jenius

I'm hoping the battroid would look better with some good posing... the fighter mode is letting me down more. I think it looks like Yamato elevated the cockpit position so it looks kind of like a bird more than a fighter. I also think the canopy area is a bit to bubbly and could be more sleek... still hoping that I'll be more impressed by it in person.

Just an FYI, I heard from a friend in Japan that Yamato did, in fact, make a change to the shoulders. I guess the initial reaction was to build the shoulder more carefully but then, before the second run of the VF-1S Focker (no idea when that was), there was a slight change to make the plastic stronger. He says it can't be ascertained visually though and it amounts to a microscopic additional amount of plastic. I'm pretty sure this word was passed along to him by someone at Yamato and I'm afraid the only way to really verify it would be to buy an upcoming VF-1 toy and put the shoulder area on a scale and compare it to the weight of one of the original VF-1S Focker hinges.

Yeah, I'm going to update my Fuke review at some point with pics from Shinobu, I've been working on it lately. Shinobu seemed a bit better to me than Fuke but still a long way from great. In the meantime, I just put up a post on Maia's Shadow Chronicle's Alpha, here's a sample pic:

Didn't we see pictures of the Japanese design team working with Kawamori in various published mags?

Bandai doesn't make anything from stores marking up their toys beyond MSRP. Another thing to consider, the Chunky Monkey was an expensive toy when it was released also and it also wasn't the most true to the line art toy while simultaneously being a huge hit. People like having fun with their toys, there's a lot to say for that.

From what I've seen elsewhere (and to a smaller extent here), the Bandai VF-25 is being lauded as a fun and playable toy. I don't think you can simply pin its success on a lack of competition (although it obviously helps a ton to be the only show in town).

A heatshield has to cost like 2 cents to make, they should just give all the VF-1S toys two heatshields and let their owners decide.

I'm fairly certain the Weathering editions all include water-slide decals so if someone wants them maybe someone could just reproduce the ones Yamato is already making.

Hiro Protagonist FTW!

That Blow Superior above is an event exclusive, the event is next week. The Dark Mospeada on HLJ is the black/white paint scheme.

Yep, so you decided you would hate it, bought it, and hated it. I'm shocked. Your complaints are valid though, there are seams that seemed a little too wide to me and the cloth could be a lot better. I've been thinking about buying a burgundy leather jacket from a thrift store for a mod but that seems like too much work right now. Still, that was the best Ride Armor toy you ever touched.

Atomski got Toynami'ed SOLVED:

The collectiondx video review got taken down... I hope because they're going to transform it with the head on. I'd rather see someone else do it so I can correct my review also instead of having to dig the toy out and do it myself . Yeah, I'm feeling lazy.

Or he only screwed up once...

Likin' the vintage stuff, very nice.

So basically Pete, you're just saying "I don't care what anyone else says, anime shouldn't be made into live action." It's not something I'm sure I disagree with but you might want to work on being a bit more concise.

There's no way $115 is a legitimate price on the 11B. MSRP is way higher than that so either this guy has improper connections or he has his pricing confused with the VF-1.

I originally read about it here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~cyc01/gcmFAQ.htm

Yes, it is a mis-romanization of Brough Superior... and Fuke is actually "Houquet."

To a point. What I'm saying is they took a preproduction Stig sample and made some changes to it to create a preproduction Ray sample. It's not like they had actually made a dedicated Ray at that point so there's still hope that there will be changes made to make the Ray product superior to the Stig product.

It's hard to say but the prototype they were showing was just a Stig toy with the gun swapped on and a new head on the figure. Whether or not they could incorporate changes for the next project depends on when it's supposed to be released. If It's due out by the end of March they could probably only make very minor changes... like a different fabric. If it's not due out until the end of April there might be more hope.

It's quite possible. Then again, Star Wars starts with a larger preamble than I would imagine and then throws the audience straight into a battle. It seemed to work really well for Lucas.

New review of the Defender up on anymoon.com

I definitely would not anticipate a re-release of Stig by Beagle. I have to assume all this info gathering is more for the Ray release and it might as well be since Ray will need some hype. If Ray was just a straight reissue of Stig but with the gun and different figure they probably wouldn't sell that many. If Ray is an improvement that could go a long way.

Transformers is a good example. Any of you holding out hope that this will somehow be a faithful live action adaptation of the cartoon, you're just fooling yourself. It seems they're going to stick to a couple key aspects of the story, an alien ship crashing, humans making transformable jets, and then the aliens coming and starting a war. For people who haven't seen Robotech in 20 years, that's all it will need to be for them to recognize it as Robotech. Those people don't remember the names and backgrounds of the characters. Those people won't remember what Protoculture was or any point finer than that. The diehard fans who have seen Robotech at all recently will probably get a few dialogue bits that are nods to the original series but nothing much more than that. New fans, who probably will never watch the original cartoon, are what this movie will need to suck in so developing a story for them will be where the real effort lies.