Plasticgoose

Seeing how the reactive armor for the VF-0A/S is the next flag ship for Arcadia, I am more interested in what re-issues of the VF-1 line they will come out with it to keep us interested. Arcadia needs more than one valk a year. The VF-1A w/GBP armor was a a nice treat. Would be awesome to throw in an M&M or VT-1 Arcadia for 2016 just to limp me along until the reactive armor release....please Arcadia.

I know the podcast had a rant about landing gears, but what is up with the landing gears? They look cheap and I hope they are just place holders for something that looks more robust. From the pictures they look like grey molded twigs; no rolling rubber wheels or any detail. Just molded static plastic gear. Still I pre-ordered. Would not be surprised if thing does not do well, it would end up on a black friday HLJ sale. I remember a few years back that happened with some of the Yamato and even Arcadia models.

The chrome VF-1 will sell about as well a the 30th Anniversary NASCAR version which is still available. M&M are no brainers for Arcadia. The only thing I see prolonging the release is the strike parts. They will either release the strike part sets seperatly to indicate they can produce strike parts, followed by bundles M&Ms just to keep us in more wait. Or they release M&M with the strike parts out the gate like they did with VF-1 w/Armor (Honestly was not expecting that release). Either way, I do not understand the logic in elapsed time to release these older valks over others that have already been mass produced. Heck there are so many hero valks they have become the new CF valks. Yamato released Hikaru and Roy valks before they were bought out and Arcadia just pumped out more of the same thing. I am pretty sure Yamato, if it did not go under, had the VT-1 next in line because the mold was the same as the VE-1 they ended. And of all the valks the M&M and VT-1 had shoulder issues so a reissue is must. Unless Arcadia is reversing the order of release from Yamato that would mean VF-1Ds are next!

Personally I really like this line for its scale and detail. I agree for the price, an Arcadia valk is worth the extra. Yet, I really would like integrated landing gear, I really do not care for the heat shield. From what I can tell on mine, there should be no internals within the legs or nose area that would prevent integrated landing gear. Bandai has already done this effect in vehicles of the same scale with great detail on their XIG UX-02 and UX-03 spaceships; wheels even spin along with wheel well bay doors.

I like many hope for the M&M release and VT-1. I feel the VF-1 line is safe and arcadia will continue to make repaints and other variations of this. Not sure, but it seems like Macross valks come with anniversaries. Is Macross DYRL going to have a anniversary soon? If so, then then VT-1 and M&M should be next. Yet I heard M&M valks did not sell well in Japan due to them not being hero valks. Maybe I am mixing the Yamoto 1/48 line with the 1/60 line.

Curious, was the hlj secure link the default link if you searched for the item on hlj or was it something dackdoor special? Just askiing because I had this happen once before because it was listed under a different model number. I think hlj coded the link wrong at the time of my previous experience so search in for the actual item came up with nothing.

The last three days I was checking hlj, nippon and ami ami every hour. Had the f5 key on standby. Never did I see the item come back into stock. Never got any indication from hlj on the secure link people were using. Not sure how my computer missed that. Well if anyone got a few too many I am interested. Live in the US.

I really like the look of this new Valk, but it blows my mind at how much these new ones cost. I have all the Yamato Zero valks, and keep them if fighter mode. The only reason I want the Arcadia valk is because I hope (big hope) that they come out with reactive armour which I suspect will not be backwards compatible with the yamato valks. Something has to entice people to pay this price for a re-mold...right? The VF-0D was new so I can see the price of that being high, but one can go get a bundled yamato/ghost set for less than the asking price of this. I read that the Yamato bundle sets are a bit tighter in tolerances and do not suffer from the drooping gunpod and cracked sholders. Like I said, still in for one, because of the color and the hope for some future accessories. Just hope I can snag a VF-0S as hero valks seem to go fast when that comes out.

My questions are this: When is the ghost going to be available (I assume we will have ghost as the box art shows one)? Do you think the Yamato ghost will be backwards compatible with this? Will their be a bundled version later on? Not to get off topic, but was Arcadia making a fold booster for the YF-19? I only ask since this was an essential accessory to complete this model and we have not seen that yet.

