jeniusornome

Looks good, but I’ll keep my Yamato one. I actually prefer the more generic color scheme.

So I managed to snag the one VF-31 I wanted - the 31C, Mirage’s sweet magenta ride - and I am seriously digging the looks of it in plane and gerwalk modes. I like the feel of the figure too; the only other DX I have is a v2 VF25 and while I really like that it is a little more awkward to transform and pose (trying to sandwich everything together to get the torso solid in particular, though once I get it all lined up right it seems solid enough), and feels a bit unbalanced (heavy legs, light torso). Anyways, battroid mode on the 31 feels off for me. I’ve checked videos and instructions and it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything wrong, but, is there some kind of trick to getting the whole thing to stay together and be able to stand up? There’s clips in the front where the cockpit collapses on top of itself, and the sort of hinged pegs in the back where you fold down the top of the plane / wings, but there’s so much hanging off of the back I either have to stand it awkwardly leaning forwards or put it up against the back of a shelf. Am I missing something that makes it so it can stand on its own?

The standalone super part set has stickers you can put on the sides of the boosters. Skull Squadron emblem in red, blue, black and green backgrounds, along with a UN Spacy Kite. I snagged a pair of sets off Mandarake for about 6k each. More than I’d like to have paid, but my 1D and brownie 1A look good with them. Plus, you know, strike cannon on the 1D.

@Sanity is Optional they look great together! Although this may not be a popular opinion with the VE-1 in there, I think Luca's 25 with the ghosts is the best of the lot.

!!! Those all look great together! Epic photo, TYVM @tekering! The 25G looks like a really close match to Max's blue. I passed one up just recently since I've got a 25A and YF-25 but now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have... Although I also like the contract the blue 29 provides. Hmm.

ty @borgified ! I wasn't sure if Alto's 29 or Mirage's 31 would be "red" enough to sit alongside Milia's 1J... they might, but now I'm thinking maybe they would just go onto my purple "ish" shelf instead. They were the two colors I was leaning towards anyways, though if anyone has additional side-by-sides I'd appreciate the time.

Wondering if any of you might be able to help me out with a purchase decision. I’m setting up three color theme shelves - red, blue and “purple ish” - and I want to add a YF-29 and a VF-31 to them. Possibly a 25 but I’d have to sell one I’ve already got to do that. But I’m not sure which colors will work alongside the two Arcadia ones I already have. Any chance someone might be able to post a picture of any of these? Doesn’t matter what modes they’re in, just trying to gauge whether the colors will work together or be too far off. Arcadia Milia and DX YF 29 (Alto) Arcadia Max and: DX VF 25g (Michel) or DX YF 29b (Rod) or DX VF 31j (Hayate) DX YF 29 Alto and DX VF 31c (Mirage)

@tekering love those photo booklets! What a neat find!

@Lolicon aha, tyvm for that. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong but couldn't find another way for it to go on there. Thanks @F360 I might check out YJ... although that Buyee link has a warning at the top that says Buyee has reviewed the item and it is prohibited for bidding, not sure what that's about...

I bought three. Digging the look and the heft, though it seems at the most angled my Super 1S has a tendency to rotate a bit - not enough tension to hold it entirely sideways. i feel like the adapter for fighter mode is set so the weight isn’t quite centered. Anyone who bought these new stands have one of Arcadia’s clear simple stands they’re looking to unload? one of these I mean: https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1065690534&ref=alist&lang=en looking for one for my 35th 1j.

@kkx I've had it happen before where it looks like the package is just sitting, having not even been picked up - then suddenly it shows up on my doorstep. Like if it isn't scanned in one place it takes a while to catch up, or something. I found punching the tracking number into the USPS website occasionally gets me updated information faster than Japan Post, if that helps. /shrug

I'd like to see a 1A/1D as their next release, along with a standalone set of VF-1 super parts. Outside of SDFM... did they get all of the Yamato molds? Wouldn't mind seeing some M+ releases from them - VF-11 and YF-21. Destroid reissues would be neat too. Are they working on anything new, or is all the new stuff going to be coming from Bandai at this point?

