jenius

Besides the fact the thinking caps don't work at all with what's in the animation, I don't get what's so bad about them. On Mars Base Rick pulls off some maneuvers that only a gymnast could do. I find the notion that he did those maneuvers using a couple joysticks and maybe a couple pedals REALLY far fetched. If his mech is hooked up to his mind that's a bit less far-fetched to me.

I agree that the concept of Protoculture in the Robotech universe as a biological fuel source could be fine. There are hurdles though. The name "Protoculture" doesn't really seem fitting for a biological fuel source. The idea that this fuel source doesn't just create energy but assists in mechanical creations behaving more life-like was too much of a stretch. Then the fact that Protoculture, as it's applied in RT, doesn't seem to have consistent attributes kinda throws the whole thing into disarray. The only way "Protoculture" as we know it in Robotech can work for Robotech's Macross Saga is to make the Zentraedi truly ignorant. You have to imagine the Robotech Masters telling Dolza "Go retrieve Zor's spaceship and the precious Protoculture." Then you have to imagine Dolza not having ever heard of Protoculture before and telling all his soldiers that there's something called "Protoculture" that is so important and powerful that all the Zentraedi have to go hunt it down. The Zentraedi have no idea what Protoculture is so every time they're confused they wonder if this is the result of Protoculture.

There were 800 CMs Drones made. Thanks for the review Ray... I'm sure that's really going to help me sell off any extra sets I still haven't even had a chance to open mine because I've been working crazy hours. Man I can't wait until April when my life gets back to normal. In the meantime I'm hoping to open my first set on Sunday.

I did what I think is a really good review of the drone for my site... I don't want to get people too sick of Mospeada though so I probably won't publish that review until after I get a Macross post or two up. I agree with what you're saying.

looks like the tailfin is supposed to split in two when the backpack folds up but it might not do that on the toy.

I think I'm going to have one or two sets for sale soon... I bought one set and then a full order I thought wasn't going to happen was sent to me.

I've got 4 sets now but I've only handled 3 of them. While the joints are fine on them, any moderate handling will disturb the already disturbed look of the fighter. If gravity or a twisting motion doesn't disturb the arms, chances are you're going to inadvertently touch them and end up with an ugly duckling. Heck, even my photoshoots were kind of annoying because of all the inadvertent bumps to the arms. The arms not locking into the legs and the Tread not locking into the Legioss were both huge design oversights and something any future buyer should be prepared for. As to modding the shoulders, I have no experience modding toys other than the VF-17 which was ultra straight forward. I'm sure someone could come up with a good solution but it might be better just to shave a bit off the top of the fin rather than digging into the shoulder.

I hear the toy industry was a very tough place to be last year and some toy companies, even some of the ones we may be familiar with on this site (not talking about Yamato) may not be in business by the end of next year. Don't expect anything too bold from toy companies this year. Lots of repaints with minimal investment. If we see anything more from the destroids it might be like Robotech's old civvie color themes.

I bought mine from the guy on eBay for $178. A word of warning though, if you're a stickler for perfect boxes he's probably not the person to buy from. He puts everything in a box with a bit of packing material but both my items came with pretty big dings to the boxes (I also got my drone from him). Another note on the link up, the upgrade parts do lock the tread in place and do allow you to get the Legioss in a place where it won't fiddle around too much either. This allows you to finally be able to pick up the combined toy and have it remain looking like a combined toy. It's still not combined in such a way that you'd probably go wooshing around with it. If we're just talking fighter mode on the Legioss, the Toynami one is probably a bit better (provided it's not broken and it actually collapses together okay). The Toynami locks together in fighter mode allowing you to woosh it around all you want. The CMs has arms and legs that don't lock into anything so after one good woosh it will look like a sloppy mess.

Very tough decision. CMs is leaps and bounds ahead of the Toynami (Legioss/Alpha) in terms of playability. Toynami is leaps and bounds ahead of CMs in terms of aesthetics.

Actually Tobey called it quits and sent things into a downward spiral. He said "You know, I just can't get into a good place to do Spiderman right now... I'm too focused on ROBOTECH!" EDIT - before people on RT.com start quoting me... this is an obvious joke.

