Ghadrack

It wasn't Spartakus and the Sun beneath the Sea was it? The male lead, the female lead and their little wierd dog creatures all had special powers? And they had a funky ship

French serial about a women named Arkana, who was sent to save Arkadia from the sun’s failure.  She is joined by Spartakus (slave

rebel), Bob, and Rebecca (brother and sister) One of two songs would be sung, sometimes for very little reason.  Bic and Bac would

do a dance called the Flashbick, and the Pirates would sing about themselves.  1985.  Ran for 52 episodes.

I saw this on CNN today and thought it was something some of you might find interesting if you haven't already seen it.

It is a business that manufactures custom parts/pieces/tools for people who submit designs through CAD. I think it is a really neat business and might be something that home inventors could really use.

I think it would be neat to see how much 1000 stainless steel BP8's would cost as well

Anyhow, I didn't see any other posts about it when I searched. If nothing else it is a fun little diversion to design junk and see how much it would cost

~ edit ~ Oh yeah, the link :

eMachineShop.com

You know the sad thing is that we all know exactly what is going to happen with these prices too. Look at the crappy MPC's selling for over 200 bucks each, starting at $80.00 and worth about 40.

Now consider the 1/48's, starting at $100 and arguably worth every penny, if they don't re-issue I expect that they will be selling in the $300 range in no time.

Better get them now, because in 6 months, if there are no re-issues from yamato they are going to get exponsive. I went ahead and ordered a Hikaru 1A the day before yesterday and will probably pick up another next week after I get my paycheck if they are still available. Otherwise I am going to be priced right out of ever trying to put together a custom or two.

I am signed up for one and I can go either way. I know by looking at the pictures that this is a massive project with hundreds of parts and that casting literally thousands of pieces is going to be an insane amount of work, so, personally I understand if Ken is looking to reduce the workload by letting people who are going to back out do it now. I imagine it probably will help him figure out what he is still looking at by getting another snapshot of how many kits he is looking at putting together.

At any rate, If you make the kits I will absolutely live up to my end of the bargain and buy one, however if you are looking to reduce the number of castings and cut your workload I won't be offended if you need to knock some people off the list.

Just let us know what you are thinking and what you intend to do.

I think I recall from my last order that you are out west or else I would vounteer some time to help ya out if man hours were the tough part.

Well I think that it would be interesting to know the number of 1/48's per type that were manufactured. Most people will agree that as far as collectible VF-1's go, they are the nicest around. (No offense to the Chunkey Monkey crowd, I have my own Bandai's and they are great for playing with). I know we are in the minority here with many members having a half dozen or more 1/48's each but they have all sold out eventually so far, unlike the chunkey monkeys that are collecting dust on store shelves.

As the Robotech crowd and the late purchasers get around to scarfing up the last retail ones it is going to stay crazy for a while on the after market.

I am planning on snatching up several 1-A's while they are still available for customs. It seems it is now or never until Yamato commits to whether or not they will do a re-release.

I know that the subject has come up before with regard to the 1-S model 1/48's, but has anyone heard in general whether Yamato has any plans to release any more 1/48's at all?

Not to start a panic but I am sure you guys have recognized that they are becoming scarce stateside. I have been putting off picking up spares for customs due to lots of other stuff coming out, but now looking around, anything but the most recent 1-J releases are getting hard to find on primary markets and prices are going up on the auction markets.

Anyhow, I am considering picking up several this week while they are still around to do some customs unless there is good information around that there will be more 1/48's issued at some point.

It seems strange to me to think that with a successful line like this Yamato would just cut and run to the next project, but I guess if they profitted maybe they feel like they won and it is time to move on......

Anyhow, that's just speculation, anyone know anything concrete?

Awesome looking recast. Looks like I am finally going to get around to doing my own Max 1-S, put me down for one too please

Absolutely beautiful, I wish I had the money lying around to bid on that baby. Good luck with the auction!

Nope yamato would NEVER do that. For one thing I am pretty sure yamato and takara are rivals in japan. U can be sure their votoms toys are trying to outdo the old takara ones much like the 1/48 pretty much took bandai 1/55 down from throne. PLus takara wouildnt bend over and do that anyways.

