Graham

Awww..........that's so sweet. No Macross toys for my son yet as he's far too young at 2 months and one week old, but I've already started playing Macross CDs to him. I have to do it when my wife is at work though, as she doesn't like Macross music For somebody with such a good taste in men, she has a very poor taste in music Graham

DatterBoy, Nice looking custom and nice looking kid as well. Personally, I would think at 2 years old, he might be a bit young to be playing with Valk toys, but anyway that's your call as a father However, I'd definitely say that at that age, a Valk toy should be allowed only with adult supervision though. I'd recommend a 1/55 Bandai reissue rather than a Yamato 1/60 as the 1/55 is tougher and more resistant to rough handling, plus there's no heavy legs to fall off. However, even with a 1/55 for a child that young, I'd recommend removing the front and rear landing gear springs to prevent the spring-loaded landing gear from hurting his little fingers when it pops open. I'd also consider gluing the canopy permanently on, so he can't remove it and try to swollow it and choke on it. We all know how little kids like to put everything in their mouths. Probably the best starter Valk for a small child IMO would be the Bandai 1/65 scale VF-17D/S toys. Those thing are virtually indestructible, even tougher than the 1/55s and yet have no metal parts and no removeable parts, except the gunpod. Now I have my own kid, I've been thinking a lot about child-proofing my collection and which toy is best to start him with Graham

The VF-0A box art was already posted by another member in this thread on August 10th. Please keep discussions on the VF-0A in the linked thread. Thanks, Graham

Ouch! I like my MPC Alpha, really I do, but I get the feeling we are going to be seeing more and more casulties, especially with the missile hatches and wing hinges as more members start receiving these toys. I hope I'm wrong, but my gut feeling is that the MPC Alpha is going to turn out to be a toy which should be handled with care and seldom transformed for the sake of longevity. Graham

Saw 2 or 3 VF-17D toys in the Causeway Bay area of HK yeasterday, but they were quite expensive at HK$850 each (approx US$109). Graham

If you want to sell me yours for $16.99 I'll buy it from you Graham

Just got my MPC Alpha from Kevin (thanks for the fast service). Here's my first impressions, negatives first, then positives: - Negatives Dried dirty glue on left forearm. Forearm missiles only half visible when hatches open, Disappointed that shoulder sensor has to be removed for fighter mode = not perfect transformation! Disappointed that gunpod magazine has to be removed for fighter mode = not perfect transformation! Rear landing gear doors difficult to open. Front landing gear difficult to take out, Some overspray and paint scratches new out of the box. Left wing damn diffiicult to fold during fighter to gerwalk transformation. I thought the wing hinges were going to snap = very scary! Huge feet = unnecessary? Belly drags in fighter mode, rear landing gear pretty useless! In battroid mode, the wing tip pegs will not stay plugged into the holes on the underside of the nose. Positives Nice box. Well illustrated color instruction manual. Yamato could learn a thing or two from Toynami's manuals. Great striker placement guide. Toy looks good in all three modes. Nice pilot figure. Overall good articulation. Gunpod grip well designed with palm attachment peg, so gunpod hand holds gunpod securely. Overall, I like the toy, and may consider buying a second blue Alpha. I'll definitely buy at least one each of the other color variations. Most of my complaints are minor in nature and I can live with them. I do think Toynami's QC inspector(s) need to get the factory to improve their paint application tho. Graham

My stepmom is Greek, so I've been to Greece many times, love the country and food. Thought the opening ceremony was superb, the Greeks did an excellent job. Graham

Both the reissue and the original release are excellent toys. The only difference with the reissue besides the packaging is that the yellow trim and UN Spacy emblems are painted on the reissue, whereas they are stickers on the original toy. For this reason I slightly prefer the reissue as on my 9 year old original VF-17S, some of the yellow stickers have developed some mis-coloring. Graham

The hands are just plugged into holes in the wrist. However, even in the anime, the VF-0's hands do not retract into the forearm they are extended at all times even in fighter mode. In fighter mode, the hands slot into cut-outs in the backpack. Those who have the Hasegawa kit will know what I mean. Graham

Here's a pic from the July issue of Dengeki Hobby, which shows which parts on the Yamato 1/100 scale VF-0S are removeable/swapable. Graham

I'm 99.99% sure that it fits in the Q-Rau. Graham

AFAIK, none of the SHE kits have ever been recast. Graham

I'm also one of the few people who thinks M7 was too short. I'd have loved to see more episodes . Graham

Heh, I've gotta be one of the few people who thought the first 12 episodes were great. Graham

US$29.00 is an excellent and extremely cheap price for a Bandai 1/65 scale VF-17S reissue toy. I've seen other online stores sell them for US$70. Consider that the Japanese retail price for the toy was ¥6,800 when it was reissued back in 2001. Graham

Is that Swindle just a repaint of a green Jeep that was released a while back. Sorry, I'm no good with TF names. Graham

Moved to the model forum, as er.....these are models not toys! Graham

Yep all completely true. Collecting out of product Macross resin kits (something I'm just getting back into) is a pretty expensive hobby. Fun tho Graham

Yep, the price that Noel (Blackaces) is offering on that auction is pretty good. I just came accoss the same Wave 1/100 battroid mode YF-19FP kit at a hobby shop in Mong Kok and the price was about 25% higher than Noel's price. Graham

I doubt the studio would have signed off on a movie with absolutely no dialog Graham

Yeah, I agree Event Horizon was an enjoyable and fairly creepy movie. Graham

The voice acting for the English dub of the Macross Plus OVA is suprisingly good (at least I think so). However, there is at least one case of bad translation. In episode # 1 when the dubbed Col. Millard is talking about the YF-19, he refers to it as being "made by Industries". Actually what he should say if the dub was correct is "made by Shinsei Industries". This has always really bugged me. Personally, I prefer to watch all my anime in Japanese with English subs as 99.99% of the time the Japanese voice actors will be far superior to their Western counterparts IMO. Graham

I for one am going to see AVP with an open mind. Also, I refuse to watch any 'making of' TV specials before I see the movie as I want to go into the theatre with as few preconcieved notions as possible. I think most of these 'making of' movies tend to give away far too much of the story and usually show all the best action bits. I thought Paul Anderson did a reasonable job of Resident Evil. True it wasn't up the stand of a Romero zombie movie, but I did like it enough to buy the DVD. I'm going to remain hopefully optimistic until I actually see the movie myself and avoid reading all reviews. Graham

No, no no. Everybody knows there are only 2 Alien movies Graham