Graham said that the destriods weren't on the list to revisit until better economic times... it's in his "meeting with Yamato" thread.

LOL.... YOU FOOLS! You pulled too hard transforming your toy. That's why it was broken in the box before you handled it! Even the replacement arms I was sent, that were never put on a valk, were broken. Shove that in your "it's how you transform the toy" pipe and smoke it.

What are you smoking? This is already 1000X more successful than anything HG has attempted. While being a clear rip-off this show looks way more watchable than Shadow Chronicles.

BLAM-O I got a post up on these upgrade parts! Visit Anymoon.com for the full scoop (although I did have to rush it out after work so let me know if you spot any issues or feel I glossed anything over too much).

Somebody posted the online advertisement here a while back. I'll have the online ad as part of my review when I get it on my site or you can go hunting through the old Mospeada super threads. I'm close to being done my post but I'm swamped at work with year end financials so we'll see what happens.

Sometimes "official" announcements (of which there NEVER are when things are discontinued or put on hold) have to come via common sense. It's been forever since we've heard about this toy and none of us own it yet. That means it's officially on hold. Then you have to ask yourself "what does 'on hold' even mean?" It simply means you can't buy this thing yet and no one knows if or when you ever will. Could be February... could be December 2010.... could be never.

You know I haven't talked to them about the parts service since my order back when I got the first V2. I think it's safe to say if they mentioned it to you it's true. Maybe some day they will have a better way of managing the requests and restart the service. Yes, we're just talking about the parts requests.

That's exactly why Overdrive should cancel the service. They tried to do a good deed but it would be way too much work for them to keep telling people "Hey, Yamato never responded to your request." Meanwhile, people who submit requests are constantly bothered by the fact OD isn't telling them "Yamato never responded to your request."

I think Overdrive should cancel that service until they have a better system for tracking it. The whole "we'll contact you if we ever get the part" system just leads to way too many complaints and way too many people spamming them with parts request. "I've asked for this part six times and never gotten a response!" They need to have a "my parts request" page where you can request a part and they can have a status "No response from Yamato" to basically let you know you're probably never going to get that part. This doesn't seem like the appropriate thread for that chat though.

No, I think all of us pointing out the head issue aren't saying "Just because of this reason, the 1/48 is better." I just am saying that it's a "con" for the 1/60V2. The notion that you think the 1/48 backpack is any where near the same concern as the 1/60V2's shoulders seems startling to me. Almost every BP8 that ever broke was because someone was forcing the situation with back armor (as I pointed out, I broke a BP8 because I didn't notice the back antenna wasn't recessed). The 1/60V2 shoulders can be broke in the packaging before you get them.... indeed, my REPLACEMENTs that were sent to me, that had never been on a valk, broke in their bag. So, what were you saying about much more solid?

I don't exactly see how "the head is in the wrong spot" is some sort of vague argument. Like Eugimon pointed out... just about every toy before the V2 got it right. Yamato decided there was too much backlash about how long the crotch looked on their 1/48 so they had it slide up and pushed the head up in the process. I understand WHY they did it, I just think it was the wrong choice. Also, just because we can't immediately see how a toy manufacturer could have made things happen doesn't suddenly make it impossible, it just means some engineering would have been involved.

Seriously, there was like an SDF-1 taking off to fight the Vajra. It's like a beautiful trainwreck of various Macross works. If I'm HG I am esctatic. This is exactly what they need. Provided it doesn't suck absolute balls and they can get US distribution rights they can totally abort Shadow Chronicles which has lower production values than this show and treat this series like a re-launch.

You should make a dedicated thread... that's too sweet to be stuck in this thread with all the observations on the stock stuff.

The pic comparison on the 1/48 there isn't exactly fair but yes, having a slightly recessed head does create some problems. Those aren't problems Kawamori seems to care too much about (see the VF-0 which has big chest spikes that limit the VF-0's field of vision). For that GBP shot, if the camera had been elevated a little, and the chest angled down a tad, it'd look a whole lot better. Having that higher head position definitely will make things easier on the 1/60 V2... but it's still wrong. I can understand proportion issues and that sort of thing (of which the 1/48 has plenty) but having the head be in the wrong spot is really awkward to me. It's the friggin' head... not too fat a leg or knee cap or something like that.