davidwhangchoi

On 10/1/2025 at 4:20 PM, mikeszekely said:

I'm not going to judge the MPG line based on a repaint of a decade-plus old MP... I mean, with the old MP line dead where else does it go?  And with SS86 and Missing Link Soundwaves hitting in 2026 I don't blame Takara packing Soundwave into every line while he's fresh on people's minds.

I will, however, judge MPG based on their original molds.  Granted, so far the only one I've picked up was Super Ginrai, and he was rather underwhelming.  He was, in my opinion, a premium price for a toy that could have been in Generations if they dumped some of the accessories and chrome, and he suffered from a number of tolerance issues (the Super head liked to pop loose, the truck panels on the legs wouldn't stay tabbed in, too much wiggle in between ratchet clicks, etc).  But these days you haven't really Ginrai-ed until you God Ginrai, so now I also picked up MPG Godbomber.

My first impressions aren't too bad.  He's a lighter figure, but you kind of expect that on a figure with a largely hollow torso who breaks down into components that have to be supported by another toy's joints.  His joint tolerances seem better, too, and whether that's actually from Takara paying more attention and tightening him up or simply because the joints don't have to work as hard to support the weight, who can say.  The colors are pretty on-point (his pelvis could maybe stand to be a little darker).

Cartoon accuracy does seem to be a little less pressing in MPG than the original MP line, though.  His proportions are definitely a bit more heroic, with more of a tapered waist, higher wings, and massive forearms that put the fins closer to his shoulders than his elbows.  But perhaps the oddest choice is how is shoulder cannon sits.  There's a black part with a 5mm port attached to the top of his torso.  The instructions would have you fold it back, then the 5mm peg on the cannon is on an elaborate hinge system to angle the peg so it's pointing forward, allowing it to plug into the black piece.  There's even a support piece that folds out from the front of the cannon to help brace it.  But the thing is, there's a 5mm port on to the top of his back you could use without all the extra hinges on the cannon or the black part on his torso.

I guess that segues into accessories.  Well, you've got the aforementioned cannon, which is the only thing I think Godbomber really needs.  The missile can be removed, but it's not spring-loaded or anything.  Takara also gives you some more of the blast effect parts that came with Super Ginrai, little unarticulated slugs for the Headmaster Juniors, a trailer adapter, two stand adapters, and a big ol' sword because of that one time in that one episode.

At first I thought Godbomber's head might be a ball joint, because he can't look down much but he's got fantastic upward tilt and good sideways tilt in addition to swiveling, but closer inspection reveals a rivet swivel and separate hinges for sideways and upward tilt.  His shoulders swivel on a ratchet and they ratchet nearly 90 degrees laterally; make sure you're using the actual shoulder joint and not the transformation joint.  He's also got some butterfly hinges that bring his shoulders foreward 90 degrees.  He's got bicep swivels above his elbows, which bend just under 90 degrees, then another swivel below the elbow.  His wrists swivel, and his hands can bend backward.  His thumbs have a hinge at the base for pinching.  His other fingers are pinned at the base and mid-knuckle, with the index fingers being separate from the other fingers.  His waist can swivel 45 degrees to the left or right, but that's good enough for most poses.  His hip skirts move so his hips can ratchet about 90 degrees forward, just under 90 degrees laterally, and about 45 degrees backward.  His thighs swivel, and his knees ratchet a little more than 90 degrees.  No toe tilts, but his ankles pivot nearly 90 degrees on ratchets.

If you mount his shoulder cannon the official way, it can tilt down a bit or back so that it's straight up in the air, though you'll likely need to fold the support back in and you'll expose another handle if you bend it back too far.  If you just plugged it into the port on his back it can't tilt down, but it can still tilt up about 45 degrees.  The blast effects can plug into the guns on his forearms, as well as the blue details on the left side of his chest.  Godbomber can also hold the sword by plugging a tab on the handle into a slot on fingers.  His hands are too small to really close around the handle, though.

