jenius

Nothing at all (edit- from Toynami). Tommy mentioned that they were expecting one out but said he hadn't heard anything on a release date.

Hey... maybe they could get the rights to the redesigns from MacrossII....

I doubt Kevin will say anything. If he does he will say the typical "All rights to ROBOTECH!" line which only serves to confuse matters as those who don't see through it assume it means all facets of the Macross story. He might even address Seto directly to make it seem like he's correcting Seto when in reality he'd pretty much just be agreeing with him in a way that would confuse the snot out of the people who haven't been following any of this mess (and to be fair, very few people are probably even aware there is a rights issue).

Tommy at Comic-con acted confused and said that as far as he knows Macross still has pending litigation and left it at that. Every time I hear them talk rights they talk about the rights to "all of Robotech" which is essentially an admission that they only have rights to those elements which are UNIQUELY Robotech.

These days it's BW who refuses to play with HG. Not that I blame them after Tats' animation land grab and HG's demands years ago. To be fair, it's established everywhere now that HG IS entitled to merchandising rights to Macross and Battletech never was. HG is totally in the right to tell the BT folks to stop... I just don't think it makes business sense. That's the thing though, charging an ungodly amount that will never be paid by a developer who thought the designs were free isn't going to get either the developer or HG anywhere. If HG said "Do as you will, just give us a big friggin' ad" then that should do it. OR, what might be a much better way of doing things, make the Unseens paid for downloadable content and let HG just get a cut from the downloads rather than entire game sales.

I think HG is seriously dumb if they don't try to get their Macross mecha into a Battletech game. Both franchises should work together to be relevant... they need all the help they can get. Just have one of the game's opening ads be an HG logo and have it say "A Thank You to HG for the use of several mecha from the hit anime ROBOTECH." Bam, some advertising for HG and Robotech and the Battletech fans get to play those old designs.

There is a HUGE difference between "absolute blood bath" and "no no no, they made it so those characters just weren't on screen!" Max and Miriya not having names, not being on screen, and being in limbo is no where near as satisfying as seeing a blue-haired commander having "M. Sterling" written on his craft get blown away after an intense battle. So no, I don't consider just avoiding the issue to be way ahead of resolving it.

Noooo... not at all like the MPCs. You pop pieces off the backpack and plug in backpack replacement pieces that then attached to the new parts. Everything else fits in via pegs, no magnets.

As to the previous discussion on Protoculture, the only sensible thing for HG to do is to move as far away from Macross as rapidly as possible, including the hokey term protoculture... ya know, since it sounds like it has something to do with culture more than fuel. I have very different tastes from the average Robotech fan but I would have made Shadow Chronicles into an absolute blood bath. You know all those nameless soldiers who the Haydonites killed? That should have been Rick Hunter, Max, Miriya, Lisa, and just about every previous cast member the show ever focused on. Sure, leave a few old fan favorites out of it so they can pop up from time to time but everyone that has any licensing issues at all should have been slaughtered. I think the show should have also been created so it could have been a Mospeada 2 but that's another can of worms.

Wow... I really messed up that sentence. I think I meant to say that SC went nuts with it and now you can't help but think the humans have the edge since they have a God on their ship. I think the handling of Ariel was pretty much just terrible writing. Tommy didn't really make her magical though, she's that way at the end of Mospeada as she transmutates into an apparition and is in seemingly multiple places at the same time. The way she's used in SC though is like an escape hatch for the writing. "We'll write the characters into a bad position that they can't escape from... then save them with Ariel. We'll make it so the plot would completely fall apart without the humans finding out something they have no ability to discover... and then have Ariel tell them." Meh. Still, the crappy writing of SC doesn't have much to do with legal concerns/rights issues.

I'd like to point out that Ariel is still the only Invid ever born into a human form. Sara and Corg were both mutated from lower forms but Ariel actually hatches that way. In that sense I like the idea that Ariel is a step above all other Invid. Since the Regess then deemed her a failure it make sense that she toned it down for the next rounds. That said, Shadow Chronicles went nuts with it and now you can help the humans have the edge with a God on their ship.

I know the pics of Hikaru's 1/48 VF-1J with weathering surfaced long before the 1/60 Weathering Hikaru 1J (Which is the Hyper hobby Mag exclusive if I'm not mistaken... I'd check my site but I'm at work). I can't really recall the context but I believed the same thing as SDK's quote, that the weathering Hikaru was being lined up as a third Chronicles exclusive. Maybe Yamato was just showing off a weathering 1J to show they could.. I know they've also talked about doing one at shows.

I think that's the first proof of the red Tread I have ever seen. Nobody tell Carl... he might have to fly off to Japan with a suitcase full of money.

From the Kakizaki thread and SDK's link: Sadly I don't see the pic any more and the only other thread search pulled up was of a custom Weathering. Still I swear I can remember an official pic that had the 1/48 Hik 1J weathering in it.

Actually.... there are pictures of both a 1/48 and 1/60 Hikaru 1J with weathering. The 1/48 is part of the Chronicles releases and was pictured with the Kakizaki and Max 1As.

September for Kakizaki, no idea on the weather Hikaru 1J. I'm guessing it will be the one to follow Kakizaki so that release wouldn't be until like next April.

The overglue is common, CMs glued the hell out of 'em after everyone broke the first editions visors off... because of that you don't hear many people breaking Yellow's so it's a bummer you had the misfortune. I'm not sure I follow on the misalignment but something definitely does look misaligned there. You can check out the review on my site for pictures of how it should look to see if you can figure out the problem spot.

That would be the perfect kind of thing to put in a PM.

Anything is possible... but it's kind of unlikely. It also depends on what you consider the beginning point. I don't work in Hollywood but in my industry we sometimes talk to a company/bank for years before we actually figure out a mutually beneficial arrangement. Now, if you look at that final arrangement that we get into, you might say it took us 16 weeks but if you went to the first time we tried to set things up it's way longer.

I find it HIGHLY unlikely you'll get an official word from Toynami about this. The toy industry doesn't really work that way. New lines get hype and press releases and lines that die go quietly off into the night.

LOL, someone is trying to force Macrossworld into having a small talk section.

The correct legs can definitely be done in 1/32. I was goofing around with a little model one day and some binder clips and it seemed pretty easy to do. Not only that, you could use the mechanism used to move the legs to then switch back up and form side covers in battroid.

This definitely seems shaky. HG has the international rights to the merchandising of the original Macross series. The Macross designs appearing in Battletech would be an example of cross-merchandising and so HG should be involved in some capacity. Maybe all the parties involved did reach some backroom agreement though. Still, if anyone is trying to make this work under the assumption that BW's being awarded the IP rights to the designs means HG has no rights may find themselves in a lawsuit from either/both HG and BW. I would prefer to think that HG has just decided to let it go since they aren't making money on the destroids anyway and if BT gets successful it's kind of free advertising in some minor capacity for RT.

You sure they weren't talking about the card for the Shadow Beta? I think Toynami is still using outdated cards at their conventions.

I think the timing of the LAMR announcement after Frontier came out is pretty much a coincidence just like I don't think the release of Shadow Chronicles had anything to do with the development of Frontier. The Zero/To the Stars thing is also somewhat coincidental if you look at the bigger picture. We were in the middle of an old franchise revival as the kids of the 80s got money... everyone wanted to start cashing in on that. For the LAMR, HG probably made just a big enough splash with Shadow Chronicles to get chats going with the studio and they went public when they could. I'm pretty sure at this point HG knows they can't really compete with BW, they're just doing what they can to try to make a dollar.