Well there ya go then, Since Hasbro already did it once, and Bandai has all those 1/55 re-issues floating around that won't sell they could jsut collect a shipload of chunkey monkey re-issues and sell them to Hasbro to be re-painted. Jetfire perfect re-issue and decepticon jets booyah!

I know people are sick of the VF-1's but I have little to no faith in Hasbro/Takara coming up with a decent jet based tranforming robot that looks good in both modes. The majority of the original Transformers are no better than go-bots in my opinion. I had a ton of them as a kid and now when I pull those ugly things out and look at them my memories are betrayed like watching The Black Hole again.

Because you know Americans, as soon as they start giving away free toys with every bottle of soda, some moron will file one or all of the following lawsuits:

A lawsuit stating that the reason their 8 year old child weighs 426 pounds and has diabetes is because pepsi was arketting to children and forcing them (the parents) to buy him soda to get toys. ;

A lawsuit stating that their infant poked his eye out and choked to death on their dangerous and negligent bottlecap.; and/or

A lawsuit stating that they have been mentally scarred by the collectible bottlecap search. Mental anguish and distress due to the nefarious obcusrity of certain bottle caps in certain regions of the country force the individual to go rob and bank and murder his uncle the priest.

Or maybe I am just feeling cynical today

Of course it might be because Gundam isn't selling well enough in the U.S to warrant a nationwide marketting campaign for pepsi...

Hahaha I just had a thought, wouldn't it be sweet if Yamato sold U.S. distribution rights for their 1/60 or 1/48's to Hasbro/Takara and they just re-tooled the heads and released Starscream, Thundercracker and Jetfire Masterpieces

I don't know if any of you guys played Neil Manke's "They Hunger" mods for Halflife, but Doom 3 is giving me the same heeby-jeebies. As far as horror experiences goes this is right up there at the top of the list in my book. I love the atmosphere and the darkness of the game, there have been several times so far where I have just had to hit the escape key and take a break from the game for an hour or so I was so deeply engrossed in the game and freaked out.

Heart Pounding fun,

I don't know how anyone could not like this game unless they hate being frightend.

WARNING, SPOILER

Spoiler here:

The part were the girl puts on the armor that the Predator makes for her from the alien was the stupidest idea ever put on film! Enough said.

I watched it Friday afternoon. Sold out theatre at 1:20 was sort of wierd to see.

At any rate, People with high expectations going in to a "Vs." movie are destined for disappointment, especially one featureing two science fiction titans like Alien and Predator. Anywho, I had a good time at the movie, sure it was dumb but it was fun to watch, I wasn't expecting Shakespear, just some excellent eye candy (What else can you expect from a movie about two aliens that kill each other and can't converse in human language?)

The set up was a little silly, but not too out there for me. The action was lacking in my opinion, shaky camera fights and too few combatants took away from this one, if they had doubled or trippled the number of Aliens, predators and humans and allowed the humans with weapons to maybe barricade themselves in a room and have a decent fight before being incapacitated and grabbed then i think it would have had better reviews from fans but regardless it was cheesy, no arguement there.

Personally, I love both franchises, but I had no crazy expectations so I didn't feel cheated.

Now is it just me, or coul they have made this movie a little more fun by making it Aliens Die Hard with a Predator and put Bruce Willis on a plane ride back to see his estranged wife, when suddenly a group of crazy german archaeologists hijack the plane and take it to a remote island in the bermuda triangle where they come to an ancient Inca Temple. The crazy german archaeologists kidnap 6 women from the plane and disappear into the temple, Bruce willis wakes up from a nap and goes into the temple with his 6 shooter to whip ass and save the day. Temple trap closes the doors, Bruce willis kicks ass and shoots some archaologists, some of them and some kidnap victims get impregnated, the predator roll up on the island in a pimped out submarine spacecraft.

I can just see the "What the ^%$#" look on Bruce Willis' face as an Alien egg opens up and a facehugger starts to roll out.

Then, at the end of the movie, Bruce Willis has been marked as a Stud by the predators giving him even more ass kicking street cred. It is too perfect.

This case have nothing to to with the XBox. It is just our lovely reporter from CNN/AP etc. creatively twist the story to make it sound more special than a gang murder. The real issue is the police fail to ack on the threats, and the crappy news headline all over the place.

