Matt Random

I can't comment on Convoy since I only have the Starscream. The quality is nice. The plastic is durable and the paint application is clean. The part fit is good. The articulation is better than G1 but isn't anything special compared to some of the other modern TF lines. The thing that suprised me about this line is that the figures are really small. I don't have SS in front of me so I can't do an accurate measurement, but I think it is 5" tall or so. The RM Convoy looks to have a simplified transformation and the inner arms (and perhaps the thighs) are hollow.

I received the Sidious RotS mini (normal color) a couple of days ago. Very nice looking. Much smaller than the other hilts. The Weathered Obi I ordered should arrive in 4-6 weeks. I don't mind the wait since I got it for a good price. Collection prior to adding the Sidious...

The name Metroplex just screams steam shovel

I totally agree that the serious collectors will still get the LEs and EEs but I feel that a significant portion of the casual LE buyers (and these folks do exist) might switch to FXs if the blade was removable. One rule of marketing is to never canabalize your own market share. Keeping the blade in place would be no problem. The Parks sabers use a single set screw. The MRs could use a push down and turn lock mechanism that would be rock solid. I've never dissected an FX but I'm guessing there are only a handful of wires going into the blade. Ground, one wire per blade segment and perhaps a power wire depending on if the LEDs are driven off a transistor acting as a switch or if they are direct driven. I'd bet that the light up effect is accomplished by using a 4bit port (assuming there are 4 blade segments). The power up sequence is 0000, 1000, 1100, 1110, 1111 and the power down sequence is 1111, 1110, 1100, 1000, 0000. I actually prefer the classic trilogy sabers that have a hole for the blade to come out of. To me it is more believable (yeah I know its all scifi) I think that the flat emitter sabers (which is most of them) look unfinished. This is just a personal preference.

An MR guy said in an interview that the blade on an FX must go into the hilt something like 2" in order to be durable enough. This means that sacrafices would have to be made for any of the thin necked sabers (Obi, Luke RotJ and Sidious). I wonder if we'll ever see a removable blade FX. I can't help but wonder if MR is avoiding this since it could cut into the sales of the LEs. Some of the FX hilts look almost identical to the LE replicas. The hardcore MR fans would still get the LEs but the more casual buyers may switch to the FX and display it without the blade. I saw a Luke ESB (IIRC) FX with the blade forcefully, permanetly removed on Ebay a while back that sold for something like $120.

It was a challenge for my company to port our Linux software to IA64. Our customers (the chip designers and manufacturers of the world) never really jumped onto the IA64 bandwagon. I'm not even sure if we're building on that platform anymore. It was much easier to do the port to AMD64 and our customers seem happier with the machines. Porting is often a little more involved than marketing people would like you to believe. Getting something to compile is just the first step. The time consuming step is assuring that each and every piece of the functionality still works. Then there's all the tweaking and benchmarking to keep the runtime acceptable. I prefer not to use the 64 bit EXEs if at all possible since there a performance hit associated with the additional addressing overhead. IBM needs to do something to get their stock price back into the 90s and somehow I don't think this is it

My only complaint is that I don't have this in my hands yet!

Has anyone found pictures of the Diecast Jedi Starfighter kit that will be released in the US later this year? I'm wondering if I should get import the snap together kit or wait for the diecast.

I think the challenge with the Qui-Gon saber would be the deep cuts between the black discs on the lower end of the hilt. Original page at Starwars.com

That has to be the worst Next Generation episode I've ever seen - oh wait, that was an Enterprise episode. I guess I can try to convince myself that the Enterprise series actually ended one hour earlier - much like the Star Wars series ended over 20 years ago (at least until next week ). I would have liked to see the return to Earth with a number of NX class ships in orbit. I also would have liked it more if Tripp and T'Pol's relationship had continued. Maybe his death would have meant more. Speaking of which, it seemed to me that Tripp died simply out of a need to kill off a character. It was nice that he died saving his best friend but I'm sure that Malcom would have arrived with the commandos any second.

I hate you Now that I've discovered these XMod thingys I want the '65 Mustang w/ the light kit and maybe a few other upgrades! UPDATE: Well, I picked up the '65 Mustang, light kit and suspension kit. This thing is really fun even though I'm a crappy driver. I'm still experimenting with the suspension parts to find the combo that gives the best handling.

I have most all the .45s released so far (not interested in the gold or silver varients and can't afford the weathered Obi-Wan). They are very nice looking and the quality is great. You can pick up the first 6 for fairly cheap on Ebay. I think I paid something like $170 (shipping included) for all 6. Target.com has a Sidious, E3 Obi-Wan, E3 Anakin, E3 Vader and Yoda listed as future releases. I hadn't heard about the Vader, Yoda or the normal Maul (thanks David). I wonder why there's never been a MR Qui-Gon in any form?

I have a Parks (blue), a Rubies Windu and 7 of the .45 scale Master Replicas (Vader, Maul, Tyranus, Luke, Obi-Wan E1, Obi-Wan E4 and Mace). I built a double-bladed saber in the past. The hilt could split in two and the plexiglass blades were removable.

My ranking... Picard Kirk Archer Sisko The rest of the Star Trek and all parallel universes Spuds McKinzee Quizno's Sponge Monkies Admiral Ackbar Janeway

The last 20 years are always the hardest. The Sith have a proud tradition of trying to kill each other. It's how they relax. I got nothing. I would have preferred for Yoda to be the old master guru type. I'm not too crazy about the lightsaber yielding super ball. It seems to me that becoming a Sith is a career limiting move. The only promotion path is to take your masters job and then there's some new snot nosed brat waiting to take yours. Hmm, on second thought it seems a lot like corporate America.

