MacrossMania

10 hours ago, spacemanoeuvres said:

Here’s a review of jpfigures

Could not find a ton of info on them but the above is not promising. 

This review is EPIC!!!  Easily the best review I've ever seen.  There's nothing more satisfying than watching a pissed off toy collector drop F bombs all over the place.

3 hours ago, sh9000 said:

I went to the industry toy fair last year in NYC.  Got a special pass and talked to several folks there.  Really cool.  Bandai was one of them and we discussed all sorts of things.  Also spoke to the guys who created the arcade here.  Really cool.  Wanted one then and want it now.  

If you ever get a pass to an industry toy fair, I highly recommend going.  You get a peak of their upcoming releases for the new year.  No reveals as such.  All highly confidential (Hasbro had a walled off area you could only through with press passes!), and most of that is reserved for Asia, but still very cool.

So due to my clumsy American hands, my DX Chogokin masterpiece took a shelf dive this morning.  Actually more like a coffee table dive, but onto a hardwood floor.  Everything's fine though.  No scuffs, marks, or broken pieces.  Really speaks to the superior quality of this piece.

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:

1. integrated intake covers
2. integrated side covers between the back and chest.  The one on the DX 1/48 is definitely unsightly!
3. a locking mechanism for the neck
4. tougher head lasers.  Mine feel just a tad on the fragile side on the DX 1/48.
5. LED lights on the head, knees, wings and backpack
6. a locking mechanism for the backpack
7. detents on the wings and wing flaps (I have no problems with the wing flaps on my copy)
8. tougher tail fins and a locking mechanism/detent for the tail fins
9. shooting gunpods (with a robust spring!  Ah the 80's!  Bring them back!)
10. mechanism that allows you to choose between symmetrical movement of the wings and head lasers (somebody mentioned this in a previous post)
11. 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)
12. tougher leg fins with detents/locking mechanisms.

3 hours ago, nightmareB4macross said:

Not quite.

I already have plans to use funds for other purposes and divest in other interests. To restart another 1/48 collection is a lost cause in my book. 

The new DX is not really all that new when you break it down. It takes ideas from all it’s predecessors and just tweaks most of the dimensions giving it a new look but not really anything or real added value for me. In some cases it goes backwards.

But you know what they say “to each his own”. I found mine. Good luck on finding yours.

Already found it.  Thanks.

1 minute ago, nightmareB4macross said:

I’m still on board with these Yamato 1/48s. At the moment I have most everything ever released in this line an not to mention numerous wonderful customs that I know will never be made. The new DX is here and that’s cool and all, but I have no need to collect everything again and go through the madness once again. To me it’s just not worth it. All I need now is time to continue customizing. I mean what do you when you acquire 100+ Yamato 1/48s? You make what you want.

I have a DX on the way and might collect a few others in the same line  if more come but not to the extent of my first 1/48 adventures.

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?"

17 minutes ago, jenius said:

The king is dead... Long live the king!

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.

2 minutes ago, seti88 said:

Sounds like....

 

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.

Just now, ArchieNov said:

I don't know why people are so concerned with fast packs now when no one has any clear idea of how they'll be implemented yet. It's needless worrying at this point in time.

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

9 hours ago, HardlyNever said:

Isn't that a false equivalency, though?  The original takatokus where designed to be daily play toys for kids.  I don't remember the recommended age for them (did they even have one?) but I can guarantee that they were thinking somewhere in the 7-10 y/o range (minimum) for those toys.

The modern toys are specifically marketed to adult collectors.  Most boxes have 14 or 15 as the recommended age, but the marketing and price shoots even older than that.

Of course I would like a little bit more durability (or just QC, as this is probably more of a QC issue than durability), but all things have a price.

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.

Just now, jenius said:

It's the early adopter curse. Hopefully now that I've banged up my toy word will get out there to be a bit more gentle in that area and people won't follow in my footsteps. Anymoon.com saves valks lives! Maybe that's a bit dramatic...

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'.

31 minutes ago, jenius said:

Wow, eagle eyes guys! That actually is a hairline crack (coming up from the black on the lower left-side, your right) chest plate), I just investigated.... wonder if it happened from the transformation step where it gets pulled up?

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.

4 hours ago, Sildani said:

Comics weren’t far off. I remember a GI Joe comic where the Commander was talking about Major Bludd behind his back and said something like “That miserable bootlicker thinks that Proust rhymes with Faust!” And at 9 years old, I didn’t know what the hell that meant, so I went to the library and the encyclopedia. Awesome. 

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?

39 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

I rewatched some of He-man not too long ago and I must say Skeletor is one of my favorite villains ever, for being so hilariously petty.

8 minutes ago, Slave IV said:

Haha, gotta love that guy. He was great in the cartoon and original mini comics. 

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.

Just now, Slave IV said:

Lookey what I got!

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.

24 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Best part of the holidays is apparently coming home and picking up all the packages that arrived while I was away.

The YF-29 and SV-292 are from @mog_kupo

The M9 in the damaged box from Zen market (they just bubblewrapped the Tamashii shipper)

The M9 in the undamaged box from From Japan (they stuck the Tamashii shipper inside another box)

The VF-1 is from Amazon Japan, and was a steal for $173 and change shipped.

Boss haul.

4 minutes ago, jenius said:

Meanwhile, on the Yo-yo forums:

"OMFG, adults have entire collections of Transformers... some of them never even open them! LOLZ, idiots!"

Those who live in glass houses...

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.

20 hours ago, apptt4 said:

previous owner had it custom made to hold his THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR worth yo-yo collection. he chose his classics cars hobby over the yo-yo's, sold them and sold the case to me. IKEA detolfs either side.

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.  

On 12/30/2018 at 2:54 AM, tekering said:

The 1:48ths are back!  

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.

On 12/28/2018 at 2:38 AM, SuNDuK said:

My squad, and especially Ozma with his little customised Valk vaiting for Luka's 171 in next year

AAAAaand night time party!

 

 

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!

4 hours ago, sh9000 said:

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.