually, Yamato don't necessarily make a ton of money on the 1/48 or any toy, unless they sell sufficiently large quantities. One thing to remember, is just because the retail price of a 1/48 is say ¥14,800, that doesn't mean that Yamato is getting back ¥14,800 for each 1/48 they sell. Between Yamato and the final customer (you), there is a usually a couple of layers of middle-man that the toy passes through first, with each one adding their own mark-up, e.g. from Yamato to distributor, from distributor to toy store, from toy store to final customer. The actual price that Yamato sells each 1/48 for is not that high probably less than half the recommended retail price. When you deduct the production cost from this selling price, the actual profit per toy is pretty small. Graham

I really hope Yamato releases a recolor of the 1/48 GBP armor in this color: - Click on thumbnail to enlarge. Graham

A VF-0 in 1/48 would just be too large and therefore too unwieldy, not to mention be a real shelf hog. The 1/60 VF-0S is already slightly larger than a 1/48 VF-1. The cheaper (I won't say cheap as the price point would have been ¥4,400), 1/100 scale VF-0S toy was quietly dropped before release as it came under universal scorn from both Japanese and International fans due to the ugly sculpt and need to swap out a large number of parts to transform it. There were also rumors of production difficulties with the parts fitting due to some of the parts of the toy being designed with CAD, while others were hand-sculpted - basically a real mess. Graham

Just saw this announcement on Yamato's website. Can somebody translate please? Click on thumbnail to enlarge. From the English text it's obvious that something on the web is going to be open from January 16th, but what? I wonder if it's going to be a Yamato online store? If yes, it would be great if they could ship Macross toys internationally and start selling spare parts again . I'm probably guessing completely wrong through . Graham

Asked and answered. Too many GBP threads at the moment. Graham

Honestly, the GBP hands look way too big on a VF-1 without armor. Graham

Just a warning. Anybody posting the animated Hasselhoff gif (you all know which one I mean) in this thread is going to get a 7 day ban. You have been warned. Graham

My Blue and Green MPC Alphas are both great. My Shadow has a few issues though. As Jenius said, it's basically a crapshoot whether you end up with a good or bad one. And yes, you should definitely treat them very gently. Gotta say, I'm impressed by the toynami sticker sheets on the Alphas, definitely better quality than Yamato stickers. Graham

Not an MSG fan either. I played one game years ago on the Playstation for a few days, but lost interest before finishing it. Just not my cup of tea I guess. But even as a non-fan, I can well understand the horror you fans must be feeling at the thought of Uwe Boll getting his nastly little claws all over the franchise. Graham

And of course for you guys living outside of Japan or Hong Kong, shipping is a large part in the cost as well. Graham

To a large extent, it boils down to economics of scale, i.e. the more units you sell, the lower the cost-price per unit. Both Gundam and Transformers have a huge fanbase compared to Macross. Bandai and Hasbro/Takara have production runs likely in the hundreds of thousands of units per toy, compared to Yamato's production runs, which are relatively small, e.g. in the 5,000 to 15,000 units per toy. Therefore price comparisons of Macross toys compared to Gundam and Transformers toys are mostly pointless as the big companies can afford to sell their toys at a cheaper price point. But, yes as mentioned aleady Yamato is the only kid on the block producing quality transforming Macross toys, so the lack of any meaningful competition does allow a certain amount of price jacking on Yamato's part. However, Yamato is still a pretty small company and the costs involved with the design, tooling and manufacture of this type of toy are insanely high. Graham

We've found that the best thing when installing the chest missiles, is to gently and slowly rotate them into the holes, rather than try to push them straight in. Puts much less strain on the fragile bar that way. Graham

Any movie with Meryl Streep in it. That women bores me to tears. Graham

Just to clarify, Shawn is going to be contacting 2 out of the 3 people who have expressed an interest in the position. That means 1 person will not be contacted. Graham