The transformation for Godbomber's not bad!  They didn't totally try to avoid partsforming like the Legends toy (which left it with needlessly complicated hinges to move the chest without disconnecting it, but they also didn't design him to totally come apart then get pieced back together like the G1 toy.  Instead, the front of his torso splits from the back half, taking his arms, head, and wings with it.  The crotch opens, allowing his hips to slide forward, then his legs come up and over his crotch and tab together.  Some flaps fold out of his back, and the unpainted, unchromed gray bits fold and tuck down so that tabs on them are pointing toward what will become the back of the vehicle.  Meanwhile, on the other part, the head folds in, the wings move out of the way, and the shoulders drop.  Things need to turn so that inside of the shoulder joint is now facing outside and the arms can swing and tab together.  Joints in the wings tuck into the spaces his shoulder joints were occupying, then they fold upward.  This bit uses some tabs to plug into his shins on the other part, then panels swing out from the sides of his legs to fill in the sides of the vehicle, tabbing into his bumper and the unpainted gray flaps.  The fins on the arms can tilt inward, giving you the clearance to plug the cannon into the black part.  For this mode, the cannon's peg is folded up so it goes straight down into the black part, but it seems like now would have been a better time to use those hinges to position the cannon so that the fins wouldn't have been in the way in the first place.

Aside from having to tilt the fins in to give the cannon room, I don't have any complaints about Godbomber's alt mode.  The mechanical detail on the inside of the shoulder joint is cartoon accurate, and a blue panel rotates up from the leg panels to help fill in the area around Godbomber's hands.  The proportions are about what you'd expect, and the whole thing holds together pretty solidly once everything is tabbed together right.

Godbomber's wings can fold down, and the boosters on them can rotate 180 degrees.  This allows you to plug the effect parts into them for a flying trailer mode.

Alt mode is also where most of the other accessories we haven't talked about come into play.  For example, the front opens to reveal and nicely-painted interior.  The Headmaster Junior slugs can sit inside, but here's where things get weird.  There are little slots at the bottom of the brown-painted seats, and tabs on the bases of the Juniors.  The tabs are on their front sides, so they can plug into the slots in the seats but they're facing backward.

Another alt mode accessory is the trailer adapter.  See, Godbomber's bumper but has a bit that flips out with a peg on the underside.  But there isn't clearance under Godbomber for Ginrai's legs, so you can plug the adapter into the trailer port on Ginrai and it adds a new port behind his feet, so he can tow Godbomber.

I'd expect that most people who bought Godbomber bought MPG Super Ginrai, not MP non-Super Ginrai, though.  Super Ginrai's trailer already has a port that can fold out from the rear, allowing Godbomer to attach without any adapter needed.

Of course, most people who bought Godbomber weren't doing it for the double trailer, they were doing it to form God Ginrai.  Sadly, this is where things kind of fall apart for me.  First, Godbomber needs to be disassembled, because this time he's back to totally partsforming.  In fact, my first complaint is that there are actually more parts than before.  See, you remember how I was just saying that Godbomber's forearms seemed to big?  Well, you have to open them up, and flip around Godbomber's hands to reveal another set of slightly larger hands.  Bigger forearms and bigger hands make God Ginrai's arms look a little small, so red parts are removed from inside Godbomber's waist to peg into his Ginrai's shoudlers, making them also look bigger... from some angles.  From other angles now they're horribly hollow, and to add insult to injury they don't stay pegged in particularly well.  The forearms don't fare much better, eschewing the Combiner Wars-style sliding connector on Godbomber for a 5mm peg into Ginrai's forearms.  Which brings me to my second big complaint, one of Godbomber's forearms was misassembled.  It had no bearing on Godbomber's robot or alt modes, but the flap with the peg was installed backward, so I had to take part the arm (five screws) and turn it around before I was able to connect it to Ginrai at all.  Godbomber's legs side off his hips, again, Combiner Wars-style.  The toe folds out, the thigh folds in, and the red detail on Godbomber's shins have to fold out, spin 180, and fold back in the reveal the connectors for Ginrai's feet.

The front of Godbomber's torso splits again, so the pelvis detatches, which seems kind of unnecessary since it reattaches to the same part, just by folding the hips back, lifting the hip skirts, and plugging the skirts into Godbomber's waist.  That whole contraption will fit, loosely, onto Ginrai's back, with tabs on the trailer hitch plugging into slots under Godbomber's neck to help secure it into place.  Finally, Godbomber's back and butt slide over Ginrai's cab and tab into two places on each side... IF you have Ginrai's cab seated exactly right.  If it's off even a little Godbomber won't fit over properly and can't tab into place.

