MacrossMania

Playing with this guy almost every day. He's definitely not a shelf warmer. Just proof to me that he's still the GOAT, so far. But my wish list for the 1/35's are: integrated intake covers integrated side covers between the back and chest. The one on the DX 1/48 is definitely unsightly! a locking mechanism for the neck tougher head lasers. Mine feel just a tad on the fragile side on the DX 1/48. LED lights on the head, knees, wings and backpack a locking mechanism for the backpack detents on the wings and wing flaps (I have no problems with the wing flaps on my copy) tougher tail fins and a locking mechanism/detent for the tail fins shooting gunpods (with a robust spring! Ah the 80's! Bring them back!) mechanism that allows you to choose between symmetrical movement of the wings and head lasers (somebody mentioned this in a previous post) shooting gunpod (again, do we really need to worry about child safety laws for adult collectibles? This was a charming addition to most 80's toys that I don't think makes it any less of a collectible) tougher leg fins with detents/locking mechanisms.

Already found it. Thanks.

Reminds me of this scene in Jackie Brown: "You never got into the CD revolution?" "Oh I got a few, but I can't afford to start all over again. I mean I've invested too much time and money in my albums." "Yea, but you can't get new stuff on records." "I don't get new stuff that often." Cue Delphonics: "I gave my heart and soul to you girl. Didn't I do it baby, didn't I do it baby?"

Ah, now I somehow queerly understand this phrase now more than ever. The dead king lives by the ghosts of his own deeds and legend. His reputation carries him forth from the grave, tears him from the pages of history and into the realm of legend. He lives beyond the grave, but in memory only. So it is with the 1/48's. I shall always remember you, my love.

I wonder how this thread is doing in light of Bandai's release of the DX VF-1J.

Reminds me of the fantasies I used to have about toys when I was a kid and I hadn't yet purchased them, or my parents hadn't at least. Or maybe the days and weeks leading up to Christmas, when I would sneak into the closet and just stare at the toys my parents hadn't yet wrapped for Christmas Day. One time my mother even discovered me and scolded me for it! I guess some things never change lol.

LOL. How collectors love anticipating the next big thing. They turn it over in their minds endlessly!

If it was a false equivalency, Bandai wouldn't have gone to the lengths that it did to make the DX as durable as it is. It's leagues above the Yamato 1/48's, which clearly deserve the name display piece. I just think there's room for improvement if you really want to make the absolutely perfect toy. It's the perfectionist in me. It would be nice to have durability that lasts a decade or longer with more than just time spent on a desk or behind a glass walled cabinet, and the occasional swoosh by an admiring collector. You don't have to look any further than the Metal Build line to see the kind of durability that Bandai is capable of. Of course, those do not transform, and so maybe there's a lot more room to play with in terms of the amount of heavy plastics and nigh bulletproof die cast that is used in those things, and so maybe we're just right back where we started, teasing the mind with possibilities that simply can't exist in the real world.

You never had to be this gentle with the Chunky Monkey's. I know I'm harping here as a self-proclaimed "protector of the franchise," I guess you could call it that anyway. But the reality is you never had to even consider that with the 1/55, and yet now, this many years later, we do. Maybe as fans this is something we should come to expect out of our chogokins. Durability that lasts. Still have immense love for the DX, just sayin'.

This is what I was initially pointing out when I gave my first impressions on the figure. The leading edges of the wings and intake covers are extremely fragile, at least they appear that way to me. Of course this is a necessary byproduct of creating something so beautifully and perfectly designed. Those leading edges have to be thin to make them so sleek, but of course it impacts durability. I'm not surprised, if still a little disappointed. This doesn't really impact my overall impression of the figure. I still think it is the best currently out there, better by far than the 1/48 or 1/60 V2. But it does point up my earlier comment that we are living in era of toy making where the pursuit of perfection, which entails extreme detail and preening (some would say overweening) design, necessarily means compromises in durability.

