MKT

Some pics from TN2024:

Well ok, this thing is still alive.

I remember I had some trouble with the hands too in Fighter. All I did was lift the whole arm out to inspect the shoulders, rotate it slightly to test articulation and tucking them back in. It is really one of those annoying things needing a lot of eyeball estimation to align the arms and hands for the panels around it to close properly.

Pretty diverse collection there @Tking22.

"How do you like my snot-inspired dress?"

I have lots of soft spot for these. It has its flaws, but they are cool. It's also a timely reminder for myself not to judge modern toys so critically, if we can feel the heart and effort put into them.

I actually don't mind the metallic paint, much in the same way as what they did for Dana. It's a bit of nice creative flair, something like how folks customize model kits - for eg, I'm seeing a lot of the HG Fire Valk being done up in glossy, metallic deep reds and they look great. But I do get why some want it to as close to the show as possible.

I guess lip-syncing is sort of half accepted now depending on circumstances, but I think having a different person behind the vocals is an entirely different thing. Incidentally, I was watching some videos how advanced lip-sync technology has become, that now in many live concerts it very difficult to spot it. I suppose one's voice changes over time due to age, so to always be suspicious when there are comments on how 'amazing (insert singer's name) sound almost exactly the same as back in the days'..

It will suck in some ways if the white turns out to be the same as previous. I imagine many buyers would have gone in expecting it to be a different shade exactly as per pics.

No lip sync, no fake voice this time lol.

Agreed with everything said here. Given how the situation is already playing out with KC on the rest of current POs, it just comes down to the FOMO aspect that makes someone like me give some thought to the Kickstarter. And if we think about it, the whole campaign really plays to FOMO - if it's just one or two figures, it's easier to pass, but a whole lot of yummy ones?? Where do I sign up? But committing large sums of $$ purely due to FOMO is never wise, unless we can upfront fully accept the risks with it. To me if we are already worrying over the amounts we have tied up with KC POs, is it worth to sweat over this much bigger amount for years to come?

Doesn't matter if one gets the VF-2SS first or the 19 Kai. Because whichever you get first, the other will come next. Engineering wise they are pretty different. The 19 Kai in Fighter lock very solidly all around, but a lot of the VF-2SS is just held together by joint strength in Fighter. It's not really a big issue for a naked walk since the toy is small enough / not heavy to overcome the joints, but once you put on the packs, then handling in Fighter is like a grenade and it is very, very easy to nudge stuff out of position. I'd still edge towards to the VF-2SS primarily for its design uniqueness. But don't wait too long to get the 19 Kai, since it's still below retail now. The HMR 0D which was also below retail for some time has now finally turned the corner & price has started increasing.

Nothing seem pokier than the 31AX lol. Love that design, but quite hard to swoosh around.

I love that new Ishtar art. At the same time, Mikimoto's art have sort of changed recently. The colors seem.. less layered? As if lost some of its watercolor quality.

KC has launched the Kickstarter campaign. Unexpectedly, the Gluu-ger & various other Zentraedi figures are part of this. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kitzconcept/kitzconcept-the-series-of-macross

I agree, it makes for a nice display in Battroid due to the dynamic posing possibilities and paint. The wonky panel lining design on the wings are also not so visible in this mode. The weight really does feel nice whenever handling it, though technically Yamcadia has shown it has no bearing on how good a toy can be. I'm impressed that ThreeZero has managed the weight well by having stuff lock well with good tolerances on all the stress joints handling said weight. Parts that don't bear much stress, such as the backpack and canopy shield can be finicky to handle, but mostly do go into position without issues. Put another way, the final mode in each form is pretty good, just that the process of getting there is rather more involved than needs to be. I guess disassembling the shoulder is not so hard after all, but I'm reluctant to permanently mod anything during the warranty period. We never know if another issue pops up down the road, that requires unit to be sent back to ThreeZero, and they can certainly point to the modded shoulders and invalidate the whole warranty if they want to.

I didn't count, but it feels like this year has one of the most Macross releases in a long time for HMR + DX combined. Just that perhaps a few of them is a bit of a snooze..

