jenius

Seven short months away!

Was the red heat shield offered for the strike valkyrie the same shield that came with the 1A toy? How did one get that heat shield? Anyone got an extra?

These toys are nearly 40 years old... we can be patient while he heals.

Sorry, yes, several toys being discussed in short order. Do you own that toy JVmacross? Curious if it has a manufacturer mark. As Matsuhiro was failing they may have done many interesting things.

They aren't KO crews in the way most would think. Many gray market Takatoku/Bandai toys were Matsuhiro produced toys finding different outlets. Some apparently by Matsuhiro, some probably after Bandai acquired Matsuhiro assets and liquidated stale stock. The legal complexities of the time and opportunism mingling.

Yeah, that was my meaning, it's a Bandai toy in the box. Does it have the Bandai stamp or did they dremel it off like the SDF-1 toys that were dumped as Space Fortress?

Thanks for bringing up the Jetfire armor releases. So those releases had to have the smooth box I suppose? Were those Taiwan knock-off VF-1S toys that only have half the strike Valkyrie box more official products sold without armor or are those really knock-offs?

Seems like they gave us a LOOONG runway with a December preorder for a July Product. Maybe next would be a February preorder for September?

Here are the known first issuance dates: Bandai DYRL VF-1S Strike Hikaru: October 1984, 4,980¥ Bandai DYRL VF-1A Hikaru: January 1985 3,980¥ Bandai DYRL VT-1 SuperOstrich: April 1985, 4,980¥ Bandai DYRL VE-1 Elintseeker: June 1985 4,980¥ Does anyone know when Matsuhiro did their first run of Jetfire? I would suggest that the 1S and 1A toys were released three times (or more). 1) Takatoku stamp with Bandai sticker and textured box. 2) Bandai stamp and textured box, 3) Bandai stamp and smooth box. I doubt the second releases happened before the VT/VE-1 toys due to how tight the schedule is, I would guess instead that the box manufacturer made more of what they did the first time for the second release and then were specifically told on the third time to drop the texture to save some yen.

Curiously, my strike VF-1S has a textured box, appears to be new/unused, but has the Bandai stamp, no stickers. I wonder if there weren't multiple runs of the strike VF-1S with only the final run dropping the textured box. Of course, there's always the possibility someone in the 30+ years of the toy switched the boxes. You can see the texture and the Bandai stamp in these pics.

Wow, a wealth of information! Thank you so much.

Alright, so hypothetical timeline goes like this: Takatoku folds, Matsuhiro uses the molds unaltered to created Strike VF-1S toys to be sold by Bandai but stamped Takatoku with a sticker over it Matsuhiro uses the molds again to make VF-1A Hikaru toys sold by Bandai, still stamped Takatoku with a sticker over it Matsuhiro updates Jetfire mold to show "Made by Bandai". Does a Jetfire run Matsuhiro uses new Jetfire mold to produce VT-1 then VE-1 toys for Bandai. This means every VT-1/VE-1 has the Bandai logo. Still not clear if the first VT-1's made have the black BANDAI sticker on them over a Bandai production mark. Matsuhiro updates original Takatoku mold to show BANDAI and produces another run of VF-1S strike and VF-1A Hikaru toys. After several Strike VF-1S runs the mold is well worn and Matsuhiro sells it to Bandai with other assets due to its own financial difficulties. Bandai updates the mold and creates the 1990 changes. Everyone hates the 1990 toy so Bandai makes a new copy of the Takatoku mold and produces the 2001 toys.

Yep! Wasn't sure how much he wanted that known....

I know the guy that owns the prototype heads.

I'm definitely interested! I feel like i'm still wrestling with the basics. The VE-1 and VT-1 have the rounded nose of Jetfire so it seems REALLY unlikely to me they were ever stamped with anything other than BANDAI but I had that one VT-1 toy with the same stickers shown there on the Strike Valkyrie so I'm not sure if that was a thing on the VT-1 or just some sort of aberration. The VF-1A Hikaru toy debuted three months after the Strike Valkyrie and I've never owned one but I'd be curious to know if the fix had been made and if Bandai kept applying stickers fixed or not. If you have a chance to look at some point, I'd be very eager to hear your findings.

I feel like I'm getting into 1/55s a little too late in the game to go chasing down the Matsuhiro and Takatoku gray market toys, and way too late in the game to explore all the true KOs which continue popping up to this day, so I have great appreciation for folks like you with your collections and expertise. If you ever post a website that explores the gray market, hopefully I can link on over since it will always be a weakness on anymoon. Speaking of Strike Valkyrie, I do mention the Takatoku release only briefly and I could use some fact-checking if anyone wants to help. Here's what it says: "There are two variants of the Strike VF-1S to hunt down. The early variant was produced while the molds still had the Takatoku manufacturer marks so Bandai covered them with a “BANDAI” sticker. The later versions show Bandai as manufacturer. Curiously, the VT-1 and VE-1 also received the Bandai sticker treatment though the mold had already been updated to show Bandai as the manufacturer… this may have been done to present a consistent look and make it less obvious the Strike Valkyrie was hiding a secret." Here's my questions for the 1/55 experts here: 1) Is there a version of the VF-1A Hikaru toy that has the Takatoku logo? Does it have the Bandai sticker? I don't have one of those (yet) so the post is light on content about it. 2) I owned a used VT-1 some time ago that had the Bandai stickers on it above the Bandai manufacturer mark... but that doesn't mean someone didn't put them there from some other toy. I've owned two essentially new VE-1 toys and neither had the Bandai stickers on them and my current VT-1 doesn't have the Bandai sticker either. Should I delete that sentence about Bandai putting their manufacturer sticker on there because it was just a one-off oddball thing on a toy that may have been tampered with? Were there maybe two runs of the VT-1, one with Bandai stickers on them one without? Since both my VE-1 toys seemed new and didn't have the sticker, I should probably at least update that sentence to specifically reference the VT-1 as possibly having a Bandai sticker.

I have updated my 1/55 post thanks to the feedback in this thread. I think it's much clearer now what came with which releases, including heat shields.

It's very unlikely De Japan is set up to do that. They would need an order in their system to match your delivery to. This gives them some level of assurance there isn't funny business going on also. They would almost certainly want some mechanism for charging you for doing this, at least a minimum order charge of some type. I've never heard of any store or proxy doing this so I'm pretty sure they would turn you down.

Wow, that was super well done... Makes my flip books very sad in comparison.

Delta has a whole episode dedicated to training, shame we didn't get to see that scheme and they couldn't come up with a train to do a Hikaru homage.

Sure you can, you just need a valid Japanese address and a Japanese issued credit card.

Well the good (not good?) news is the next two releases will almost certainly be regular releases... so we can all spend those evenings cursing the people who now use those shoe-buying-bots at our retailers.

I was thinking "I'll hold out for Nin-Nin" since they were at 25,500... then I refreshed the page and they were at 26,500. At that close, I'd rather go with Okini.

Wow... pretty early in the game for that mark-up!

I'm not sure what to do about my Supers at Kurama... the FedEx price puts the total cost at some crazy level but will they really hold onto them for like six months while we wait for shipping to get back to normal? I really wish companies would let you put stuff on a boat... though I think my YF-29 may have been on that container ship that lost a bunch of cargo recently....