jenius

Not sure on the RT license vs. the Mospeada license but I've heard Tats isn't too generous with their Mospeada license.

Oh God, a LOLCat reference.... nice. The latest update regarding the Inbit toys (and I think the style of toy you're thinking about is approximately the type of toy that was planning on being made) is still under consideration but looks extremely doubtful at the moment due to the economic crisis at hand. It was almost impossible to convince Japanese investors to make a bad guy toy right from the onset when times were great. My Beta should be arriving any minute (I hope) so maybe I'll see something in it that will convince me it ought to cost $150. That said, the economy of scale issue I'm kind of tossing out the window. Toynami is making about 40K Betas. CMs probably made less than 10K total for all variants (some say they made about 5K total). I think I even read somewhere that the CMs was made entirely out of POM and even if it's not the plastic feels super sturdy. So, if the CMs Tread represented about $150 of the cost of that combo I would think, given the 4 to 8x larger quantity Toynami is producing, there's some cost savings there. But it is pretty pointless trying to figure out what goes into the numbers like that, maybe this toy will really bowl me over.

Are you looking at the photoshopped picture or the actual Jason? The actual picture is properly transformed... (at least, I'm pretty sure it was).

That certainly seems plausible... and it would have been very interesting for HG to somehow get Japanese rights to a show and then license it's odd adapted sequel back to a Japanese company. I thought that's what we were going to see with Shadow Chronicles and Mospeada II (glad we didn't). Robotech Art or something like that probably has an article about why the mechs were adapted but they don't seem like they were adapted enough to really come off as unique. Then again, this was the era of Space Gandam.

I think intellectual property laws and their enforcement (in regard to such things as what HG was trying to do with the Sentinels) was still very murky waters at the time. HG seemed to sense there were potential legal issues so they were doing redesigns already in an effort to avoid any potential mess. After the advent of the Internet intellectual property laws have definitely become better understood/fleshed out and HG now seems to understand that they need to steer very clear of anything that was in the original works (barring some miraculous rights change brought on by WB or something).

There really shouldn't be anything wrong with that pose... it should look somewhat intimidating as it's a straight shot with the legs and arms somewhat flared kinda like cowboy/wild west style. ff95, I like what you did... although it could now be considered anime magic since to get that head position the nosecone would have to shimmy downward.

Yes Roger, because materials are the only cost of a toy, you're smart and stuff. I'm with DND, world's simplest toy currently selling for $150. Roger, wanna make a bet that I'll be able to buy it for $80 some day?

It seems like your observation about the Invid fails to consider several points. First, the Invid are pretty prominently placed in the Shadow Chronicles. Second, every "generation" of Robotech has a new enemy. Third, the Haydonites were shaped up to be the next enemy way back in the Sentinels days. Fourth, it's wouldn't make sense for any Macross or Masters enemies to return as their chapters are pretty nicely concluded by the generations they appeared in. Fifth, the lack of reference to previous alien species is evidence of the very rulings referenced here, mainly that HG has no intellectual property rights and can thus NOT use anything from Macross in an HG original production. Their legal claims are no longer dubious. Their legal claims WERE dubious when they claimed to have rights to EVERYTHING Macross related. Since then it has been established that they have the international rights to the original show and its merchandising rights and NOTHING beyond that. Do I sound like a broken record yet? EDIT - HG is NOT selling Mega House products. Toynami is selling Mega House products in the US by way of a license agreement with Harmony Gold. Of course, the Ride Armors have very little to do with this conversation since Big West has nothing to do with Mospeada. Tatsunoko handles Mospeada licenses in Japan and Tats has a long-standing and decent relationship with HG.

Here you go, tell me that head position doesn't throw you off...

Now that I've owned the 1/60 2.0 for a while, and have a couple, many of its charms have worn off. I still think it's the best VF-1 yet but the head placement seems to be bothering me more and more. I'm now think I prefer the 1/48 in Battroid mode.

I see Radd has already answered why Yamato doesn't have a deal with HG. As to HG's stopping of the Mac+ valks years ago, that was sort of the pinnacle of HG's dickiness. HG was trying to assert rights it didn't have due to the ambiguity of the rights it purchased from Tatsunoko. Like I said, the contract HG has may literally be "You have all rights to Macross" written on the back of a cocktail napkin circa 1983 (or whenever it was). HG initially seemed to understand that they really should only have the rights to the original show, and merchandise for it, and that's likely why MacII and Mac+ (the animes) were brought to the US without HG involvement. Then it seems like HG hired new legal staff when they were trying to resurrect their brand and that legal staff said "Wait a minute, this contract is vague enough for you to claim rights to EVERYTHING Macross related!" That's when the poop hit the fan. They railroaded Toycom who was planning on releasing what later became Yamato's 1/72 series, helped start Toynami, and fought a legal battle with BW over their more and more bold assertions. The Japanese court put them in their place limiting their rights to just the original film and its merchandising rights but the damage was done and BW was bound to hate them forever. Edit - Just FYI - I was writing when Radd wrote his response so pardon the redundancy. Will this affect HLJ? In all likelihood no. People actually exporting stuff from the orient are probably well out of HG's reach.

