ewilen

$27 shipped for a 1/55 carded bootleg, anyone? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3165890242 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3164951334 Too rich for your blood, you say? How about $22? We have a winner! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=13668

You wouldn't have bought it anyway... Personally, I'm with Graham. The diecast in the 1/60's does very little for me, but it does make the toys difficult to handle.

Okay, I came late to the game but if you can tell me where to get a VF-1S strike, VF-1J Max or Millia, or VF-1D for $26, I'd gladly pay you a commission. Surely the earlier Yamato VF-1's took longer to drop to their current prices than the YF-1R has taken to drop to its current level. Anyway, the $80 MPC price tag is probably Toynami/HG highballing the price, knowing they'll still make a profit if they can sell it at $40. If a few people bite at $80, so much the better. Edit: It's already available for $70 + S/H! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3172393657

To get an idea of how big it will be, look at the pics of a 1/55 Gakken posed among various VF-1's, including an MPC and Chunky Monkey. Oh, yeah, here's the link: http://www.tmpforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7071

Guardian:

[crap, forgot the image] [Might as well give a link to the Toynami page which has links to the big pics: http://www.toynami.com/gallery/download/alpha-mpc.htm ]

Fighter:

The preorder page has pics, but here are the pics from toynami's site, which I've resized (to 30%) and compressed a bit. Battloid:

I can't say this is a burning issue for me. I suppose if someone clearly intended to solicit multiple offers, post the top offer, and solicit counteroffers, it would an auction and should go in the auction section. But I don't know if MW really wants to have people actively running auctions through it. Anything else is a gray area. "For sale" just means you want cash, not trade. It could work out to be sort of an auction if you say "or best offer" or "make me an offer" in your listing, but the assumption should be (and probably is) that the item will be sold once an acceptable offer is made. Obviously, if you get two offers within a short time of each other, you can pick the higher one. I would say that if you make an offer to someone, and they accept but later renege on the grounds that they've gotten a higher offer--even if no money has changed hands--it would be worth posting to the blacklist forum.

I hate the drawing too but that's irrelevant... Speaking as someone who didn't like the first pics of a painted Toynami Alpha, I've got to say this one looks pretty nice. With the exception of the cockpit, of course. I can't even begin to guess why they would have the opaque cockpit either for the preview or for the final version. Still, even if it turns out to have top-quality construction, I personally wouldn't pay $80 for a 1/55 Alpha. Not a big Mospeada fan (among other factors).

It's hard to say whether the VF-0 is a bad idea or not. I don't think that the money it nets or loses is going to affect Yamato's ability to make further toys--it's not like they have to build up capital in order to finance other toys. With the possible exception of the 1/1 helmets and the 1/60 monster, I doubt Yamato thinks of any of their toys as "expenses" which need to be subsidized by other, genuinely profitable toys. So as long as the VF-0 doesn't flop and send the company into bankruptcy, I wouldn't worry about it in that sense. I see the 1/100 VF-0 as serving four strategic purposes: Make money in its own right, or at least not lose too much money. Generate buzz and "synergy" with the M0 OAV to expand interest in future products beyond the existing hardcore collector base. Note: WITHOUT cannibalizing sales of future "high grade" products. Test the market to see if enough interest exists to justify more M0 toys. Test the market to see if the "cheap" format is a winner. I personally don't think I will want to buy the 1/100 VF-0 at full retail+import costs due to the scale and transformation method. I couldn't care less about diecast. Also, I'm less interested in "perfect transformation" per se than I am in transformation that represents the transformation method shown in the animation. That's why the 1/60 VF-1's leg-swap doesn't bother me--to my mind, it's a reasonable representation of the fact that the "real" VF-1's legs completely change their attachment point during transformation. But I dislike the leg/nose swap idea for the VF-0 because the "real thing" uses swing bars. But in spite of my personal opinion, I think the 1/100 VF-0 isn't a bad marketing idea since it seems likely to achieve the strategic purposes listed above.

All right, continuing off topic...I have a Raite AVphile 715, which was one of the famous region free players a while back. (I don't think it's available anymore, but essentially the same player may be available as a Yamakawa, Tokai, Monyka, etc.) It works great. You can choose any region, or you can set it as regionless. (I've read that some DVD's won't play on regionless players, so being able to change regions is conceivably useful as opposed to only being regionless.) My player also does both PAL and NTSC output. However, on the only Region 2 discs I own (Macross Plus Ultimate Edition from the UK), the video comes out slightly compressed vertically. This isn't a big deal, as I can adjust the vertical on my TV set. Perhaps other DVD players do the conversion more smoothly. Here are some useful links: Guide to region-free players and how to use them: http://www.regionfreedvd.net/players.html Guide to DVD players and recordable media compatibility, not oriented to region free but may have info in notes http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.php

It shows that whining is the universal language of Macross fans. Thanks for the link imode. http://www.excite.co.jp/world/url/ helps very slightly. I don't know how much I'd understand without your translations, but I was able to figure out 359-361. (Onna = woman, Onan is a biblical figure remembered for exactly one thing, will leave the rest to the reader.)