I'm no photographer, so the poses/shots/poor lighting will have to do in place of the truly inspired pics on this MB, but here's a few I took tonight as well as some of my thoughts below. Maybe some of the hardcore photographers on here can take some of my setups and do a better job. So my impressions are this: hands down the best valkyrie made, ever. I know that's a tall order, but true. First let's get rid of some of what I feel are the misguided criticisms. Bandai could never design this from scratch because of the momentous leaps and bounds that were made by Takatoku's original design. Remember, Takatoku virtually created the Transformers market with this design, along with many others, and set the bar high when it comes to elegant but simple transformation. There's just no other way to put it: there's one and only one way to transform the VF-1J, and that's the design that Kawamori and later Takatoku with the Chunky Monkey originally envisioned it. To say that the DX VF-1J falls short as a masterpiece because it isn't revolutionary in its engineering misses the point entirely. Bandai is clearly building on the work of its predecessors, and it was late to the "masterpiece" game in the first place, only seriously entering the market after Yamato blew it wide open with the 1/48's, and so it could only do one thing, use Takatoku's basic design and improve on the slight improvements that Yamato had offered with its own 1/48. And we also have to remember the fact that Yamato only really "improved" the Takatoku design by making the first serious undertaking of the VF-1J as a high-end collectible. That was what was truly transformative about it. It wasn't about reenvisioning the design from the ground up, but taking a beloved toy and launching it in the 21st Century, all dolled up with CGI effects and engineering. The perfect dream toy, if you will. Of course the shortcomings of Yamato's 1/48 toys were legion. They were fragile to handle, would break at a mere glance, and had very little if any die cast. And while the jet was certainly elegant, the robot mode was clunky and awkward, had a long nosecone, awkward limbs, skinny arms, and ... those hands! And herein lies the true glory of this masterpiece! Look at how beautifully designed she is! The trick, as for any valkyrie, is to make the robot mode believable and anime accurate while at the same time retaining the elegance of the fighter mode. And the DX nails it. And that is no easy feat, believe me. How quickly people forget the shortcomings of the 1/48 in this regard. Of course the 1/60 V2's were extremely popular, and typified the so-called "perfect" valkyrie design for the time period. But again, Yamato has always seemed far more concerned with the "masterpiece" side of toy making, at least in my mind obsessing over the real-life version of the toy to the exclusion of the more charming characteristics of its anime counterpart - the hyperbolic poses, the thick, almost Popeye-esque arms and legs, the quirky rabbit-like ears that form a V at the top of its head. All of that was missing from Yamato's versions, both the 1/48 and the 1/60 V2's. Moreover, Bandai seems to have learned the lessons from its YF-19/VF-19 outing. It's left the plane looking sleek and elegant as ever, managing to incorporate the Popeye-esque arms and legs into a compact, yet elegant, fighter mode. Performing that real-life anime-magic trick where all of the anime characteristics of robot mode disappear in fighter mode, which retains its elegance and beauty. Unless I'm missing something, this basic fact of the design and sculpt of the DX seems to have been overlooked in previous posts. I'm only pointing it out because I think the DX VF-1J deserves high praise in this regard. And the "masterpiece"/high end collectible market, at least when it comes to valkyries, was never about redesigning the transformation, but only about making the best possible rendering of the toy in real life considering design, sculpt, fit and finish. Yamata's entrance into the market with the 1/48's, and continuing with the 1/60's, was only ever about this strategy in my mind, and Bandai's too. In that regard, Bandai hits it out of the park. With all of that said, it is not perfect. Despite the far superior fit and finish, the superior die cast and plastic, it still tends toward the fragile in certain areas. The leg fins (by design) break off, when it probably would have been a better move just to make them a little thicker, smaller, and therefore without the need for a fail-safe detachable hinge. The valkyrie is simply too big to handle, and the most obvious way to handle any VF-1 is by the legs, behind the wings, which puts your hands right over the fins, flopping them all around. The same is true with the tail fins. I almost broke one of them trying to fold them for the backpack, and I can see that being a problem in the future. And just generally, while it is certainly elegant to look at on the shelf, much of the plastic on the leading edges of the wings and intakes is extremely thin and not hardy at all. And the same goes for the ailerons (while a vast improvement over Yamato's, which almost always broke off the wing, I am still very nervous about handling them). I suppose this is just a natural byproduct of making a high-end collectible, where a "real-life" rendering is prized over sturdy durability as a toy. But still, it is a shortcoming in my mind, and places the DX VF-1J still firmly in that sphere of Yamato's valkyries which were so often criticized as being nothing more than display pieces. I still long for the 1/35, and hold out hope that one day we will get it. But for now, the DX VF-1J is clearly the champion. The mother of all valkyries if ever there was one. It will probably reign supreme for easily the next ten years, and see no serious challengers without a license in the pipeline for a competitor, which I don't see happening given Bandai's dominance in the market and its status as a flagship toy company in Japan, indeed the world. That leaves the 1/35. Until then, I will be rabidly collecting all of the permutations of the DX 1/48's I can get my hands on, and consider myself luck to do so.