Aside from the new fists (which are articulated exactly the same as the smaller Godbomber fists), all of God Ginrai's joints are the same as his Super Ginrai ones and he has the same articulation as before.  The cannon plugs into ports where the top sides of the trailer folded up onto his back, using the same folded-in configuration as Godbomber's alt mode.  You can also fold out a handle from the cannon and have God Ginrai hold it in his hands using a slots that plug into the fingers, just like the sword (which, despite being held in larger hands, is still too big to really close the fingers around).  And he does look pretty good... assuming you can keep him together.  Again, I had the head popping up from the cab, the shoulder armor popping off, and the truck panels not staying folded against his legs.  Plus, there are joints that extend Ginrai's shoulders to outward a bit for God Ginrai mode that help make him look proportional with all the extra kibble, but using those joints made his shoulders kind of droopy.

On it's own, I kind of like MPG Godbomber.  I think it's one of the better Godbomber toys around, with decent articulation and all-around solid robot and alt modes.  But again, most people want Godbomer to complete God Ginrai.  Putting together God Ginrai was frustrating, and keeping him together is nearly as frustrating.  To be fair, a lot of the issues are still issues with Super Ginrai; poor tolerances, and the need to have little Ginrai's knees bend just right to line up his legs just so to seat him properly in Super mode.  But some of it is still on Godbomber.  He commands a premium price because he comes with accessories I don't actually want or need, plus a few things like the hinges in his cannon mount and the fact that you have to open is over-sized forearms to fold in his hands and fold out slightly larger hands when one pair of hands for both Godbomber and God Ginrai would have sufficed are over-engineered in ways that do nothing except inflate the parts count and price.

I think, if for some reason Godbomber is like your favorite character and you really want a good toy of him and don't care about Ginrai or combinations, then yeah, MPG Godbomber is probably the best Godbomber toy ever released.  Go pick one up!  But I don't otherwise recommend him... as an accessory for Ginrai he's just ok, but the real issue is that Super Ginrai isn't good enough to recommend in the first place.  Which, I suppose, is a really long-winded way of saying I agree with @lechuck— MPG does feel subpar.

@mikeszekely You know what really was disappointing with MP God Ginrai(Power Master Prime)?

They had an opportunity to make him as the artwork on the original box with the cab folded in the chest recessed to perfectly line up in the housing of the trailer. Instead, it's sticks out like the crappy g1 toy.

i want a power master prime! 

18 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Up on AE, go one no fuss.

https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=97550

HLJ seems to be having web issues though, it's listed on the main page, but the link is dead.  Seems that they added all of the Bandai products to the front page, but none of the individual item pages are ready.

Edit: Working now:

https://www.hlj.com/dx-chogokin-vf-17s-nightmare-stealth-valkyrie-gamlin-kizaki-s-banc692672

lol hlj limit is 1 per customer... i'm not sure who wants 2.

BBTS is $299... i won't criticize BBTS for this,  perhaps that is the msrp price for the US that is set by Bandai,

someone must be smoking rocks or out of touch setting that MSRP 

18 hours ago, Graham said:

For further comparison of the VF-17S vs the VF-171, here's the 'detall-up' VF-17 lineart showing full panel lines and other details.

IIRC, these pics were first seen in the "Macross 7 Animation Materials" book, published in 1995. 

Credit to macross2.net for the pic, saves me having to scan the page from my book. 😅

Interestingly, despite their simplified transformation and limited articulation, the old Bandai 1/65 scale VF-17D/S toys from the 90s actually feature most of the panel lines from the detail-up lineart.

There is so much detail difference and proportional difference between the VF-17 and the VF-171. You just cannot use VF-171 legs and most other parts of a VF-171 and call it a VF-17......sigh.

Being a huge VF-17 fan, the more I look at the Bandai DX photos, the more depressed I get.

Thanks @Graham

this is illustration is the cleanest image of the VF-17. esp. the underside of fighter, seeing how wide legs could be stored underneath...  