Dimensions of a 1/72 Valkyrie: Wing span 20.5 cm/8.1" Fighter length: 19.8 cm/7.8" Battroid height: 17.6 cm/6.9" The Bandai HCM's are 1/72 and manage a pretty good near-perfect transformation, albeit with swingbars. Here's the VF-1S Hikaru DYRL HCM. Posability is the same as a Chunky Monkey. I think with modern technology, a good 1/72 would be quite practical, at least using the 1/60-style leg transformation. Which I personally don't mind at all. Also, personal taste here, I much prefer strong plastics to metal, except in high-stress areas. Should keep the price down, improves the balance, and less subject to paint chipping.

Overtechnology is advanced technology derived from the ASS-1 (post-crash/pre-reconstruction SDF-1). In answer to the previous question, to my knowledge, the special rig is only shown in that one episode. GBP-1, for all its popularity, also only appears in one (different) episode, but gets a brief cameo in DYRL.

What are the URL's for those boards?

If you're thinking of buying a subititled VHS tape...don't. The only reason to get something on tape is if it simply isn't available on DVD. Even a cheap $30 no-name DVD player is much, much, much better than a VCR in terms of image quality.

I'd prefer that a consistent scale across Macross items be available, and since so much stuff has already come out in 1/60, I think that would be the best. But I personally wouldn't complain if it was suddenly all redone in 1/72, since I currently only own one 1/60 Yammie, and as newca said, 1/72 is a standard scale for model planes.

Back to having sigs turned off, and interestingly, it makes little difference in the number of posts that can fit on the screen. The reason: the user data on the left still stretch posts to a certain minimum vertical size. The sigs only increase the size if the post is beyond a certain length. Big sigs really only make a difference (for me) because they're visually jarring. It should be easy to skip over sigs as you read through a thead, but when the sigs have big/colored text, the eye tends to skip over the posts and hit the sigs.

That won't work, kids have little to none attention spans. As soon as they realise there's more somewhere else, they're out to go get them. A little misdirection/reverse psychology, then: put a collection of Playboy mags somewhere else, and VERY POINTEDLY forbid the kid to ever touch it. Also, force the kid to endure a one-hour lecture on Macross and Macross paraphernalia every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

I've temporarily turned sigs back on just to see how things are. Please don't take this the wrong way, but it's silly to have a signature that's in bigger type and which takes up more space than a typical post. It's like driving a Mini Cooper but adding a trailer to haul a billboard around because you need more bumper sticker space. Now, my sig is over 50 characters, so it's also over the limit. But (a) it provides some info that I think is actually useful and hopefully cuts down on the amount of "how do I?" threads, and (b) if the 50 character limit stays, I will edit it further to get it under the limit.

Just an idea: bribery/distraction. Give the kid his/her own Valk, or actively encourage interest in something else, like Dragonball, and get them toys for that. Idea 2: Send your collection to me for safekeeping. (I know someone would offer that suggestion eventually, might as well be me.)

Looks like the system is "grandfathering" existing signatures. That seems okay...attrition will probably handle the bulk of the work, leaving the powers that be to decide if they want to deal with egregious offenders. But is the new limit going a bit too far in the other direction? It seems that the limit is 50 characters in my control panel.

This has probably been said, but a 1:100 VF-0 will be kinda small, but not tiny. In fighter mode, it should be about 2" shorter than a 1/60 VF-1. I don't think there are stats for the actual VF-0 battroid height, but I'd estimate the toy will about about 16.5 cm tall including head lasers, or 1-3/4" shorter than the 1/60 VF-1 battroid including head lasers. I like it, but I don't think I'll be getting one at the retail price. Re: swing bars. Doesn't the "real" VF-0 have them? If so, why shouldn't the toy?

Agreed. I turned off sigs because of this. Makes using MW much smoother, but I'd prefer not to have to do it. I'd like it if sigs had a max font size no larger than "normal", or preferably "smal"l. And frankly, the fewer font options allowed for sigs, the better. And I'd limit the length to 300-400 characters--i.e., about three lines' worth.