jenius

Ley was the only sensible choice for the second toy. You have to think about it from an accounting standpoint. It would take ridiculously low sales to recoup the cost of the separate design for the Ley toy. The problem was that the Stick toy didn't make the resounding sales they expected during planning and they did the math and said "Crap, we'd need every single ride armor to sell as well as our Stick toy did now to keep this thing alive." Ley didn't matter, he was so cheap to make, but there's no way Fuke or Yellow sale as well as Stick so the line was cancelled. Blame the economy. Both Beagle and Toynami slashed their expected quanitities between announcing the line and putting it on the shelf and pretty soon so few toys were beiing made that if they didnt' sell out at lightning speed the line was going to be doomed. Darrin, I suspect all Mospeada lines will be dead after the release of the Shadow Beta (saving maybe a Shadow Chronicles Beta if you want to include RT in the discussion).

You can find them further back in this thread... all have been revealed.

Macross the First. I haven't looked at it much but I gather it's just a subtle stylistic change. This VF-19 is starting to sound like what this line should have been all along (with the possible exception of the price tag). Many Macross fans have the "I don't care what it costs, give me the best thing ever or give me nothing at all" mentality. I'm at that point in my collection where I don't need the most expensive toy ever made in the biggest scale; I'd like some cheap stuff in smaller scales that is still fun to handle. Bandai got an epic fail in the "fun to handle" portion of the VF-25. Unfortunately it seems like they're on the brink of losing the price benefit for the small scale with the newest MSRP news. I really think $40 is the pricing sweet spot for small scale toys... $70 is pretty pricey.

Man, I wish this were a PS2... or even PS3 release. There's nothing that could make me buy a PSP but I could convince myself I need a PS3 for the Blu-Ray.

Macross and Mospeada... I'm an adult with a toy collection.

Go here: http://anymoon.com/blog/2008/09/22/vf-1-to...omparison-post/ Click on links to learn more about each.

IIRC, you just have to pull really hard. It's been a long time though and I never had the nerve to do it with my Takatoku (but I did do it with the Bandai a couple times).

Ah, I see, sorry Sketchley, I must have glanced over that. Backpack is angled up to give the canopy space to extend upward. Very interesting that that was the way SK chose to go with that one.

That's true, although you do still gain mobility by moving both the thruster bell and the thruster itself (if bell can move 50% and thruster can move 20% then you could get a full 70% rather than just the 50%). Even if you can only move the thruster so that it points upward there is still something gained... although maybe not enough to warrant the contrivance. EDIT - you could conceivably camber those fastpacks also (think ball joint) to avoid having them thrust onto the legs.

No, actually the OP's question hasn't been answered by anyone... but you guys sure had a fun argument about nothing on topic. So, getting back on topic: Argument 1: The tail fins stay out to elevate the VE-1's radome I don't think this makes a lick of sense. First, why not just put the radome on a bigger pole? Why use the backpack as a prop? If that's unfeasible, why not a telescoping pole for the radome? That's probably the best solution for something that will also transform. Argument 2: It has something to do with it being a 2 seater The altered canopy does require some altering of the chest area but it doesn't seem to necessitate the awkard folded out tailfins of the backpack. Here's a hypothesis for you (and I have no proof whatsoever) I hypothesize the tail fins stay out for the Elint and VT-1 because they are the only ones with fast pack boosters than can actually spin on their attachments to the backpack (again, an unsupported hypothesis). The fixed fast pack boosters on the traditional VF-1 are tucked tight against the body and only can propel the vehicle forward with their main thrust. If the thrusters could be spun up or down then their main thrust could be used for increased mobility. In the VE-1 this might help it get out of a tight jam with limited offensive capabilities and in the VT-1 this might allow an instructor to stabilize the craft or get out of a tight squeeze a rookie pilot might put the plane into.

Yes, I was talking about fighter mode. I went strictly by the instructions the toy came with (which shows the armor being applied in fighter mode) and I knocked off most the armor trying to get the wing nubs to stick in the leg armor. I also knocked off the arm armors several times but again, knowing what I do now I'd probably just put them on last which is a bit tricky but do-able and way less frustrating than knocking them off constantly. I haven't transformed the toy into the other modes, and I scratched some paint putting the armor on in this mode.