@PointBlankSniper @Chronocidal

Images of the VF-17 and VF-171 from the same video that claims the legs are the same.  I can't understand Japanese so you'll have to re-confirm if you can understand native Japanese  or if it's possible it was misunderstood (as i can't confirm it one way or the other with the link you provided).

Anyhow, the scale comparison in the video displays the 17 and 171 vall side by side and i found a video just for the 17 and screen grabbed further images.
 

5 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

Think it was this one. He credited master file and some other publication.

 

Thanks @PointBlankSniper, really appreciate the link. i remember watching this youtube channel and may have posted another one of the channels video on here in the past.

3 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

What's at hand here is not a matter of how it's depicted in animation. It's that Kawamori or some supplementary magazine or some other product blurb invented some lore and set the stage for Bandai to be lazy here.

we're digressing, the whole point is what it looks like in the anime. 

 I was responding just to one point of your comment to Chronocidal.

I agree with some of your points but I wanted to debunk just one specific point.

You brought up a point of the 171 and 17 have the same leg sizes and it's the CG  vs. M7 art style the reason the proportions look different.  I was responding that it isn't the reason the 171 looks thinner than the vf-17 by comparison of a CG VF-1 compared with M7 and SDF-1 TV/DYRL Macross depicts the VF-1 consistently, CG or not. Kawamori at the helm of all these shows he's going to make sure the VF-1 are proportionately the same CG or not. So the 171 being done in CG is not a great reason for the difference in leg size between the 171 and 17. 

 if you can link me to the source of the material that says the 171 and 17 legs are identical in size, I'd appreciate it. (i'd like to read up and crappy General Galaxy designs)

but yes, I agree with you, Bandai sucks with this one.   

On 9/25/2025 at 9:55 PM, PointBlankSniper said:

To put it differently, if 171 was drawn in M7 style, it would be just as chonky as 17. 

I haven't looked up the 171 lore so i don't have a dispute with you there,

but comparing the CG valks found in Frontier/Delta vs. M7, I'm going to call B.S. on this specific point. 

the VF-1 in Frontier and Delta that is done in CG looks exactly the same vs. M7,  specially, the legs of the valk between Frontier, Delta and M7 are drawn identically.

If that's the case in point I would think the vf-1 would be more chonky or see a difference between M7 and the later CG models.

for reference:

• M7 Ep. 14
• MacF Ep.1 
• Delta Ep.3 

What's with these collabs? 

Mattel isn't even Hasbro.  How bout JEM Arcee? 

5 hours ago, Mog said:

Don’t put that evil on us!

Especially when there’s a perfectly promising TV style prototype just collecting dust somewhere.

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I think the topic here is much more about the proportions of the jet itself than the individual parts.  For all of the changes between them, the YF-19 and VF-19 are still fundamentally the same aircraft design, with the same layout and overall proportions of components relative to each other.

That really can't be said about the 17 and 171, because their proportions are really nothing alike in battroid mode.  Obviously moving to CG animation changed the magical proportion shifts present in Macross 7, but that didn't stop Yamato from making a massively chonky brute of a VF-17, and getting it to transform into a solid fighter mode.

Bandai made an accurate VF-171, sure.  But it looks nothing like what the VF-17 ever has, in any medium.

They may as well be trying to upsell an F-18C as a Super Hornet.  The designs are at least that different.

100%

2 hours ago, nightmareB4macross said:

Well said. And so very true.

I think I found the original sketch used to develop this new DX. Not much really changed.

Thanks for nothing Bandai.

ahahaha, that drawing...

This site is the best 

9 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Which, funny enough, I think I would have been more on-board with?   They could have marketed it under the Macross 30 game license, since it included a bunch of alternate color 171s I would have loved.

On that note though, this might give us the red Millia 17S I always wanted, but Yamato never did.  I'll definitely bite on that one, if it happens.

All things considered though, I might still grab one or two of these down the road.  They won't replace the Yammies, but I'll be very curious to see how it sells, and whether it winds up in the Amazon bargain bin (where it really belongs). They'll stay in fighter forever, but I can't say the design is terrible in that mode anyhow.

