ewilen

Hm, I'd edit the previous post but seems there's a time limit.

Okay, so I think the place I must visit for games is Shosen Grande in Jimbocho. Akibahara seems like a good place in general (Yellow Submarine RPG shop for games, other hobby shops for mecha). Seems walkable from one neighborhood to the other--is it a nice walk?

Also, I've seen suggestions of Nakano Broadway in other threads, but it appears to be out of the way and I doubt it's worth an extra hour's round trip unless there's something else nearby of interest.

Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions.

Hope it's okay to post a specialized question.

I expect to be in Tokyo just long enough to get out and explore the city for a bit. (Did this once before and had a great time.) Would like to visit a toy shop or two but I find the only thing I'm really looking for is a non-weathered, standard-issue 1/60 Tomahawk. Am I likely to do any better at a store than ordering from the states--i.e., $140 or more shipped for tan, or $85 for olive drab? And where should I look?

Wouldn't want to spend too much time hunting around but I reckon getting to a shop and browsing would be fun in itself.

Thanks to the posters in this thread and especially armentage for giving me something to work with already.

EDIT: Actually there is another thing I'd like to find: a copy of the old Macross City Fight board game, or any of the old Dougram board games. Any places that might have old/used board games/wargames?

Hey, kanata, I haven't posted to MW in ages but I happened by and saw your thread. Just want to give you a shout out. Hope everything works out.

Yay, finally a new Macross toy I can probably justify spending the money and space on.

Hopefully the dollar will not have completely tanked by September, and I can get one for less than $100.

No, I don't plan on owning a 1/60 Monster...probably ever.

Would love to see what Yamato could do with some of the other enemy mecha besides the Q-Rau in 1/60. Wouldn't it be cool to see the Glaug and Regult's cockpits done in detail?

Welcome back to everyone, and thanks to Shawn and the other staff for their work.

I don't come here very often these days but it's good to be able to drop by and know MW is still around.

Aha! I forgot that one had the city, and I was thrown off by the way the carriers are (un)mounted. Looks pretty nice that way.

Hey, Noyhauser, thanks for the welcome! I've bene off in RPG-land, but I was drawn back by the pheremones released by the 1/60 VF-0S.

Okay, so where did this thing come from? Who made it?

Ebay Auction

Well, this is interesting to come back to.

I'll skip the doll, but if the quality on the 1/100's is decent, I'd consider buying one even at retail just to have a better 1/100 than the old chunky-monkey version.

Better still if they do a SDF:Macross (TV) Max 1A.

If they make destroids or Zentradi mecha in scale, so much the better. But I'm betting Toynami doesn't really know how to make stuff that isn't based on existing toys. Thus these are scaled-up banpresos just as the MPCs were scaled-up HCMs.

Positive feedback for eBay seller mikec100uk. I won a Miria 3-piece figure set from him and it arrived safely from the UK to California in a week. In the interest of full disclosure: slight denting in one corner of the box. Not something I care about but if you're fussy about that sort of thing you might want to ask about extra packaging.

Hey, guys, still alive. And AgentONE is indeed a nice guy. I can say that now because his cover's already been blown.

Actually, with MZero over and toy releases down to a trickle (especially since I'm not a massive 1/48 freak), plus going "cold turkey" during a couple trips, it was easy to get lured away by other interests...not to mention work.

I really appreciate all the flattering stuff y'all said about me, though. More, more!

(Also: I read a bit of the "nice" M7 thread--some interesting stuff there.)

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soooooooo..... how about that matsu?

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PM coming your way...

Hey, guys, still alive. And AgentONE is indeed a nice guy. I can say that now because his cover's already been blown.

Actually, with MZero over and toy releases down to a trickle (especially since I'm not a massive 1/48 freak), plus going "cold turkey" during a couple trips, it was easy to get lured away by other interests...not to mention work.

I really appreciate all the flattering stuff y'all said about me, though. More, more!

(Also: I read a bit of the "nice" M7 thread--some interesting stuff there.)