I just added the armor to mine for the first time, the locking nubs for the wings took a tremendous amount of effort. My advice, don't put on the missile bays on the legs, the hip pieces with removeable armor, or just about anything else. Get the main leg armor together and then try to lock the wings to the legs. After that you can worry about fitting on the rest of the armor when everything is locked together nice and snug.

psst... QuinJester, Yellowlightman is a bit of a curmudgeon, he was being very sarcastic and making fun of all the people who were saying Yamato should take a stab at the license.

It would put an immense amount of pressure on the backpack joint when the boosters fired but I'm sure there's some lock for that.

Yep, Robotech.com is not the Macrossworld of the Robotech universe. Robotech.com is a business, not a fan site, and they pro-actively do whatever they can on the realm they have created to protect their own business interests. Usually one would think this means that they would have a set policy in writing and any time someone broke the rules they would be in trouble. I would have never thought they'd have so much free time (likely the result of everything being in hiatus) that they could actually monitor their users' activity on other forums and then invoke punitive measures based on perceived infractions that had nothing to do with their own written P&Ps.

I'm not really sure where I stand on this. I'm a huge Mospeada fan, I'd buy one of each if they were made, but I have some doubts about the 1/60 scale. At 1/35 the Tread ends up being overwhelmingly large and isn't enough of an "it" toy to likely warrant being made. However, 1/35 (or thereabouts) is the PERFECT scale for the Legioss. Would I love to see both made in a 1/30ish scale? Absolutely, but the realist tells me that just would never happen. At 1/60 the Tread can be made perfect, especially if it was designed with an attachment to a 1/60 Legioss toy always in mind (which it seems no manufacturer has really done... although Aoshima/Toynami did a good job after the fact of making things work half-decently). A 1/60 scale legioss, without opening missile bays, opening cockpit canopy (honestly, I don't care if the canopy can open so long as there's a decent looking pilot inside and a detailed cockpit), and without landing gears could probably be done alright... but I think people would pan it for having all those features absent.

Are you 100% certain on that? I was pretty sure the courts ruled against BW (again, while defining what BW actually did have the rights to) and found in favor of Tatsunoko having certain rights. It was Tatsunoko having those rights that made BW give up on the whole Macross trademark issue and everything else and focus exclusively domestically.

I don't think it really should ever be said that "BW won" anything. BW actually lost quite a bit. I kind of think of it as BW owning a really sweet car but having Tats tell them "Hey, if you want to go on this street you're going to have to pay us a usage fee." BW took Tats to court and the court said, "The car is definitely yours but you are going to have to pay Tats if you want to drive it down that street." People say BW won because the court case made it clear that they actually were the IP holders for Macross but what they were upset about (from my understanding) was that they couldn't sell Macross Plus merchandise in the US without paying Tatsunoko/HG a cut. The courts said "Without Tats there was no original Macross so you're going to owe them a cut for anything you sell with that name outside of Japan." Since then BW has shrugged, said "F it", made it so all their licenses restrict the licensees to selling in Japan, and have let the Internet and exporters solve that pesky issue about not being able to distribute internationally.

When Hikaru was flying around on Earth in the VT-1, did he fold the backpack all the way down in GERWALK?

I've been tempted a couple times... but never pulled the trigger. It's way over-priced for what it is.

BW forms its contracts to forbid its licensees from doing business with HG (although I'm sure the words are less explicit, something akin to "the licensee is prohibited from entering into corresponding licensing agreements with international bodies.) So there can't really be an agreement where some company (like Bandai was trying to line up) can do business with both BW and HG. EDIT - I have never seen a BW contract and can not swear to this but it seems pretty clear by the number of attempts Japanese companies have made to bring their products to the US officially only to later cite "licensing issues" after Toynami/HG reps stated they were on board.

Yep, unless CMs does some mold milking I'm pretty sure we're done with Mospeada. Toynami seems pretty disinterested in making Shadow Chronicles toys. They were supposed to release superposeables and Imen at some point and instead all that's going to come out are two limited edition repaints of existing Alpha toys and MAYBE a Beta (and fan feedback on that Beta was icy cold when Tommy asked about it at Comic-con).

I wonder if CMs is going to give us a black or general soldier version of Yellow's ride armor.

It makes sense though that Rand would be a pretty tanned guy. He's an outdoorsman from South America.

Meh, I don't care what you haters say, Bandai took a scheme seen in the show as a lighting affect for only several seconds and made a toy of it. That's pretty cool. I'm not saying it's for everyone but if Bandai is going to make exclusives I think this was a great idea for one.