jenius

LOL, Hurin still sucks but you have to admire the power of SDF-1 toys, they're like the bright light of a porch lamp to his moth. Maybe Hurin can tell us whether or not it will have knees (Hurin, please feel free to add a link here to when you made an ass out of yourself over the SDF-1 having knees). I'm definitely excited about both the Quarter and the SDF-1 but I think I'll buy the Quarter, put it in some cool poses, and probably sell it later to make room for valks. The SDF-1 will be purchased and kept until it absolutely has to move.

I think you guys are a bit premature on any criticism to Beagle for not improving the Ray version. The toy isn't due out until some time in May, that's plenty of time to make some tweaks. Sure, maybe the initial prototype may be just a Stig version of the toy with a gun instead of missiles but this doesn't tell us definitively that the final product will be that way.

One positive note on credit cards. I buy everything on a credit card and pay the card off every month. I get approximately 2% back on my credit card purchases in either money or travel rewards. So, I never pay a dime of interest and about once a year I get a free vacation (well, flight and maybe hotel). I also get a company on my side if I feel a vendor or merchant screwed me over. So, yeah, 99% of people out there should think of credit cards as the devil. If you're really up on how to use them though, things can work out pretty nice.

Did they actually say a projected price or has it all been speculation?

Ah, I see. Interesting... but an easy thing to pass on (thank God).

Why do you guys think Alto is an action figure? He's on the same base as all those static little statuettes.

I didn't want to get into this... I'm happy to tell you you're wrong and that's not how it happened. There's some truth to that but it's not really related to the FDIC or the good your money does in a bank. To be fair to them, they didn't leach off the system. They took advantage of what was offered them. The fact they were offered these things involved poor decisions by credit analysts, rating agencies, wall street firms, banks, and the government (and this involves many governments). Very, very few people took advantage of these programs thinking "This will be great, I'll get a house for a while and then I won't be able to afford it so I'll live in it for free until they kick me out." Most people thought they'd make ends meet... and usually they didn't understand what they were getting themselves into, but there was no leaching malice involved (again, for the most part). Believe me, in general the person being foreclosed on hates this situation far more than you hate the notion that $10K of your money will go to reviving the economy. Speaking of that, nobody ever realizes how rich these years made them. The economy ballooned well beyond where it should have been so you benefited from all sorts of government projects and increased private industry services (heck, even some of your pay raises may have been based on how "well" your company appeared to be doing) so now that the piper is calling you should really think that you're just repaying the excess that you gained from a busted system (and I'm aware almost no one will do this). A word to the wise, calling any science "completely useless" normally just makes you look ignorant. While it's true that some economists are better than others, and economics is a soft science that can often be interpreted a few ways, macroeconomic theory is going to be VITAL in resurrecting any semblance of a functional world economy. The people tapped to do things like create stimulus packages have studied depressions, recessions, and macroeconomic theory and they are BETTER for having done that then say, your local barber. Basically everything you said from savings to spendings after that is wrong. We're in an era that needs responsible lending and having wealth that's not gaining so much as a 1% interest rate is just a means of throwing free money away. There's almost a level of religious fear being imputed into a discussion about cash. It's okay everyone... it's okay. An economist is a person. There are a number of people on these forums that work in financial sectors who are far more qualified to discuss the value of economists than various other people on this forum. Spouting nonsense about "macroeconomic theory is shize" or "Economists are evil" is just supporting ignorance and it's not a conversation that even needs to be had in the first place. Polite? The post that says "You're an economist, well pardon me but the world woudl be better without you" wasn't very polite... even if he did beg the pardon. It also didn't have much to do with how the economy was affecting his collecting habit. I dont' think I've ever met an economist who said he was engaged in a Hard Science. If models had ZERO to tell us they woudn't exist. Every model is viewed context, they're understood not to be finite, and more than a little deduction is involved. As is too often the case there are people who don't have a full grasp of what happened to get us here and so they lash out at what they don't understand. It was a very unfortunate set of events involving a huge number of short-sighted people in a huge number of industries. Many economists, for a very long time were waving flags saying "this isn't sustainable" so try to cut them some slack.

Release date is some time in May... complete guess here but I'd bet that'd put Houquet right around December.

