jenius

I second the chunky vibe on the DX... mighta had something to do with the styrofoam but then, one blast through transformation without a second of fear and I definitely had the vibe going even stronger.

The 1/100 is a great idea, and I initially was pretty pleased, but the more I handle them the more their cheapness shows. All the little joints cracking is pretty sad and the way the super parts attach is just plain dumb. I'm hoping when I get this I'll notice some small improvements... but it's not an actual expectation.

The SUPER Packs almost certainly fit the V1 DXs just fine. It's the GRENADE pack which doesn't look like it's being sold separately (yet) which looks to require additional connecting holes.

I don't want space suit guys, I want to complete a ground crew.

What do you mean by covering the headlights. I don't really follow what that is or how to do it (short of, ya know, grabbing a cloth or something and putting it over the front end of my toys).

All Beagles with the Beagle head (that I know of) have a problem with floppiness. This was addressed a while back by advising the use of a piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of the head ball. The Toynami versions don't seem to suffer from this problem.

If they did make an Animaniacs film she could play hot nurse!

I don't think the shoulder position or the arms has anything to do with the sliding mechanism, that's just sculpt stuff and other design elements and I like what Yamato did there. I'd much rather have a bit of a crotch (like all VF-1 toys have) then have the head in the wrong place

The whole sliding nosecone thing was a terrible idea... it makes transformation more complex and puts the toy's head in the wrong place with the only benefit being less of a crotch. The head also looks like it sits a little too far back in battroid also. Great toys, no doubt, but the more I handle them the more I wish Yamato had just made smaller 1/48s without wingflaps, removeable nosecones, and air brakes (but keep the bigger hands!).

Having the legs extended isn't all that bad, it keeps the toys from looking to squat. Roger pretty much confirmed that Toynami has excess capacity left on all of their MPC Alphas but that they also have no intention (at the moment) of using that extra capacity.

If you keep the arms of the flexi display toward the center and your screws tightened I'm sure you could get it to work. Carl, my bad, I was reading too quickly. Something different with the head of a potential sixth volume of the MPC Beta... guess i'll wait and see. As to getting a truly GOOD MPC Alpha... I took the approach of just buying lots of them, transforming them all once, returning the ones I didn't like, then handling the ones I kept very gingerly. I know that's nobody's preferred method.

The only Alpha that's hard to get is the blue one. You can still get the green through black variants for $60ish. I imagine that if Toynami is going to release a plastic giftset that won't be until long after all these MPCs are on the market so they don't hurt their own sales... that's a long wait. If I had to guess as to what Roger's hinting at it'd be the Synchro Cannon variant prototype the HG staff showed (somebody referenced a picture earlier in this thread). I'm guessing that'd be sold as a Marcus/Maia Shadow Chronicles volume.

Votoms.. no bikes but it seriously is great.

It's a fair criticism that the Aoshima isn't MUCH of a design overhaul, but certain parts were over-hauled and when you handle them you get even more of the "Damn it, why couldn't this toy be built better!" feeling than you do from the Toynami. So, beyond that, we're basically discussing semantics. The Aoshima improvements were great ideas and if these toys do make it into a full plastic rendition I hope they keep those improvements (although, from what I have seen with the Maia MPC, I have no real expectation of that). No problem on the Imen review, it's been one I've been wanting to get up for a long time... and it's probably not the last time you'll see those little figs.

You got it all wrong. "Thanks for your cancellations guys, this will convince Bandai that their future 1/100s will have to be of a greater quality if they really want them to sell!" If I see lots of preorders and then lots of cancellations I see lots of demand be turned away by my crap product... but at least I see the demand was there.

That is a commonly held, but not entirely true sentiment. HG would love to import a lot of toys and collect a licensing fee, it's a no brainer situation for them. However, their bone-headed moves in years past to try to lay claim to everything related to Macross (they claimed to have all rights to the show and its derivatives) have made it so BW will never allow another company to do business with HG again. If companies can't do business with HG then HG can't make licensing fees (BW is happy) and you get no toys unless you import it from someone who is paying BW licensing fees (BW is happy again).

As much as people hate it, BW shouldn't get a penny for a Valk sold in the US. HG should get that penny. If BW is doing things to prevent the 1/55s from being sold in the US (most likely in the form of a clause in their licensing agreement for the Japanese territory prohibiting the marketing of similar products outside of BW's scope) then it just doesn't seem right to me. That's not to say many things HG has done didn't seem right to me either. I think every Macross Plus and Macross Zero toy should be readily available anywhere... it makes no sense that HG has managed to shut that door. In the end, they're both screwing each other so there's little incentive to work out a happy arrangement... besides, BW has the lion's share of the stuff people want and the people who want it.

Yep, BW put the smack down on the Yamato effort (what was it? Sundown or something like that) and then put the smack down on the Bandai relationship. BW hates America (okay, maybe they just hate HG).

A little clarification: Aoshima's Legioss toys were better DESIGNED toys. They were worse in terms of CONSTRUCTION. So if you wanted to see a plastic Alpha actually built well you'd want it to be the AOSHIMA design, not the Toynami MPC. The Aoshima had ratcheting joints and other little bits (including sturdier hands) that would have made it superior had it not been thrown together from warped parts by people who didn't care. It should also be noted though that Aoshima does have the Toynami as its underlying base so there are plenty of legacy issues (I'm sure Aoshima arms pop off randomly just like toynami ones). I may be wrong but I believe what SAVE posted was a pic of an Aoshima booth at a toy show that showed a TOYNAMI MPC BETA, not an Aoshima Blue Tread. Aoshima was announcing they'd be doing repaints but had not yet begun producing them. Tommy Yune DID create the MPC Beta's unique heads although I don't believe he had anything to do with the MPC Alpha heads. As to the Beagle folks, your rampant speculation is fun but you're building yourselves up for a let down. From what I hear Beagle is very pleased with what they'll be showing but it's not going to be part of a new line.

16 Days until we'll get our first pictures of something very nice...

I don't think the "tooling" in that sentence should be anticipated to mean any sort of "re-tooling." I think they are simply saying that the place that made the Beta will make all future Alphas. It's certainly not a bad thing but I wouldn't take it to mean there will be any improvements in the new Alpha other than having a better factory put them together.

Apparently not...

Man, I hate to say "i told ya so" but if Yamato couldn't do it I didn't see how Bandai would.

This isn't the end folks, the economy was fine but it got kicked in its nuts. Just like we all survive a kick in the nuts so will the US. It's just a kick, not cancer. Putting ice on your balls doesn't necessarily feel good either but it might help the swelling. In the end, all it takes is time. Again, tough times call for rational thought people, now's no time to grab your tin foil helmet and start expecting the end of days.

Well we're not supposed to get political. I can say that all politicians, not just the two at the top, share their fraction of a percentage for not being able to see the writing on the wall. The various lobbyists had everyone convinced that this wouldn't happen because they would always play it safe enough to survive... in the end we all saw that they were way too confident and everyone was suckers for believing them. There are plenty of reasons to blame Bush for the way money was spent and such but this problem was way too insidious to say its his fault... it's his fault, the congress' fault, the house's fault, Wall Street's fault, the bank's faults, the rating agency's faults, the lenders' faults, the borrowers' faults, etc. etc.