Not dumb at all on BW's part. BW ONLY makes a cut off of every Yamato valk sold in Japan. If Yamato were to establish a deal to sell the Valks outside of Japan they would not have to pay BW a penny for those valks, instead they'd have to pay HG. BW hates HG and BW only has control over the Japanese market so it'd actually be smart for them to word their licensing agreements in such a way that forbids companies from pursuing sales relationship beyond BW's scope. The only way that'd be a stupid move would be if Japanese companies were only willing to make the toys provided they could also sell them outside of Japan... but Yamato and Bandai (and others) have proven that there's a big enough market in Japan alone.

It's all too soon to tell. Hopefully we'll have answers some day. Here's to hoping Graham gets a phone call from a slightly inebriated Yamato employee who spills all the beans... barring that maybe just a phone call from yamato that references the few pressing issues right now.

HG reportedly tried to get Yamato selling their products in the US and Big West objected. If this thing with Bandai ever gets rolling it will be because Bandai has the clout to tell BW what to do. It's also possible, as AcroRay said, BW's license with Yamato had a provision about only selling the product in Japan so when Yamato tried to deal with HG BW countered that it would invalidate the Japanese rights.

That's the word on the street. Yamato was looking for a different solution to the shoulders from the all POM approach they allegedly tried on the Ghost release.

Pretty sure that info is wrong. The original Japanese dates were Stig in November, Ray in March with no dates announced for the other two. Since then Stig has been delayed two months so it's quite possible Ray will also be delayed. Since Ray was all but done he may still hit the March target but I can't see a way in which Yellow would somehow be released before him... Yellow requires quite a bit of retooling.

Actually, a 100% mark-up on toys isn't at all uncommon and pretty much in line with what we should expect.

Just an update for those of you waiting on my review. I think my order didn't actually ship until today... and even then it may have shipped at the very end of the day. That probably means I won't get it until Thursday at the earliest. I had planned to drink heavily and not be around much this weekend so it looks like my review might not be up as quickly as I had hoped (I was really hoping I'd be taking pictures tonight). I did pull my superposeable out of storage and I have my CMs Tread handy so the review looks like it will be pretty complete as soon as this thing finally makes it to me.

No, HG will not lose control so long as they remain a company and don't sell the rights. Licensing agreements for anime have become a lot more sophisticated but back in the days when HG made the deal with Tats they were pretty informal. The HG license is probably something like "HG can use everything Macross. Domo Macek-san." written on the bottom of a cocktail napkin after a late night and a handshake.

I whole heartedly agree, and I don't mean to sound pro-HG by any means (or pro-BW or anyone else for that matter).

Uh, your post makes no sense. Not once did I say that HG has the intellectual rights... in fact I make it clear in EVERY post they own the rights to the original SHOW and merchandising rights for it. They DON'T own the intellectual rights, the characters, the story, etc. They can't remake Macross, they can't make a new valk that looks just like the VF-1, they can't have characters that look like they're straight from Macross in another show, etc. They have no rights to derivatives like MacII or Mac+. They never had THOSE rights because Tats could never sell them THOSE rights, they DO have the rights to the show and the merchandising. HG TRIED to exercise rights they didn't have until a Japanese court gave them the smack down. They then copyrighted the name "Macross" creating more problems. They claim they are no longer standing in the way of Frontier etc. and none of the recent events disprove this. All they did with BBTS is tell them to drop bringing in stuff from the original Macross (although they may have said "any Macross merchandise" due to that move with the copyright).

Do some damage to whom? What would we be suing for? HG has the rights to the show and the merchandising for it, a Japanese court even recognized that in the judgment that made it clear HG owned no derivative or intellectual rights.

Pete, your entire argument can best be summed up with the words "epic fail." The lawsuit being referenced, IIRC, affirmed Tats' ability to sell HG the rights to the original Macross as a film, not an intellectual property. That means that it is easily within HG's rights and ability to stop Japanese imports that don't pay a proper licensing fee. I also see a fair amount of hypocrisy going on here. If any of the members of this thread purchased the rights to something they would want those rights to be honored but yet here they all are saying we should support the gray market and ways of circumventing a rights holder. Granted, we do this because we're not fond of the rights holder but I think you'll see the hypocrisy if the shoe was on the other foot.

No, it's not. It's somewhere between the two if measured by soldier mode. It's like 1/40 if measured in fighter mode (because the legs don't collapse enough... but no Alpha/Legioss toy has ever accurately pulled off the tiny dimensions of fighter properly.

If no one answers the superposeable question I can try it out when mine comes in.