ArchieNov

6 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

You know what I just realized, regarding the tilted-up Ghost...

Bandai muffed the whole process by pairing the Yamato Ghost with the Arcadia VF-0 mold.  They weren't meant to go together, and the issues attaching the Ghost to the newer 1/60 VF-0 mold are exactly the same as what you get from the HMR version.

Namely, the chest plate is narrower, meaning the Ghost's canards had to squeeze together tighter, propping it up higher than it should have been.  Bandai just straight-up copied the error by making the canards the original length.   Not that there isn't precedent for this.. since they also copied the incorrect tailhook/gunpod positions...

Oh, that explains it then.

10 hours ago, MKT said:

Re: the Ghost booster tilt.

Here's an old pic (previously unused, didn't like many aspects of it) of Arcadia's 0A with the Yamato booster. It doesn't really tilt, if any, at all.

But agree with @Chronocidal, the tapered look, top intake plus the other lines & shape of the Ghost booster do give a strong impression of an upward tilt. I had always thought with its landing gears down, it has an even more pronounced tilt, but when viewed directly from the sides it's not really there.

  

Well here's a picture of mine. It's clearly not level with the plane. You can see it when comparing the angle of their wings and fuselage.

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I don't think it's tilted up so much as it's just the natural shape of the Ghost itself being tapered toward the back, since the intake is on top.  It doesn't look like it's sticking up on the HMR much more than either the Hasegawa kit, or a screen from the anime.

I did notice that the Ghost does look better if you don't press it all the way down in back though.  It looks like Bandai didn't make the rear tabs long enough.  The original Yamato design didn't lock into the backplate, it just rested on it, and Bandai changed that to give the supports a small recess to press into.  Whether they overdid it or not is hard to tell.

Thanks. But it really does stick up. It's due to exactly what you said, namely about the rear tabs not being long enough. Or the front tabs being too long. Anyway, once you get yours  you can let me know if you have the same issue.

I just got my copy. Does the ghost booster really point upwards and is not parallel to the plane when attached?

Arcadia with competitve pricing?

https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=75697

Whoa that was fast. Only lasted a few seconds I think but I got one

I wanted to see if they had corrected the "Sinsei Industry" tampo on the recent release. Seems like the typo is still present. If they had fixed it, I might have gotten this copy.

1 hour ago, sharky said:

Out of curiosity why are some of you guys rushing to buy this knowing that there's a good possibility that the leg joint will explode?  Having read through the thread I didn't come across anyone mentioning that it has been fixed on this upcoming release.  It's what prevented me from buying it the first time around.

This issue was only limited to the cannon fodder variant. The 171EX versions (of which this upcoming release is like) didn't have those issues with deteriorating plastic. I still have the original release of the 171EX Alto and it still holds up fine (although it has yellowed so bad). My cannon fodder though has broken at the hinge joint that connects the upper torso to the lower body. Gluing it back together didn't help much because it started to break at other points afterwards. So now it's stuck in fighter mode until the day I throw it in the trash. Funnily enough, the triangles on my cannon fodder are still intact.

On 12/9/2023 at 10:08 AM, Chronocidal said:

I would say that's almost certainly what happened with that entire production run.  That metallic gray plastic has the material properties of obsidian.  When I say how my leg shattered, I mean it, it broke up into glass-like shards that were rather sharp.

That's really only half the issue though.. the other half is that Bandai used an absolutely incomprehensible design.  The way the thigh rotation hinge was designed looks like it was made to explode intentionally with how terrible the idea was.  

Just to be clear, the part that broke off, and allowed the leg to fall off is a hollow-cored mushroom peg, with a toothed metal spring pin down the middle.  THAT was what they decided was the best way to give the thigh rotation hinge friction, instead of something like a rubber friction pad on a solid peg.

The thing was rigged to explode catastrophically from the drawing board, and that's before you even consider the unnecessary interlock they added to keep the leg from rotating, which is just the carrot leading you to step on the land mine when you try to rotate the legs.

---------------

I know I do go off about the 171's design quite often, so apologies if it becomes a broken record, but I really want people to understand just how terrible the entire design is, in the hopes that they'll somehow avoid destroying theirs.  It seriously hurts my brain that such a thing ever got approved for production, and I wish I could walk up and slap the person responsible for what an affront to good industrial and engineering design it is on every level.  Bandai owes everyone who ever bought one a set of redesigned legs.

Slightly off topic, but the worst engineering design of Bandai that I ever encountered was the hip joint for the Chogokin Gipsy Danger. Now that was a sure fire time bomb, I can't imagine how it will not break itself over time, even with good materials. Basically I found that my Gipsy Danger's hips were both loose after keeping it boxed up for a few years. Turns out the reason they were loose was because the plastic peg/cap that holds the metal hips together had snapped. I wish I still had a picture of it, but basically they designed the hip to be made of 2 metal halves held together by a plastic cap and with a screw inside. Normally you wouldn't think this was a problem. But they had the idea that the best way to give friction to the metal hips was to sandwich a super high tension spring inside. This spring was so strong, I could barely squeeze it with my bare hands. So you can imagine that having so much force being exerted on a plastic piece will turn out. I wish they just used a screw with a bigger head or better yet, done away with the spring idea.