Talking slightly out of my ass here but I recently got renter's insurance and in the course of discussing it with my agent, I seem to recall being told that

a) This type of insurance generally covers value as opposed to purchase cost.

b) For an additional payment, (some? all?) insurance companies will give you a special type of coverage where you give them a list beforehand of your valuables/collectibles, including value (which they probably sign off on). The obvious benefit of this is that you get everything in black and white before you ever have to make a claim but I remember being told that items on "the list" aren't subject to a deductible.

I decided the extra cost wasn't worth it for me but it might make sense for the hard-core among us, especially if you also have some other stuff in the house like jewelry.

Saw both books at Kinokuniya book store in Japantown in San Francisco the other day.

The Miyatake book is indeed meh, unless you read Japanese (in which case, who knows, maybe there are some great insights and recollections). About the only thing that interested me were the pictures of the Zentradi mecha from Macross Plus. Also some stuff from M7 and the video games, like the Konig Monster. But everything else (or virtually everything) is already in Perfect Memory.

The Tenjin book is indeed very nice to look at but I didn't bite for the price.

Am I correct that only episodes 1-26 have aired and they're just cycling now?

Does anyone know when they'll continue with the rest of the series? Will they show the movie?

As long as we're engaged in wishful thinking, consider that Bandai could eventually just buy Takara for whatever reason. Not motivated by a desire to consolidate the Macross properties, surely, but that would be a side effect.

Thanks, Ranger565.

Well, the dust has settled and I won the item. Now, Mr. sidearmsalpha, who generally seems like a decent chap based on his MW postings--all I can say is, if he really wanted a second Q-Rau at a net ~$75, why didn't he take the auction? Or else, why doesn't he just order from this BIN listing?

So again, I think what I'm going to have to do to keep from getting plinked by "probers", "bid nibblers", "freelance shills" (not to mention real shills) is to always put my bid in at the last minute. Not an outrageous bid as implied by Ranger565, merely exactly what I'm willing to pay for the item. And akabob provides a reminder of another good reason for doing so.

Erm, some people seem to be confused. I'm not complaining about being sniped.

I'll save any further comment until after the auction is over.

What if he wanted two of them, or wanted two and hoped to save on shipping, or something???

If he wants two, he's welcome to them...

So this just shows that what I should have done is put in a $40 bid (or do nothing) and then snipe my max at the last minute. That way nobody could make an intermediate bid without definitely intending to buy the item.

That's what I usually do, but I got lazy.

The guy already has the high bid on a Q-Rau here.

So why did he bid me up over here?

And a MWer to boot. Sigh.

Isn't that the 1/5700 matchbox min-SDF-1 (non-transforming)?

Or while smashing the Stealth he can say "Feah dis guy" (pointing to self). The quip for Yukikaze is too obvious...

I think there's also a red one, and the same series included an SDF-1 and an Orgroid (from Orguss).

All the Converters are based on the cheapest Takatoku converting toys, the ones that nobody really wants any more, and are at least semi-legal in the sense that Select has some kind of relationship with Mark which is a Takatoku brand or something like that. It's possible though that they technically violate the design copyrights.

It hasn't? That was a pretty good series, at times.

Now, I'm wondering, why do they use nerve impulse sensors instead of what I remember described in Starship Troopers (the book)--where the suit has pressure sensors to "follow" your body movements?

I like the 1/60's but aside from lack of perfect transformation, you might want to be aware of the reduced posability relative to 1/48's, especially the arms. Drifand (a member here) has an article at Toyboxdx explaining how to modify the arms but I haven't tried it personally. The legs have a weird mechanism for swivelling (though far better than the 1/55's) which entails twisting them at the mid-calves instead of the knees as on the 1/48's.

Other quirks: personally, I find getting the chest plate to lock down correctly in battroid is very frustrating, but also not entirely necessary. Posing the battroid can be a little tricky, too, unlike the 1/48 which pretty much stands in any pose you put it in.

AFAIK Yamato stopped producing 1/60 Valks a good while ago, but the Red & Blue Queadluun Rau toys are also in 1/60 and one might reasonably speculate that if Yamato makes any destroids or battlepods, 1/60 would be a likely scale. There isn't even the hint of a rumor along these lines, though.

Nice. General question about spray booths: what's left over after the air passes through the filter? Does the exhaust still contain stuff that can mark property and annoy neighbors?