I forgot to put a link, there are like 10 pictures here

Overdrive just sent me some pics of Ray's Ride Armor -

YES!!! I love the Internet. It introduces me to some very... uh... interesting opinions. I get the feeling this definitely falls under that politics/religion/taboo subjects type thing. Way to take an otherwise decent conversation and railroad it.

On the topic of civilian law enforcement, my GF is also in that industry. While you're right, it's certainly stable, all sorts of local governments have hiring freezes right now. My girlfriend was promoted and then told she'd have her spot after the hiring freeze cleared and now has found out that the spot she was to get has been eliminated. So, while she's got no fear of losing her current job, it sucks that she's not going up any time soon. Putting your money in a box is crazy if you live in the US. For one, it will make you paranoid way more often and two, your money is insured at a bank... even one that goes under. The economy needs your cash in banks right now anyway so you could do your part to help and there's no risk to you.

CAD on its own is one thing, it needs to be joined with computer-assisted manufacturing to get the whole effect and even then, on anything of sufficient complexity, tightness of fit issues won't be completely eliminated.

I had actually been considering scrounging up some cash and buying a house about eight months ago... any thought of doing that is now tossed out the window. I've seen lots of companies we do business with disappear so now, even though my company seems completely fine, I'm going to play it safe for at least another year and just try to accumulate a very large down payment (or, should everything go upside down, some money to live off of for a while). My girlfriend is quitting her job later this year and she's really concerned about how difficult it might be to find somewhere new to work so that sucks. As for the toys, I'm still buying them but I'm definitely avoiding buying variants for the sake of different paint jobs. I won't be getting a CF-1J, TV-1A, etc etc. I elected not to purchase a Weathering 1S or the 1/48 Kakizake 1A TV. I had to sell off a bunch of toys last year for space reasons, if I do go unemployed I certainly have a few items I wouldn't mind selling to try to scrape some extra cash together. As it is, I'm hoping to hold onto everything until times get better so those toys I don't feel I really need right now can at least be sold without taking a HUGE loss.

So, maybe I'm a little bit late on this... but I just put a post up on the 25th anniversary toys on my site. I also started posting much larger pics because it seems like "your pics are too small" was the number one complaint I was getting. Check it out: Also, Save I think I stole your pics from this thread (or another one) to show what the original 25th anniversary scheme looked like.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much work... I'm sure there are other toys that'd make much better bases.

Ah c'mon, a leg was snapped off the toy, hardly an issue for concern. It's not like the Toynami Alpha arms that just fall off eventually without even being handled (or certain other toys with notoriously weak shoulders).

Congrats to all that guessed the VF-19 Kai was next. It's a terrible Valk that looks even worse in Bandai's rendition (judging from that prototype). I sincerely hope the final product is better.

I'm drunk as a skunk, I guess I unintentionally celebrated the launch.... now I'm just trying to stay up as long as possible so I'm less hungover. Looks like we all got good news from both Bandai and Yamato, this was a great day.

Ginrai said that the acronymns in Mospeada were actually "backronymns" meaning that random letters were applied to mechs and then given a meaning later (I'm gussing the actuall MOSPEADA had to be different since it's in the name of the show). Maybe he can quote his source and help us with the TLEAD/TREAD debate.

There better be a lot of detail and a lot of cool tricks to warrant the price. I'm sick of toy companies acting like size is a bigger price factor than design. Beyond that, no surprise and I'm looking forward to it.

Kinda, except "Tlead" doesn't really work in English and the l/r is always a tricky romanization issue. Maybe that's how the creator thought it'd be Romanized but the creator wasn't necessarily an English or Romanization expert. So, I'd still say there's some fudge room to believe it's a Tread... after all, it became a Dread according to that modernized line art.

I had the same thing happen to my 6Z. It sad untouched in a display case for a year and then I picked it up (in fighter mode the whole time) and an arm fell off. Weak. I guess you'll have your Alpha permanently in fighter mode now.

Here's that CMs Wolf set on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/cms-Mospeada-Riding-Su...A1%7C240%3A1318 CMs is totally missing the boat here. Pardon the RT names for a second (I always screw the inbit up otherwise) but they should have released a 1/18 Invid Scout (with attachable guns) packaged with a couple 1/48 Scouts. I have no idea what i'm going to do with a Wolf figure and a random greeny... There should have at least been something exciting sold with them.

Shouldn't this be asked in the existing Overdrive replacement parts thread? I believe the answer you're looking for is "It can't hurt to try."