Unfortunately those days are over. Even the bios of the GI Joe and Transformers toys went to great lengths to vividly capture the flaws and virtues of their characters. And truth be told, they were well written. The millennials could benefit from a little imaginative fun like that. They're more at the stage you were at at 9 years old. Proust?! WTF?

Dude I love all of them. I saw a GI Joe episode the other day and the ranting and raving of Cobra Commander was spot on. Hilarious! And they were so damn articulate for being an 80's cartoon. Must have impacted my vocabulary for sure. I was definitely impressed.

Is this a rerelease some thirty years later?! I passed on the opportunity to buy the original about a year ago and still kicking myself for it. Like they say on American Pickers, you don't regret what you buy, but what you don't buy.

Boss haul.

Those who live in glass houses probably shouldn't be putting Yo-Yo's behind glass bookcases either, but that's just my humble opinion.

Yo-Yo's! OMFG I'm dying laughing. Just had to call the EMT guys and they resuscitated on the spot. Now I owe the ambulance company on top of everything else. Thanks Yo-Yo's!

Just picked up my copy. It was the last one available in the store and I called to secure it literally minutes after it had been posted. Wow! My luck is just extraordinary at this point.

Love this. I will always love the 1/48ths, no matter how much they've been overtaken by modern technology and thinking re perfect realizations.

God damn! I love these pictures! I don't know what it is, the contrast with light and dark, drama, the snow outside (always a harbinger of anime). Give me more!

Awesome. I'm going to start a go fund me campaign to buy all the Macross valkyries I want to buy, and I am going to be totally up front and shameless about my intentions. Macross for me and no other 100% of the time. On second thought, I'm going to do something totally selfless and benevolent and start a go fund me campaign to buy all the Macross valkyries I want to see in a museum, call it the Macross Museum, and have everything from the eighties to the present day. Any and all members of the MM forums can contribute if they want. We'll have it in some deserted Midwestern city like the one I grew up in. That way it won't inflict any real cultural damage. Every contribution made will go toward buying another centerpiece in the collection. We'll charge admission fees of course to sustain the premises, utilities, rent etc. And the administrators of MM World can be the administrators of the Museum. What do you think?

http://blog.livedoor.jp/hacchaka/archives/52036391.html?fbclid=IwAR08QjZMkGfvmbOpcq2HfoeKZYCYUydLJOrEQFBhNj9h-jW5TTFiMfynMbA Blog with more images. Google translation is a bit of a parody though.

I really like the tampo printing and paint. SOOOO many valks botch the paint job. Slathered on too thick or too thin, too toy-like like a Yammie with no paint, or too model-like with overdone tampo prints. I don't know if this is just the original Kawamori design, but the balance is perfect on this one. It really shines through. The goldilocks of paint jobs.

A magnificent bird. And the comparison pics really show the shortcomings of the Yamato 1/48. Although it is near and dear to my heart as the one that kicked off this toy collecting madness back in 2003 (the Low Viz, which I got back graded an AFA 90 after it traveled in a tattered box all the way from Japan with the corners missing, lol, one of only two at that grade), developments in toy engineering and design over the last two decades are obvious. Bandai really knocked it out of the park. Credits to "Macross Ross" from FB.

Gotta admit I don't get the ThreeZero thing. I think they're great toys and I definitely admire them, just not enough to buy. They definitely fill a market niche with the whole post-apocalyptic thing, which they seem to specialize in. But their toys totally lack any metal. Plus they don't seem to be durable at all. They're slathered in paint. I used to be an amateur modeler who won a few competitions back in the day and I know that the kind of flat paint that they use can be prone to rubbing off. It seems to me that if you wanna be a player in the high end toy game, die cast is a must, and durability has to be a consideration. With all plastic and flat paint, it seems they aren't that though. One of the big complaints of Yamato/Arcadia is that they're just display pieces. Their too fragile to be real toys. Having never owned one, I could just be recklessly speculating here. Am I just totally off?