Kind of reminds me how Matchbox SkyBusters (the planes) of today are advertised as "Diecast Metal" even though the only metal no are the two screws that keep the plastic together. I remember when those were all metal and the only plastic was the wheels. I thought the M7 Hi-metals had more metal. I never bought those as I am not a huge fan of M7.

I can say from experience that after living in Japan and trying to buy these directly from a store was actually harder than just ording it online and having them ship to my house. I would go to Akihabara (anime/tech/otaku central) and would hit up almost every hobby store. BIC and Yodobashi Camera were actaually the best places to pre-order as Yodobashi actually housed the Tamashi show room. The problem was that you would walk in, hope to pull a ticket from the up coming item board and that would be your pre-order; this was the same routine for many stores. And I remember going out on release dates to these stores and there was no over stock to be found. The only time I ever found valks of Yamato, Arcadia, or Ban Dai were like CF valks that were never really popular amoungst the Japanese. But kid you not, wait about week or two and Mandarake in Nakano or Akihabara would have a few. Mandarake would maybe get two new and the rest just seemed to be buy backs from customers. While in Japan I ordered from HLJ and Nippon and found it to be much simplier. I did not have to pay that much for shipping, but in the end, going through what I called "Valk Black Friday" was not worth the hassle. Honestly I was always surprised at the buy back prices stores were offereing. It is like Japan has not heard of Ebay (although there is a cultural reason for this...a story for another time). For example I wish I was able to intercept the customer who was about to sell it back to a store for resale. I remember when the VF-4 and YF-30 came out. Retail was about $300 US. Stores were offering buy backs for about $150-$180. Then they would turn around and sell it second hand at ~$280 or more depending on market demand. The deals were about as bad as selling your college books back to the book store. I would have offered the guy $200+ or more just to buy it off his hands direct. Another thing that always stumped me was re-issue pricing especially Ban dai valks. When the VF-25S was reissued for the third time, the prices for the first and second issues were still commanding a $400US+ price even though you could get the third reissue for retail. Unless you are a hardcore collector and want all the reissues I guess you can pay the price, but honestly the V2 reissue Ban Dai valks seem to be pretty similar to any previous reissue in the V2 relm give or take a few fixes with duribility issues with eash iteration. Okay enough of my rant.

I cannot wait until mine arrives. Curious, do you think this will be easy to mod into a VF-0B once Arcadia releases the VF-0A? This question may have been asked already but my understanding is the VF-0B is just a two seat VF-0A. If it is I may need to snag another.

I saw this at WF and I thougth it was beautiful. The lines, color, and detail. Plus it looked like the issues that were present in the Yamato VF-0S/0A models were gone (such as the gap that was present under the weight of valk just above the jet inlet which led to the hanging gun pod). One thing I noted was each wing had 3 hard points. The two AIM missiles present on the outer most pilon and then there were two vacant hard points. The display showed two missile pods. I am not sure if Arcadia was trying to show that you will only get two pods total, so one for each wing, or if there will be some other weapons like we saw in the YF-19 that were not present.

So I attended the show and talked the Rep at the T-Rex booth. I showed up at the open of the event and went straight for the booth. I will upload pictures later and honestly these parts were awesome (I even asked if there was a way to buy the display models). Anyway come to find out the going price was 13000 Yen ~$130 per set, which in my opinion was not that bad. Yet through our discussion I come to find out that they only made 40 sets! The license agreement they had were only for 20 units. They ended up making 20 in a blue/grey and 20 in a brown/tan color like the YF-19 gun pod in order to squeeze out more units legally with the one day license they had. Long story short the rep says they would love to make and sell more and that they do read the macrossworld forums; yet due to the BIG WEST and some other convoluted licensing issues and manucturing/distrobution (Ban Dai came up in the discussion) and some other business/legal talk, they can only make 20 per year. They talked about maybe next year making another 20, but that is it. So if the 4 units they had on display counted as part of the 40 they made, only 36 people in the world got these, and they were gone in under 10 minutes! Like I said I will upload pictures later, but these truely were amazing.

YF-19 super parts sold put on 10 min.

I was checking hlj every day for the past two weeks, and it never popped up. Even under the discontinued items nothing. If anyone is feeling like they bought too many, I am interested. Stupid browser. I was even waiting for this to restock to have ship with my other items.