That is a pretty astute observation that I am glad you made. I really did not think of the ramifications, I was just thinking how terrible it is that those poor people were brutally murdered, but there is absolutely spin in that article. I expect that they will have some reference to the game Manhunt listed in the updates to the article in the next few days. None of the accused's posessions other than his video game system are listed by brand, in stead of just reporting the story they wrote up a catchy tag-line "The X-Box homicide".

Overall it is a pretty terrible story, an aweful thing to happen to an 18 year old girl and her family/friends.

Mine came out pretty cool, Makoto Yumi or Sincere Archer

Looks like a transvestite Barbie doll with a black wig and a flight suit to me.

My local target has Sideswipe and Smokescreen on clearance for 13.95, not sure if this is all over the U.S. but if you were waiting for a deal or a sale now seems to be the time to snatch them cheap.

I think the model looks pretty good, better than I could do in the time versus cost department.

I agree that the Pro-Built/Painted thing is abused sometimes on E-Bay but ultimately beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Either someone thinks it is worth the cash or they don't. Personally I enjoy putting them together even if I am not as skill as others. Some people like to have their models look like a million dollars rather than spending the time putting them together themselves and looking inferior. Neither side is wrong, just a matter of preference.

Good luck on the auction

Long Overdue but I ought to go ahead and post some props to the following for glowing transactions:

Valkyrie

ChristopherB

and

Kevin @ Valkyrie-Exchange

I have had great exchanges with all three through the For Sale boards here, very timely, attentive to detail and sent the good well packed. I guess it probably goes without saying as they are all well established members of the community here, but just in case some new person is looking for references on the last page of the SSL, they are good folks

nah, that definately looks like Michael Beihn. the pose looks alright, and at least they are not charging the outragous amounts being asked for by whoever is making those Faye and Julia statues. but i agree, McFarlane needs a USCM squad....definately Wierzbowski and Frost and Dietrich and Apone. preferably, Frost is on fire....

Drake and Vasquez figures with those kick ass Smart guns would freaking rock.

I was talking to some friends about this, I have a feeling that they will continue to put the Aliens figures out one at a time in the movie maniacs line for a while. Personally, I still expect to see Ripley and a Powerloader with Newt as a deluxe box probably in next year's MM8 series, I think they will probably put out a Vasquez, Hudson and Bishop figure at some point. It is a profitable license, I imagine they will use it to pad their sales over the next few years. They could put at least one Aliens figure out as a collector's club special to get new members at some point. Hudson or Newt would be my guesses as far as a collector's club special.

I am glad they are finally putting out a Hick's figure.

Any word on this lately? Their Site has seemed pretty dead....

Better yet, here's the link to the picture with the little figure and cyclone/backpack:

Cyclone figure

Thanks for the link, I missed that picture somehow. They sure seem to have put a lot of effort into those little suckers, I hope the mass produced retail versions are as cool as the demo versions they have been showing off.

I am getting closer and closer to breaking down and ordering one.

Unless I am mistaken you are looking for the VF-1S DYRL Super poseable (Non-transformable toynami convention exclusive and the extremely limited edition masterpiece bookends featuring Rick Hunter limited to 200 pieces at a retail cost of $200.

I think there are pictures of a superposeable next to a 1/48 and a 1/60 around here someplace, they aren't tiny but they are slightly skewed scale wise, a little thinner and more toy-like than most of the transformable versions in my opinion.

I am really jealous of you SoCal'ers again, were I still in Pomona I would have been able to come see all the goodies in person.

Really neat that the Robotech crew was able to bring out their new toy for a preview too, who knows, maybe someday we will all look back on the licensing debacle and laugh

Anyhow, looks like Toynami may be on the right track with the Alpha, I mayhave missed it, but I read that there is a miniature cyclone that fits in the alpha. Non-poseable, just a little piece of plastice detail really. Was that on or in the alhpa at the Con?

My 2 cents,

They have the VF-1 molds, they have other products lined up for production over the next few months (See Koenig, Max Q-Rau, VF-0S).

The 1/48 line has been pretty successful as far as I know, I would imagine that they will give it a few months so as not to interfere with new product releases and they will do a second production run on the VF-1S. I think that right now they need to let the 1/48's they have out on the market settle and sell before they do any re-issues.

I expect that they will do another run but it will be 6 months or so, the VF-1S is a guaranteed seller, but they don't want to oversaturate, they just released two big ticket VF-1J's in the past two months.