 I just thought I'd bring it up because hearing about the spring being used to create friction in the 171 reminded me of Gipsy Danger's exploding hips.

3 hours ago, DownIsUp said:

It might be crazy, but I actually think gerwalk mode probably benefits most from the new less accurate proportions. The legs might be a little far forward, but I think it looks much less off-putting than the Yamato's positioning them so far back.

You're not crazy. That Yamato YF-21 gerwalk looks damn ugly.

I know some people keep mentioning the nose being too short. But if you compare that picture of the gerwalk with Bandai's YF-21, you'll notice that the nose length on Bandai's is actually closer to that picture. Yamato's YF-21 nose is too long. But I'll admit that the longer nose does make the fighter look sleeker.

I just wish Arcadia would reissue their display stands (I want the simple stand). Actually they should always keep them available since their valks don't come with stands.

On 10/1/2023 at 2:23 PM, Graham said:

Forgive me for I have sinned. Sometimes I like to play with my Monster.😎 🤭

I heard Mrs. Jenius likes to play with Jenius's Monster too, so you're not alone 😜 

By the way, I just got a notification from Anime Export that the HMR VF-1A Kakizaki is now in stock, but nothing on the Max yet. I thought they had the same release date?

19 hours ago, sjoebarry said:

Reminds me of Baron Ashura lol

23 minutes ago, Zeliard said:

V1 on a 25 wwm is it? It fits?

Those are the Renewal Tornado parts. When I said "old", I meant the last set of Tornado parts that were released.

I always preferred the look of the 25G with the Tornado vs the Super because its Tornado parts' wings were also blue like the valk. Unlike the Alto Tornado parts which were gray and looked ugly to me. 

The old Tornado parts fit just fine with no issue on tolerances on the new one. Despite the contrast of glossy Tornado parts vs the matte valk, it actually doesn't look bad to me.

The one attached out of box is the softer laser. The extra laser is hard plastic

Just received mine from Hobby Genki. Wondering what I should do with my old one that has somewhat yellowed and the hip connection hinge has already cracked. I kinda want to dispose of it, but I can't bring myself to just throw it away.

I'm thinking of displaying it with the old Tornado set even though those parts are still in the glossy finish.

What was wrong with the arm cannons? I have the first release Hayate and I don't recall having that issue. If I remember correctly, I just had to make sure the forearms were slid into the correct position. The only real issue I had with the Hayate were the wing tabs that didn't fit into their sockets. And overall fitment tolerances I guess.

Does anyone know if the reissue of the Hayate VF-31AX has improved QC over the initial release? I remember people saying the Bogue variant had better QC over the previous releases so I was hoping that trend continued to improve.

I hope they update the packaging of this release so that it no longer uses styrofoam. I've noticed that all my valks that I've kept in styrofoam packaging have yellowed a lot quicker and more severely than those that were in non-styrofoam packaging.

Just received my copy. Not sure if it's been said before, but this is probably their best transforming HM-R to date. All the tabs on mine plug in perfectly flush (yes including the wings) and everything lines up properly. The build also feels a lot more solid than the Roy VF-0S for some reason, but that's probably just my imagination. The colors look really good to me too, much better than the first Arcadia release.

Now I kinda want a 2nd copy because it's so good, but I've restricted myself to only keep one copy of each Macross toy and stop getting duplicates.

On 8/24/2023 at 11:52 AM, Lolicon said:

I still don't know wtf the difference is between the "Metal Build" and "Metal Composite" line. 

Metal Composite used to be focused on Ver Ka (Katoki Hajime's) aesthetics. After all, Fix Figuration was a line that was dedicated to his style. Not sure about the more recent Metal Composite releases since the last time I purchased a Metal Composite were the Psycho Gundams.

4 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

It's this reason I try to avoid white plastic toys... 

As much as I would like to avoid them, sometimes they only come in white. The best case scenario is if the white is painted and not just bare plastic so that way it doesn't yellow. But for these valks, the white is usually just bare plastic.

However, my PG Unicorn model kit from 2014 I think is still as white as day 1, and I didn't paint or even topcoat it. It's just bare plastic. So I wonder why the white plastic on that one has held up all these years while my other stuff has yellowed. I blame it on the styrofoam packaging.

Oh nice. My Alto VF-171EX is all yellowed already so I hope if I get this new one, I can throw my old one away haha

16 hours ago, derex3592 said:

I've had dozens of packages shipped from Japan/China and inside the US to me way down here in TX. I have NEVER received a damaged package, so that theory doesn't really hold water does it?

 

 

I'm just basing it off all the complaints I see on here about mishandled packages. And it seems like all (or at least most) of those are coming from people in the US. It does seem prevalent enough for some of them that they said they will avoid using certain shippers in the future.

Of course I'm not saying that if it gets handled in the US, your package will surely be damaged. But it does seem to increase the chances based on feedback I have read on here and also my own personal experience.