MKT

I hope Bandai does more cash grab by revisiting the 31A Kairos mold.

^^^ Sorry to hear the metal hook at the hip joint broke, but glad to hear it didn't affect its articulation. I'm just thankful Bandai had the sense to make the hip housings to be metal, otherwise if they were plastic there would be many a broken or sheared housings due to the force needed to rotate them. When I got to the head, I was impressed by how the head spike & lasers can be moved and hidden out of the way in Fighter, and even more impressed how the surrounding covers & flaps cleanly hide them (In the HM, the spike and lasers have to be removed & stored away elsewhere). For the 1/60, I've only ever handled the Blazer valks with their head lasers sticking out in Fighter like any other valk, and so now I believe the Fire Valk is the only valk that's able to hide all its multiple head pointy bits in Fighter. The way it does so is pretty elegant and is yet another reason why Macross transformation design, translated properly into toys is just so satisfactory. Oh and the blue cockpit canopy looks much better than the yellow tinted one of Arcadia's.

Great set-up as well.

Awesome!! As much as the Detolf's were by far the most value vs display volume, the display possibilities expand so much more with wide shelves.

Unboxed the VF-19 Kai, so just some impressions: First thing I noticed after pulling out the trays, is that the schematic drawing sheet is now silver instead of black. Coupled with the high gloss surface, the white lines want to blend into the background and are near illegible. Tried my best to capture on pic, but there's just so much glare obscuring parts of it lol. On to the valk itself, I messed about with it in its default Battroid mode for a while, before taking it straight to Fighter to see how it compares against its predecessor the HM Fire Valk that came out years ago. 1. The forearms are on metal sliders, just like Arcadia's. When sliding them back and forth, I noticed the left forearm is much looser than the right. This possibly afflicts all copies as I'm seeing lots of comments on this in FB groups. Fortunately, it doesn't become an issue in any modes, because there is stopper mechanism to hold the forearm in place when retracted for Battroid / Gerwalk, and when fully extended for Fighter the forearms do get held in place by the shin cutouts & shield. 2. The diecast on diecast articulation points are really tight. For example, the double-jointed elbows takes more force than necessary to bend them. However, by far the most frustrating aspect of this are the hip joints. These are CRAZY tight, as in, they are tight on the level of Sentinel's first issue Legioss ETA's shoulders & knees. Trying to rotate the hips back & forth independent of moving the swing bar is akin to.. trying to tear a raw chicken drumstick off its thigh, to give a crude example. On my copy, the right hip is even tighter than the left, and when transforming it to Fighter, I could not rotate the final 5% to its appropriate position. As that piece forms a chunk of the lerx which would be quite out of alignment if I left it alone, I had to open up the hip to see what was going on inside (didn't take pics though). Luckily the assembly of the hip housing around the diecast joint is a simple affair, with the hip housing being 2 halves held by a single screw, and just lubricating the diecast joint inside immediately solved the stiffness and unlocked the final 5% movement range I needed. I'll likely open up the other hip later to lubricate it so I won't get so much grief next time. 3. Opening the hip housing made me realize the housing is actually diecast (nice!), and I could not tell that before as the paint match between it and the surrounding plastics is near, if not 100%. During the course of transformation, I found the whole back / spine piece is also diecast, just like Arcadia's (DX is still plastic), and also excellently paint matched. As far as I could tell, all the reds between various parts matches well to each other to a single shade of red, unlike the old HM where there are noticeably about 3 different shades. 4. Nevertheless, the reds & yellows of the HMR and HM are very close down to the matte finish, that it's little doubt Bandai intended it to be such so the HM Soundbooster can be nicely paired to the HMR valk. I'll bring it back to Battroid again later and mount the old Soundbooster to it. 5. Other than the hips, transformation to Fighter is a pleasure and just like the HMR VF-0 mold, everything comes together so precisely that it feels even tighter than its larger 1/60 sibling in this mode, exactly like the HMR VF-0 mold vs Arcadia's. Just rock solid Fighter mode that makes handling & swooshing great fun. The old HM on other hand, doesn't hold a candle in engineering & tolerances and really shows its age now. Still, I do prefer the HM's sculpt in Fighter for reasons @Chronocidal have well explained in an earlier post. 6. Unlike the HMR VF-0, which just feels ever so slightly out of tolerance, the landing gear doors here are very nicely flushed when closed. About the only fault I see so far in Fighter is the action of opening the rear bay doors - the doors pop off entirely too easily from their hinges, and it happened on both sides for me. They can snap back in, but it is a minor irritation. The gears themselves plug in more easily than the VF-0 due to the shallower depth, but what's up with the rear gears having comically thick posts? Ultimately, I won't be displaying this in Fighter (the HM will do that) and will have it in Battroid, where the sculpt truly shines. Thigh fillers ala the 1/60 actually fits the semi-partsforming nature of the HMR better, so the lack of it here is a small bummer. But all in, I'm quite happy with the HMR Fire Valk, and hope Bandai produces more Mac 7 valks in this line.