Over the past few days I slowly transformed the 1J into Gerwalk and then Fighter. I didn't want to rush it and resist muscle memory from years of handling HMRs, Yamcadias & DXs because although the transformation scheme is broadly the same, it's the little nuances that ThreeZero did that makes handling feel different. I think some of us saw the side fillers details look pretty ugly, so I first took them off to see how Battroid did without them. Basically ThreeZero's sculpt is such that the chest is made rather thick, so when flowing to the lower torso the hips are now positioned further forward relative to the wings at the back. This increased clearance then allow the hips to swing much further forward before the intakes start hitting the wings. However because of the thick chest, not unexpectedly without the fillers there's a huge see-through cavity. With other VF-1s the fillers were always optional to me as they never look particularly bad without them, but here having the fillers removed undoubtedly makes the toy look worse than without them, bad filler details non-withstanding. Additionally, there was mention that the outer chest plate doesn't lock down without the fillers and this is true. The fillers do hold the chest plate down, and without them, the chest plate sort of sits in place mostly by gravity, and easily jostled during handling. These above factors almost push the use of fillers to be almost mandatory. I just wished ThreeZero made them smaller & more inset into the chest so they are not so visible while also doing the work of covering up the cavity. In this regard, I think the DX does the best job here in terms of side filler aesthetics. The waist joint that I was quite happy with in Battroid turned out to be an additional handling complication once untabbed from the nosecone for transformation. Basically all the freeplay at that rail joint now makes it more involving to line up the intakes to the underside of the chest plate, and the weight of the legs makes it all the more easy for the crotch T-bar to detach from the rail. Essentially it is not unlike the issue some have with the DX’s detaching legs although the reasons are different. Going into Gerwalk, the lack of ankle twist is felt even more keenly here. The good thing is there are no problems achieving that deep Gerwalk stance that KC and even HMR struggle with, but the feet angle will be look a bit strange without that twist. On the upside, the intakes lock very solidly onto the chest plate; handling it in this mode with all that weight is as solid as a DX. I feel the backpack could be better engineered though. There’s really no complains about it once the stabilisers are in proper position in Fighter – they are very symmetrical, with hardly any gap at the stabiliser root. But they are quite fiddly when trying to fold them over one another, there’s quite a bit of freeplay at the sliding channels so the stabilisers always want to move crooked. The entire backpack does sit quite slanted in Battroid and doesn’t look upright enough. It doesn’t have the collapsing backplate feature the Yamcadia or DX has to allow the backpack to be more upright. Neither does the HMR, yet somehow the angle here is steeper. We don’t really notice it so much in Battroid since it’s usually out of view, but becomes quite egregious in Gerwalk because the backpack looks mis-transformed with that huge sloping angle. Another nitpick is that the backpack flap (if not wrong acts as a blast shield) does not have a stopper when unfurled open, so one has to eyeball the appropriate position. In Fighter mode, the toy feels rock solid in-hand, and in fact the heft, weight distribution, and nice paint makes it feel like what @Chronocidal mentioned as a nice diecast jet, even if the construction methods are different. The way the legs tab onto the backplate is similar to the DX, but the fit is tighter here compared to the latter. Arms also suffer the same design issue as DX, they don’t plug in securely, and mostly hang in position squeezed by the legs. Having the gun installed actually make the arms more secure in place because the gun is the only thing that ties the arms as a unit. If ThreeZero makes Super Pack for this mold, then it is likely going to suffer the same issues as the DX with arms and legs hanging loose with the added weight, unless the packs somehow have additional engineering to hold everything together. Some have commented one side intake cover is really tight, and mine is no different. The cover is so firmly wedged in that the included plastic tool felt like it could break while prying it out, so I used a metal tool instead. Once the covers are off, they reveal nicely sculpted & painted intakes which look to