I flipped through the graphic novel and saw what you're referring to. Its a tantalizing tidbit, but there's not too much there except for the mention of Palpie's master. Does the novel go into more detail? I'd love to know where Palpie came from. Is he from Naboo or was that all part of his grand scheme? How old is he? How did he first find his master? Is any of this answered in the book? Also, how does the duel between Anakin and Obi-wan end? The graphic novel was a little light in that area. Feel free to IM me if you don't want to post answers here. Thank you!

I figured that Syfo Dyas was Sidious (or Sidious posing as a Jedi he had recently disposed of). Sidious knew that the Clones were there. It was all part of his grand plan to play both sides against each other. One of the comics that came out shortly after AotC showed how Dooku, working as an agent of Sidious, recruited Jango to be the clone source which implies that the clones were ordered by Sidious. Since comics aren't canon this could just be how the author saw it. Furthermore, it could be that the assasination attempts on Padme were set up by Sidious so that the Jedi would ultimately track Jango down and learn of the clones. IIRC, Nute Gunray was behind that attempts, but we know that he was manipulated by Sidious. It's no coincidence that the Jedi just happen to find out about the clone army at a time when Palpatine has been pushing the Senate to create a standing army. There's a lot of things I don't like about the prequels but I have to admit that the whole Palpatine rise to power story is pretty well thought out. I've always had a bit of a problem with the whole "bring balance to the force" thing. Why the heck do the Jedi want to being balance? What did they expect to accomplish? There's like a zillion of them and 2 Sith. I guess maybe Anakin did succed in bringing balance since at the beginning of ANH there are apparently only 2 Sith and 2 Jedi left. The discussion about cloning Anakin and Vader not being all that agile are interesting. I think that Sidious got Anakin exactly to the state that he wanted. Anakin is full or rage and he feels betrayed by everyone. He's also beyond the point of turning back. Also, Sidious may have built a fail safe into the cybernetics to control Anakin. He may have been so shocked by Vader's betrayal after 25 years that he wasn't able to use the failsafe - and I think Vader got him from behind. We may not have seen Vader's full potential in the OTC. Obi-wan didn't really put up a fight (it's my take that Obi-wan was just stalling to let the others get away) and Luke wasn't too much of a challenge until the very end. In addition, Vader may have been out of practice since he hadn't faced a Jedi in a while.

I look for visual clues when transforming them back to car mode. The trick I use on Grimlock is knowing where the front wheels have to end up so I use that to figure out the arm position. It can take a while but it never fails. Grimlock is one of the trickiest since there are so many joints around the arms. This one takes me a good 10 minutes if I haven't transformed it for a month or so. The fun of Transformers for me is figuring out the transformation. I view it as a problem solving exercise. I didn't look at the instructions as a kid and still avoid it as much as possible.

Great news! This will be a welcome addition to my 1/48 shelf. Looks like I'll have to resort to the foam rubber trick again to eliminate the need for the shoulder covers. The rubber missile idea that was mentioned earlier in this thread would be great. I have a lot of missiles on my fast packs that just won't stay in place even after I've swapped them around numerous times.

I noticed that one of the pictures shows a light colored Deadend beside a G1 Sunstreaker. Was he supposed to be SS in the first place. I've heard the rumors but I didn't know if it was true. I much prefer the black and silver to yellow and whatever.

I'll listen to most anything except hip hop and rap. My favorite genre right now is country. Saw what you will, I dont care. My all time favorite band is Aerosmith.

If this is true, and I want it to be, I wonder why these weren't shown at Toy Fair. The post you linked was from August last year but there was no blue Windcharger repaint or red pickup. As a side not, I noticed is that the article mention the "Primes" in Cybertron, but it seems that the "Convoys" won't be Primes in Cybertron.

Clear nail polish worked great on mine. Now he's pretty.

I'll be a happy man if this does indeed come out. I'd really like to have a set of GBP armor to complete my 1/48 collection. I'm optimistic that this'll come out since the 1/48 line did pretty well, the GPB design isn't too complex (no transformation) and the size isn't prohibitive. I can understand why the 1/60 Monster and YF-19 FP may never see the light of day. The Monster is huge which would no doubt limit the sales. Not everyone has room for something large that pretty much just sets there in one pose. Also, retailers may not be too interested in picking it up. It would take a lot of shelf space, cost more to ship to the stores (do distributors or retailers pay the shipping fee?) and appeals only to a limited set of consumers. The YF-19 is a complex design that would take a great deal of resources to realize. Yamato has to make it sturdy enough to be considered a toy. Also, the YF-19 may not sell as well as a VF-1. Don't forget that Yamato now has sales data for the YF-19, YF-21, VF-11, YF-21FP, VF-11FP, VB, Q-RAUs and all the VF-1 varients. We may say we want this and that, but they have a good idea of what does and does not sell (something we can only speculate about). I'm personally amazed they did something as risky as the VB-6. I just hope it wasn't a bad decision on their part.

For me its the Yamato 1/48 VF-1S Hikaru Strike. DYRL is my favorite Macross series, the Hikaru Strike is my favorite mech from the movie and the Yamato 1/48 is the best VF-1 to date in my opinion.