thanks @tekering that's super helpful! Is that the ver.3 MG RX-78? It looks good - I haven't build an RX-78 since the first once 20+ years ago. @Alto-23 yeah their scales are the same but the heights are different because the mecha heights are different. A PG Strike is about 30cm tall, vs. a 1/60 1J at 22cm or so. An MG of the Strike would probably be about the same height, though the scales would be mixed up, similar to how an HMR and 1/144 RG/HG kit would probably be. I like the idea of it all being consistent scale for a display, but I also have limited room to work with. A pair of PG Strike Gundams, their accompanying Skygraspers, and 1/60 VF-1s would be like... two whole shelves. But with smaller kits I could do the same thing and still have room on the shelf for a few others without it feeling too crowded. /shrug, I'll get around to actually putting stuff together one of these days. And actually, this reminds me - do any of you guys collect Frame Arms kits? They're "1/100" scale. I was looking at the lineup and thought that Genbu might make for a pretty good Nousjadel-ger substitute, and a Ji-dao with some booster packs attached could be a stand-in for a Queadlunn-rau. Didn't know if anyone had either to see how they'd look with HMRs. I've got a Rapier Zephyr and a Revenant Eye here I haven't put together yet but the Rapier's aesthetic is more "pointy sparkly gundam" and the revenant eye has a "one year war" kind of look to it, not sure either would look good alongside HMR.

Well, the HM Valks in 2010/2011 were around ¥6,000 SRP, and the 1J/1A HMR ones that were the equivalent (without super parts) were around ¥7,000 in 2016. TBH it seemed to be like HMR was a lot more expensive than that, but that's probably because the secondary market prices are so high, and also because 9 of the 12 HMR Valks have included extra accessories (armor, super parts) I didn't account for, so it actually tracks pretty well with expected price increases due to manufacturing costs. My overall impression of the line's pricing was incorrect, but there's also nothing to compare newer jets like the VF-4 and VF-2SS with in OHM. As I've admitted, my impression of HMR pricing was wrong. On the other hand, Yamato's Valks were ¥9,800 in summer 2012. Arcadia's first release after the 30th was fall of 2013, and was ¥16,800. That's a really steep increase for a little over a year's time. Maybe they are trying to recoup some of the costs for buying the molds, but those prices went up fast and they've stayed up since (because if people are buying it, why drop the price, right?). Bandai's DX "V1" VF-25s were around ¥12,000 in 2008, and the V2s around ¥14,000 in 2011. Slightly higher price for more complexity, increased manufacturing, yeah, that sounds reasonable. But the YF-29, also in 2011, was ¥17,000 and then the VF-31s rolled out 6 years later at ¥20,000. I don't doubt that manufacturing costs have increased over the years, but we are talking about a 70% increase from Yamato to Arcadia in one year, and a 60% increase for Bandai over 8 years. (looking at the timeline of pricing, though, now I wonder if the success of the YF-29 in 2011 informed both Bandai's future DX pricing and possibly Arcadia's as well - companies monitor the market for that sort of thing). ----- Anyways I've diverged the conversation from HMR more than enough, so let me contribute: "Escort Duty" - been re-working my limited display space and I had this idea for the more "unique" VF-1s. I have a VF-1A mass production off to the left of this, and a set of HM super / strike parts on the way to add to it, along with a dark blue trident plus stand. Putting either my HMR Super VF-1A on the other front position, or maybe a custom paint job one I want to do. Going to hang a starfield background behind it, which would be multi-purpose for me since I'd be able to put just about anything in front of it and have it fit. Also really dig the HMR VF-4, although I did just get a sweetheart of a deal on a Yamato VF-4 with some very minor damage and I'm waffling about whether I want to keep the HMR one now. I just love this design - I feel like if you asked any kid in the 80s to draw a picture of a "space fighter jet" it would look just like the VF-4. I <3 Max and Milia (or Miriya, if you prefer). I really, really hope KC gets around to doing them in their 1/12 line, would buy them in a second. I liked that the white on these was the DYRL white as used on the super VF-1A and not the bleach-white as used on the Hikaru 1J, I think it would have been too bright with the red and blue being the primary colors here. Trying to figure out what to display with them - I don't have a lot of room so I'm trying to mix and match from a couple of lines, in this case Gundam and Macross. I thought maybe an RG Strike & Strike Rouge with some added blue and red accents would make a nice pairing, and I think the kits are about the same height as the HMR VF-1. I could do the RG Skygrasper in Mirage's colors and put it in the middle, although the scale there would be a little off. Or maybe MG kits next to them and forget the Skygrasper part, not sure. Would be closer in "real" scale at least. Way back I had this idea that I could do a pair of PG kits, the Strike and Strike Rouge, all custom'ed up in Max and Milia's colors, same with the PG Skygraspers, and put them alongside the 1/60 Yamato/Arcadia Max/Milia VF-1Js, but I was a lot more ambitious about what I could do with my free time before I had kids. Still, I can dream.

