Salamander

[musings about how company X has a much better track record than company Y with regards to toys using a very selective memory*] [*including ignoring the repeated breakage of bar Z on G toys, unfortunate loosening/breakage of S on toys from M, L breakage on toys from the same series, the unending bazillion of recolors, and the horrifying suck of the single toy released for E (Abbreviations have been chosen in such a way that they can apply to both company B and Y.)

I don't think anyone ever said the bit I bolded there. As for my initial enthousiasm for the VF-25, it indeed did cool down pretty much after getting my armored VF-25S. First of all because of two wrong parts in the box (which thankfully HLJ was able to replace), and then after I got the replacement parts I discovered one of the back hinges had cracked on the first transformation . That Kawamori's design put a buttload of stress on two small hinges holding the wings to the rest of the Valk does not help. I still regret cancelling my Macross Quarter pre-order while not cancelling my armored VF-25S order. The opposite would have been better. If it's only cracked it will hold together fine. If a piece is broken off, you better recycle the Valk into a "broke apart while flying"-diorama until someone makes replacement parts that don't break or some kind of brace...

Does the article only mention Imai's Macross molds, or also their Galvion, Mospeada, and other molds?

You could also compare it to the old 1:100 Takatoku...

Is it really a sticker, or a decal? If the former, I hope someone will scan it in and make thin decal versions so it doesn't look like crap when applied. Furthermore, it looks like the stickers are slightly oversized when compared to the animation model...

Because Ranka with no underpants is not "special" ?

I do hope they manage to get rid of the stand (or come up with one that looks less intrusive). I do fear that it will be between 15,000 and 20,000 yen if it's as large as a DX VF-25...

Of course, since they were both licensed releases. Hasbro got the license and mold from Bandai to produce Jetfire (and also Roadbuster (Mugen Calibur from Dorvack) and Whirl (Gazette Ovelon from the same show), while Matchbox got the licenses and molds from Bandai to produce several Robotech toys.

If you count non-transforming figures, you can as well count model kits, SD figures, and gashapon/trading figures. But why not give your list of Yamato products, so we can make a true comparison?

You realise that Bandai has been making transforming toys since the mid-to-late 1970s? Sure, they weren't all Macross toys, but they've made hundreds, if not thousands, of transforming toy designs...Metal Hero, Sentai, Machine Robo, Gundam, etc.

Considering the weight that that poor little hinge has to support, I am not really surprised. If there's parts that could have benefitted from being metal, it's both sides of that hinge...and even that might not solve the issue. I don't blame Bandai for that problem, I blame Kawamori for the anorexic design there. I suspect it might also be a problem on the VF-27, albeit more minor due to the lower weight of the wings and engines.

Methinks someone else could better have reviewed that toy - obviously the writer thinks it sucks mostly due to folding in the middle in ship mode (like the SOC Irongear) and having lots of little sharp corners (like, oh, most of Bandai's collectors' items). :|

HLJ likely didn't ask you to contact Japan Post yourself (BTW, you can find them by googling for "Japan post"), but to wait for more time (if they told you the 45 days and 90 days thing). Japan post can only investigate missing packages after 90 days, like many other post companies around the world. Only SAL large parcels come with a tracking number that you can use on the Japan Post site. These start with CC or CI. The others (small packages) do get a number, but cannot be tracked online.

That's not picking up color, but rather because either the propellant or the clearcoat itself slightly melts some of the plastics - I had the same issue with a model kit and a spraycan of automotive basecoat. You better keep the spraycan at a safe distant while clearcoating the toy, or it might end up damaged.

For those with pre-orders at HLJ, you can always log into your account when a pre-order comes into stock and request shipping. This usually speeds up the process (for me, at least). Did that saturday evening, got the payment request yesterday.

Contact the store you got it from and have them request a replacement part from Bandai (if they're in Japan). Otherwise, have the toy replaced by one that isn't incomplete.

Not really, because they lack the sticker. On the other hand, the very broken strike I have in my pile of parts also lacks the sticker, so perhaps the Strike never came with the sticker in the first place...

Both of my Strikes have a regular Bandai copystamp ("BANDAI TOKYO JAPAN"). You could try peeling off the sticker by carefully lifting it using an X-Acto blade. This usually works with minor to no damage to the sticker...

Especially since the gunpod does attach to Bandai's mid-1990s 1/65 Fire and Blazer Valks. Granted, it sits so low that the Valks can't be displayed in fighter mode with extended landing gear with it attached, but still...

Heh, the trailer on Youtube got its audio disabled because it used music from Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Way to get started.

I hope this TV Tropes page is more to your liking than the Wikipedia page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.AstroPlan Please do not edit it to be more negative! However, if you can tell me what other anime besides the obvious get ripped off, that would be great!

Gosh. Of course, an alternate choice could be to choose less brittle plastic, which doesn't need to cost more. I mean, I have never seen a chunky monkey with shoulders that shatter like those on many of Yamato's products (unscrewed, yes. shatter? no.). Lots of plastics are stronger than steel, in a sense. Of course, it depends on the type of steel you're talking about. I mean, I use high-quality steel knives for lab work, but those will still shatter if they are bend. Other steel tools will bend (and can be bend back up to a degree), but are made from considerably softer steel and might get damaged by applying relatively little force. Likewise, if I use the wrong type of plastic container to hold aggressive fluids, the container will be damaged and might shatter. Flexible plastic is generally better to hold nasty solvents like xylene, hard plastic usually doesn't like the solvent, nor any applied heat. The same containers happily withstand the very nasty fixative (strong acid + formaldehyde) I use, while that fixative will damage (corrode) the aforementioned high-quality steel knives... Eh, no. It does look like a Valkyrie contains about as much plastic as, let's say, a competition R/C buggy, while the engineering is also comparable (in fact, the buggy needs to be more wear-proof...). Competition-grade R/C buggies start at about 300-400 bucks a piece. Not that much more than a 200-dollar Yamato Valk. See above. I suggest you start at Tamiya, and from there move on to companies like Associated, Losi, Kyosho, etc. Of course, they likely have larger production runs than any Yamato Valk, except for their really high-end products. The high cost of the SDF-1 can easily be explained by Yamato having no previous experience in manufacturing fiber-reinforced plastic, molds for that kind of molding being expensive, choosing to make a limited release item in too large a scale (as in 1:2000), etc. It would help a lot of people on here if their opinions were at least a little bit more informed.

You, Sir, have never handled Europe-released G1, G2, and BeastWars toys. Hello missiles firing over 3 foot far at high velocity! TM Megatron is one of those TF toys that sadly suffers from a certain type of plastic (charged with gold plastic particles) that becomes extremely brittle over time...

You...have never handled a SoC figure, or other Bandai chogokin figure from the last decade, have you? Because those certainly aren't toys with diecast parts like the chunky monkey...they have diecast, but are pretty model-like in most of their other qualities. Of course, this usually does not include design and quality control problems like Yamato's products tend to have...

It does look like the barrel can split like in the anime - there's a seam running along the entire barrel that's visible in the Gerwalk pic, and the Battroid pic seems to show a hinge at the base of the barrel. So possibly...