I'm just a casual listener to their songs. I think this is possibly the first time replacing an iconic lead singer with someone of opposite gender is being done, but it is a smart move. Right off the bat it can deflect any direct comparisons that will inevitably be made and move on to a new era for better or worse. She seems to cover the old songs pretty decently, but their new song The Emptiness Machine is where she shines with the new vocals.

HMR VF-19 Kai. Box is even more vibrant in-person.

Well, Linkin Park has a new vocalist: The whole concert performance: https://youtu.be/Lk0EPHZ59cE?si=Tw4Tahm1BEQK9c88

Assuming the VF-1S reissues do get released in Dec 2024 without further delays, VF-5000 a full year later is very plausible to me.

Hmm I guess the wheels are still too low at the shoulders. And the face sculpt looks totally off lol. But at this price, I’ll likely overlook it. Quite a surprise, because from the first rendered images couple of years ago, they stated the targeted estimated price was USD 220-250. I wonder if HG gave some significant discount on licensing fee or something.

I really want them to stay afloat and support them by picking up re-issues, but I already have multiple copies of their items. As it is, I have both the VF-1S Super Strikes first issues sitting in the closet, whilst having multiple older Yammies of nearly same items in display & also in storage lol. I'm just thinking how much longer they are gonna milk this v2 mold. Granted it is a very good mold, but getting long in the tooth in one or two areas. A v3 would be best, but I don't mind them just updating only leg articulation - a v2.5 ala what KC did to add the sideway thigh joints and then it would be golden.

Yeah their 'own factory' thing now seems suspect, given the miniscule output we are seeing. I suspect KC is now only 2 people running it - Cyrus and the admin lady who also runs the mini-physical store they have in HK. With this size, this actually immediately calls to mind Ramen Toys / Calibre Wings, which are also only Noel & his assistant. There are also constant delays with their products, but the difference is, with Noel he posts continual updates and is pretty much transparent on what he is working on all the time. For a casual collector, it may seem there's little news from the company, but the information & updates are all there on their social media channel which may be a bit of a slog to go through if one hasn't touched base in a while, but it is there.

I don't have the model kit to compare, but by itself I actually don't mind what's already going on with this mold. Sure, there are some parts that are more of a challenge to move into their proper position, and some parts take quite a few attempts to tab & fit properly (for eg, tabbing both intakes to one another to form the chest). Ultimately, they can be done and that is what matters unlike the gappy areas we have with the 31AX mold.

Even though they have never cancelled anything & eventually delivered their products after massive, world-changing delays, I think no one will believe their targeted release dates anymore if they solicit for new orders on anything.

I've only one 1/60 VF-4 being displayed for years (the same one in pics elsewhere), and it has never been brought out of Fighter. It comes together so well in that form, that I have irrational fear if I transform out of it, it may never go back as tightly in Fighter.

Excellent pics @Froy!

@graphic revolt's toy room is one place I don't mind being shut in for days.

Enjoying all the pics posted here, thanks everyone for posting them. The paint app doesn't look shoddy at all and pretty decent. Had to smile a bit on the tech spec reader bit, nice callback to when these were actually promoted as cool gimmicks. I remember in an early review of the Valkyrie Factory VF-1, the reviewer pointed out this feature, so looks like it carried over here.

+1... + many 1s! Love the modded designs from Macross R.

No tampo printing at all? 0? Is it really made by Bandai?

Love the Moto-slaves too How's the built quality with regards to transformation actually? I haven't got to transforming any yet, so can't attest to that part lol. But they don't appear to break easily and the listings of them that pop up over the long period when I was hunting for my set never indicated broken examples - at most missing pieces. I've never seen the Galvion Circus-1 before, so that is cool.

Reminds me of an old shoot-em-ups receiving big booster & weapon upgrades!

Hmm how to do a re-issue but make the tiniest of changes to not call it a re-issue? On first impression, the base white looks very similar to Threezero’s weathering edition, except this doesn’t have any weathering. I do wonder why Bandai chose this shade of white..