be lifted directly off the DX. The cockpit canopy is lovely here. The clarity of the transparency is good, and the frame fits very nicely against the sill with absolutely no gaps, yet not too snug that makes it difficult to open. Hikaru / Rick sitting inside is sharply molded and painted. Overall silhouette of Fighter looks more like an upsized HMR though, in the shape of how the canopy flows to the back, and the width of Fighter towards the rear when viewed from the top. Now, by far the BIGGEST problem when getting to Fighter is the shoulder sliders. I don’t know what ThreeZero were thinking releasing a product with this insane level of tightness, in my books bordering on defect because from their Battroid / Gerwalk position, it is near impossible to get the arms to its appropriate position in Fighter. This basically explains it: The nice, beefy solid sleeve-over-rail design that we saw in the early videos turned out to be a mega HUGE bane. Short of disassembling the whole backplate and various other stuff to separate the slider components for modding, there’s really nothing that can be done to ease the tightness. The sleeve wraps around the rail so snugly that lubricating the rail and then forcing the sleeve to move over it hardly does anything to ease the tightness. There was moment when I was just sitting and staring at it for a good while trying to come up with solutions to move the arms up between the legs. In the end, I just used a solid tool, butted it against the flap area adjacent to the sleeve and brute-forced slid both arms into place. Once the arms are set properly between the legs, the bigger problem now is sliding them out! Fortunately, I managed to use another metal tool to crowbar them out at again the shoulder flaps. The thing is, this may not be a long-term repeatable solution as the flaps might give way with all the wrangling sliding them back and forth, even if they look very robust. This singular factor is giving me pause on the whole thing, because it detrimentally affects transformation in and out of Fighter. I’m not sure if this affect all copies, as not all of us have reported it. Also, not a single of the many video reviews I’ve seen pointed it out, though I now remember the very first reviewer video posted on these boards likely has the same issue. If we recall, we were debating on that huge gap between the arms and head in Fighter, so in hindsight it is likely the reviewer suffered the same stiff shoulders but somehow didn’t mention it. Lastly, the landing gears also have their eccentricities. That mystery flap at front that hangs down just ahead of the.. head, turned out to be some kinda helper flap to nudge the gear out of the bay. Once the gear is out of the bay though, the flap doesn’t want to stay back in & flops down at the slightest movement of the toy. This is a curious design because the front gear is always the easiest to fish out by pulling at the tow bar thingy, yet the rear gears have none of these and still need to be fished out using the plastic tool.. The rear gears have camber articulation similar to the DX, but the rearmost doors do not swing widely out of the gears’ way as per DX. Fortunately, when the gears butt up against the door, it looks like the wheels are at just about the right perpendicular angle to the ground. Very unexpectedly, the gears are made of plastic, and I thought metal would be common sense given how much weight the gears have to support, and even more so if the Super Packs come to fruition. Unfortunately, I can’t really test the sturdiness of Fighter with wheels down, because… A whole gear assembly is missing. That side was actually the first bay I opened, and for a brief moment I thought I was grossly mistaken in it having integrated gears and instead thinking that the gears are plugged in ala HMR. I’ll be contacting my local vendor to explore solutions. That cute warranty card that ThreeZero included with suddenly doesn’t look so much from a bygone era now. In finality, this mold made me realise that the DX have much more in common with the Yamcadia than I have ever given consideration of (did T-Rex also design the DX? I can’t recall.). So fixated was I with the differences of DX over Yamcadia, that Threezero’s actually have far more distinction than either of them, and it really shows when handling it. The toy really seems to be a highlight of what Threezero is best at: articulation, paint, sturdiness, whilst showing some inexperience in the transformation aspects. I was quite set on ordering Roy’s 1S, but that was before I got it into Fighter. Now, I’m not so sure. The shoulders are a major deal breaker. Will Threezero fix the shoulders going into Roy's 1S, or will they leave them as it is?