Well, it was a rhetorical question - since they've now thrown two random releases into the lineup that looked like it was going to be a complete SDFM one, why not just go full crazy? One downside I've noticed while collecting Macross "toys" that are priced like "collectibles": If they were cranking out less articulated, less featured, less "perfect design so close to line art" figures and selling them for, say, ¥4,000 instead of ¥8,000+ they could probably knock out a whole line of toys for each series and there'd be a lot of happy completionist fans out there. But like it is now, when even the "affordable" line of figures has 2 or 3 limited releases a year that regularly go for $100+ when they hit secondary market, the bar for entry is so high, of course there isn't much demand for anything other than a recognizably popular hero mecha. To that end, I am surprised there hasn't been an HMR release of a tweaked HM VF-19S/kai. I never would have expected the VF-4, which has just a few seconds of screentime, to come before those. Or ever, honestly. Yamato's prices made the high end 1/60 and 1/48 a lot more accessible. I think Bandai's pricing on the earlier Hi-Metal line had to account for that. But then Arcadia thought they could make more money selling the same thing but with increased prices, and it worked, and so now everything is more expensive, and that means the less popular designs are even less likely to get a release. (TL;DR: I imagine the 2SS would have sold quite a bit more if it was priced at ¥7,000 like an HM release instead of ¥14,000 like it was. Too bad, too, because it is a stunner of a design, and I wonder if we'll ever see the 2JA now).

I'll throw a prediction in: more mecha from Macross II. Why not?

Ha! You'll be fine if you stick to one rule: Don't buy another one before you finish building what you've got. Personally, I found that buying too many at once would just lead to model building fatigue, and I'd wind up with half a dozen kits just sitting there in boxes for months on end. Remember, with Gunpla, the stuff is basically always in production, so you don't need to go and buy it right now for fear of missing out. There's no late-night preorder madness for Master Grade kits the way there is with, say, DX Macross stuff. Just think about it - that next kit you want? You can buy it six months from now without an obscene 300% markup! You can take your time with it. There's almost no comparison to Macross collecting.

@vlenhoff I'm surprised there hasn't been an HMR YF-19 yet. While I'd love to see the 21 as well, the 19 seems a shoe-in: they've already done the work for the Hi-Metal VF-19, so a couple tweaks to the design might be sufficient instead of redoing the whole thing.

Heh, I totally get that line of thought. Im debating between putting Alto’s next to my Hikaru 1S as a sort of “30th anniversary, then and now” kind of setup, or getting the Perceval since the only other Frontiers I have aren’t character-from-series either (25A and YF).

I get that the Monster would hang around shelves, since it's so big. If your display space is at a premium it'd be hard to put up somewhere. And the blue 2SS I can understand too - I don't think MII is very popular. The figure looks stunning, but I guess it's not enough to go on looks alone. I don't get why Messer's 1S is shelfwarming though. It's the only HMR 1S available for a reasonable price and it's got a good color scheme, I really like mine.

@tekering if ever there was a "G2" color scheme for a VF, Luca's would be a good contender for it. 30th anniversario VF-1 too I think. I noticed you've got the blue YF-29 on the end there - is that the only one of the 29 you picked up? How do you like it? Leaning towards Alto's myself but if I had to pick a runner up it'd be that one.

That's... a lot of Valkyries. What does one do with that many? Doesn't the display kind of... lose its luster when you've got dozens of them just stacked up like that?

thinking about picking one of these up. I saw on Scorched Earth's review that all of the other versions already had the fix for the gerwalk mode support piece in place, but it wasn't really clear as to whether any of the Alto reissues included it. Reading through the thread, it looks like the all of the Alto version reissues (30th anniversary sticker and the later ones) had the strengthened gerwalk mode support? And the later reissues were the ones which may or may not have an upside-down "SMS" on one of the shoulders? Just looking at the Mandarake listings and thinking if I buy one I want to make sure it has the fixed gerwalk part - don't really care one way or another about the upside-down shoulder text.

oho, my nerd senses are tingling. that's awesome! I hadn't seen it before. If it was out around the same time I bought this tank kit I'm bummed I missed it.

@tekering is that Kotobukiya's Type 92 Maser Tank kit? I've got one of those sitting here, I was looking for armor for a 1/144 Gundam urban combat diorama and it seemed a perfect fit. Haven't put it together yet. I've got the two 08th MS "ground war" kits since they're in same scale. I keep checking to see if other sci-fi / military stuff has been done in 1/144. I've got a Yukikaze kit in 1/144, and Kotobukiya also has the XFA-27 kit that would look good with it; there's even Hasegawa's 1/144 Ultra Hawk which would make a great shuttle for a couple of GMs to escort, but sci-fi tanks aren't very popular it seems, in any scale. HMR is closer to 1/90 or 1/100 though... something like this might look neat alongside a Monster: https://hlj.com/1-87-scale-type-66-anti-monster-maser-cannon-wavto-008