I can say this: At a minimum you are in for three to four valks. Reason being is that you buy one, then you realize how cool it is but then you want to display it in the other modes. Then you decide you want to have one with super parts and naked, hence the four. If you like a particular series then you can be satisfied and stop with control. I started with Macross Plus which only has three valkeries so it was easy to stop. Then I moved to Japan and well let me just say I am been stimulating the economy here. Finally, I cannot be satisfied because I am a collector that sees these like art. I am always amazed at some of the engineering that goes into these models. Hence every model to me is a must. I am not one of the people that has the VF-1 V2, and the same VF-1 V2 that was boxed with super parts, and the same VF-1 V2 that came with option parts; I only have one VF-1S. Yet to each his own. The only known here is you will definitely buy more than one.

So I wanted to through in my two cents on the why the VF-0D. Yes it is not a hero valk but my reason for this would be because Arcadia needs to establish itself as company that can attract new collectors and old. They also need to show that they can be innovative and not just produce remolds. The Macross Zero line is probably due for an anniverery (which helps), and the VF-0D is new. I also think that if the VF-0D is a solid build and fixes the issues with the VF-0S/A lines, then not only will this attract new collectors but also old as well. Plus the design of the VF-0D and VF-0S are very similar so design improvements should carry over easily. I also think they are going with the VF-0D as way to rethink the Ghost for the VF-0S. As we have seen, Arcidia has not allowed for the old fold booster of the YF-19 to work with the new one even though it would only take new mounts. They are probably doing something similar with the Ghost. It will be easier to build one valk versus two. Finally, the VF-0D, just like the VF-1D, VE-1, and VT-1 were always the ones that people passed on until they became rare. Makes sense to start with a non hero valk to get people thinking, "I should buy this now knowing it will not be made again." Once they hook you on this non-hero valk, we are more inclined to buy the hero valks to accompany them.

Stupid question but the only reason yamato at the time never built frontier Valks was because ban dai owned the license. So would thisnnotnbe a vf-0d? Plus the aniversary for the macross zero is coming up even though Japan likes to make anniversaries for everything.

I saw this guy down at the Volks in Akihabara last weekend and it looks amazing. I really wanted to see the missile bays in the legs. It has the feature but with the fastpacks on the bird, you cannot use them. I am so excited for this valk. It looks tight and the color is great and the wing hardpoint really add some bulk and cool factor the valk. Also the model is not glossy but flat.

So my understanding is that that the SV-51 was built by Su/Mig (plays of Russian manufacturers). Instead of using thrust vectoring nozzles like the VF-0A/S, Su/Mig used paddle thrust vectoring like that seen in the real world X-29 and YF-23. It just so happens when it transforms they become feet which also help the look and Russian planes always seem to appear more rugid, intimidating and bad-ass compared to US fighters. I do not think Su/Mig ever in real life created a plane with paddle vectoring although the Su-27 have multi axis trust vectoring (not all variants).

Hey guys, not sure if this is the right forum but I was wondering where can I order the super parts for the RVF-25 and VF-25G? I know they do not release until next month but just wondering. Also does anyone know of any stores in Japan that I can just go to an buy directly? For some reason I can find Arcadia/Yamato valks, but Bandai valks seem to be more exclusive to online stores it seems.

I like the color. It helps filter out the space radiation and helps for projection of the integrated 360 degree HUD display:)

You are all correct on the price of the bandai valks dropping in price. I do believe the VF-27 is about 15000-20000 Yen depending on markup. I know being in Japan I still see a lot of the VF-171s and those have dropped in price because I think they did not sell as well. The reissue of the VF-25 Alto renewal version was 16000 Yen, and the VF-25S (hoping they reissue) is now fetching 28000+ Yen. Still when you take the price of the bandai valk and add super/strike parts you are at about 20000 Yen. So maybe I did over estimate. I can only say that in my opinion, the Yamato/Arcadia Valks just look and feel better. Not enough to really justify all the cost increase, but it does make sense given the market today and production costs.

So not to change subjects, but with the YF-19 out in April 2014 (more like May since things are delayed), and the VF-1s with stand coming out next month, what is Arcadia going to do between January and April? It would be really awesome if we saw VF-1J M&M during this time, but I might as well add this to my list of wishes for X-Mas.