I posted in the ThreeZero thread how I felt pretty positive about it in its default Battroid mode. I’ve just taken it to Fighter, & in the process the appeal of this toy has diminished rather considerably. Will make a follow up post in that thread in a day or two, but as quick summary my experiences have been pretty much the same as @Chronocidal’s, including that overly tight shoulder slider joint. So it may not be worth to stretch $$$ to obtain this..

I’d get one, just cause I like the Vf-27 a lot & it’ll be nice to have it in matte finishing.

I get the impression that the original Tornado packs weren’t very popular.. I wonder if this is Bandai’s new strategy for WWM DXs? Release everything as a set. In this case, there’s quite a few sets left: VF-25F Armored set. VF-25S Super set. VF-25G Tornado set. RVF-25 Super + Ghost set. VF-171 Nightmare Plus Armored set.

The normal 1J arrived. Gotta say receiving it this many months after release somehow cooled off my mix of curiosity & tampered excitement for it, so I let it sit in the shipping package for a couple days before unboxing. I've only messed with in Battroid so far, & it did take quite some time to see how it stacks up in this mode against the established competitors. Seeing & reading all the reviews so far gave me a very good idea of what to expect, but time and again as always, there's nothing like having it in-hand. Lifting it out of the blister, this thing has some serious heft. I didn't calculate, but I bet this 1J is proportionately heavier than the DX. Coupled with the excellent paint finish throughout, I can see how on just the initial qualitative feel of this toy feel alone it is so much more impressive than others of its size - namely the Yamcadia & definitely over the KCs. I won't really go into what others have already said, which for the most part I agree with, but mostly noting what stands out to me or stuff that are outside expectations. Firstly, the built is pretty solid, the joints of key limbs are sufficiently tight and move pretty fluidly throughout their movement range,that feels more like a DX. It doesn't feel at all fragile while testing the articulation and putting it through various poses. What I really like is how the waist twist is so much more accessible than the DX (which I never bothered to use). Although this feature was figured out quite some time ago when ThreeZero first unveiled the 3D animation footage, it's still pretty satisfying to see this ingenious design in action. I also like how the hands are on a dumbbell peg system, with the balls going into both the hands and the wrist. This allow a greater range of motion for the hands to get more expressive poses. I think this has been done on other action figures before, but it is the first time for a valk, and done well in my opinion. I do remember another toy I have having this system (can't remember which though), but it was fiddly because every time I try to pop off the hands, the whole peg came off at the wrist instead at one end and then I have to subsequently try to wrangle the hands off the other end of peg. No such shenanigans here with this toy, so ThreeZero definitely got the tolerances right with the appropriate tightness on both ends of the dumbbell peg. It's little details like this that endears. We know that the knees and ankles are on slider extensions that are activated using the hidden buttons. What I think hasn't been covered sufficiently is that the sliders actually have 2-click positions - half and fully extended. Due to the way the mechanism works, we by default will always pull them out to fully extend, but if we slowly push the knees or ankles back in while releasing the button, the middle position will click in place. On the ankles, half extension to me look best for normal A-stance poses. What is surprising, is that the ankles are not on ball joints as with virtually all other modern VF-1 toys. Though the feet obviously open/close plus move back and forth, the ankles are on sideway rockers only. So even though there's that nice movable inner flap to allow more sideways movement of the ankle, the lack of ankle twist point limits the fine tuning needed for the more dynamic poses, so the twist is quite sorely missed. Thus, a step forward on the ankle flaps but a step back on the ankle articulation. The knees also proved to be an eccentricity in design and turned out to be a bit of bugbear for me. For the HMRs, Yamcadias & DX-es, we are used to twisting the knee at will and the kneecap if in closed position automatically adjusts out of the way. On the ThreeZero, the kneecap in closed position physically blocks the knee from twisting, so we have to first open the kneecap. Even after opening that, the knee still won't twist and will only do so after the knee is also extended. Visually there doesn't appear to be anything blocking the knee twist in an un-extended position, but it looks to be that just a 10-20% extension of the knee finally allows the twist. This is definitely a bizarre design, complicates stuff more than necessary, introduces stress point when handling this area, and having the knee extended with kneecaps opened for twist do break the sculpt in certain ways depending on the pose to be achieved. ThreeZero reinventing this area that doesn't need reinventing really does make me realise how much I've taken for granted some of the established designs of the other erstwhile mentioned brands. If we extend both ankles and knees halfway as what ThreeZero probably intended, it stands about the same height as the Yamcadia. It absolutely does not feel smaller than the latter; any differences in dimensions in Battroid is really down to sculpt differences than outright scaling and I'll be perfectly happy to mix in ThreeZero's among the Yamcadia 1/60's for display. So far, the positives quite outweigh the negatives in Battroid. Pic to end this post:

I stand corrected on the cockpit issue. More reason why the Kairos is awesome compared to the Siegfrieds.

Needs re-issue and hopefully get rid of the frosted cockpit in the process.