At the very least it'll be a nice source of spare parts to repair more of my 171 junk pile.

yes, i will wait for Amazon clearance for this one... 

Bandai with Frontier and Delta series had good original toys designs that were created together alongside the new show from ground up to market. Good or bad, those designs were original as they were created with the anime.

-designing toys retroactively for past anime, Bandai steals the majority of the designs improvements of the VF-19 and VF-1 off Arcadia's engineering revisions.

-(19's sweep wings, everything off the VF-1 ver. 2 ) VF-0D's hi-metals. Bandai seems decent at copying and making it a bit better.

-the Dx YF-21 didn't really have a revision to steal from and came out a mixed bag.  I guarantee Arcadia, if they are still alive and had a budget, would do a much better revision of the YF-21.   

M7 is pretty much looks like a Redeco line up. TF generation 2 toys.

Minor alterations to the 19 to make a fire valk.

and the laziest Redeco, slap on a new head and some arms on a 171. WTF Bandai... this is a frontier valk. At least the isamu YF-19 was a closer cousin to the VF-19.

the 171 is not even close to a VF- 17.

Bandai should make a DX SDF-1 out of the Macross Quarter

5 hours ago, MKT said:

Some new promo materials from Pose+ on the Legioss (Translated with Google Translate):
 

 

In their original language:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

What's disappointing about the 1/28 scale is with all this talk about Robotech/Mospeada lore with the included sword for the dream episode.

There is not one container of "protoculture energy" canister attachment to insert.  We just see the openings. they don't have any place for it but we got a dumb sword... 

The coolest part of the show was the heist of the energy cells via balloons during yellow's concert.

I want some balloon attachments and energy cans to trade with Jonathan Wolf.

8 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I took a week off to play BF6 the week after its released, lol.

 

 

i had a friend who was so drawn in by the beta he, didn't come out of his room the entire weekend. He said it was amazing. 

Like the Isamu YF-29 Durandal Custom,

they should've marketed this as a 171 in M7  Diamond Force custom color. 

I'm glad i ended up buying one of those high priced Yamato 17D that never went on sale from sabrina_skimpy from China. 

1 minute ago, Chronocidal said:

"Holding up" doesn't do anything to fix the fundamental flaws in the engineering of this design.  The legs are still one misguided transformation away from shattering, unless they've completely redesigned the mechanism, and I saw no change with that in the renewal.

i wonder if the shoulder triangles will crumble 

38 minutes ago, treatment said:

from https://x.com/simsim5479/status/1971020441360937452

 

web-translated:

 

lol

3 hours ago, lechuck said:

Some insight on the Toyrise Legioss Omega – interview with the people involved (Shinji Aramaki) creating it. Page three has the juicy bits for Mospeada fans.

https://hobby.dengeki.com/reviews/2739360/

Quote

This story begins before I joined the production of the anime "Genesis Climber MOSPEADA." I was around 21 or 22 years old, and I dropped out of university in Okayama and moved to Tokyo for the first time, hoping to work in animation. By chance, I ended up doing outsourced work for Takara Tomy (then Takara). One of my jobs was the "Micro Change Series," the toys that inspired the now-world-famous "Transformers." These were transforming toys like "Camera Robot" and "Cassette Robot." I would go to Takara Tomy's (then Takara) headquarters once or twice a week, bring in B4-sized design drawings, and hold meetings with the people in charge to discuss them. Although I was an external designer, I was able to hear about the toy industry at the time, see prototypes, and experience the actual process of toy commercialization, which was a valuable experience for me.

very interesting. 

Camera Robot and Cassette Robot...  robot detailing of Soundwave, Rumble and Reflector on top of Mospeada.

20 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

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In conjunction with the "PREMIUM BANDAI FESTIVAL 2025," a "CLUB TAMASHII MEMBERS Priority Sales" of popular items will be held! Priority sales will be available on a first-come, first-served basis for Sky Stage and above, and a lottery sale will be open to all members.

Anyone getting Jesus Yamato killer? 

This thing is so powerful it will destroy Freedom Gundam Concept 2.0

METAL BUILD GN ARMS TYPE-E

P-Bandai USA $650

https://p-bandai.com/us/item/F2801947001