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Guilty as charged. I was away from the hobby for a very long time because of school, work, finances, etc. and missed out. I checked-in periodically at Macross World, The Valkyrie Exchange, etc., but I didn't allow myself to purchase anything. My life could (would?) have been much more fulfilled during that stretch of time if I'd embraced my passions. I'm tired of missing out so now I pretty much buy 2 of everything just to experience it. Even "crappy" figures can be fulfilling/fun. I try to avoid reselling even the POC figures just because my (dis)satisfaction with a figure may change over time, but having a second figure kept MISB helps ensure that I at least break even if I decide to sell.

I'm jealous because I missed out on nearly 2 decades of Macross goodness thanks to being a dirt-poor grad student and post-doc (x2). In fact, money was so tight at one point that I broke down and sold a ton of MISB Macross figures to BBTS in 2004 for just over $5,000 to help me eat and pay rent. Those who bought the Haslab Unicron will understand the volume of material I'm talking about when I say that I shipped BBTS 18 Unicron-sized boxes. They made so much money off me. If you bought from BBTS back then, you're welcome! Sweet Jesus, I was sitting on a goldmine. F... student loans, car payments, hot women with expensive taste and questionable morals, and a permanently immature brain. But mad respect to BBTS because they really helped me when I needed it. I digress. I LOVE the SV-262! I splurged hard one night about 2 years ago while floating on Jack and Coke and bought every last DX available on Mandarake and Jungle Entertainment. I ended up with half a dozen 262s and love them to bits. The first transformation was nerve-wracking but I didn't mind. I love everything about it.

Exactly. I'm a OG TF fan as well. [Oof! I collect both. My poor wallet.] Those endless panels and parts make for a nightmarish user experience. I'm looking at you, Fans Toys Powerglide: I have loads of TFs that I don't even bother pulling out of the box just because their transformation is an exercise in frustration and I value my mental health. The ridiculous parts count gets the job done, but please dear God, let's not go down this path with the DX line. I don't necessarily like when concessions are made with my bots, but I'm firmly in the camp of making an allowance within reason, especially if I can understand conceptually why particular design choices were made. Thanks for pulling TFs into the discussion.

? I've paid for two. I was late to the DX party and am tired of paying the late tax so I pick up 2 of each now.

Uh uh. We'll have to agree to disagree. There's no way a set of sliding collar plates (the way I'm interpreting your use of the term) would be sufficient to close the distance significantly. We don't have a sense of absolute scale here, but I'm guessing from the images you'll gain maybe 2-3 mm, even assuming that would be a viable option given that we can't see beneath the surface "plane" and appreciate what compensatory changes would be required underneath. But there I go again. I said I'd table further contributions until I had the figure in hand. Pfft! Anyway, I appreciate the engagement and company. Thanks!

Many thanks! Unfortunately, I'll need to handle the 1/100 and compare one to the other directly in order to add anything of value to our discussion. I thought about firing up photoshop on my other laptop and deconstructing your combined image: one valk, it doesn't matter which, needs to be scaled and aligned at various common points (e.g., the tips of the nose, the tips of exhaust rudders, wing tips, etc.) . But even doing that wouldn't be sufficient to understand design choices. I'll keep checking this thread, but I'm leaning towards tabling this discussion until I can make a proper comparison. But good discussion. Thanks!

I think this is the famed explode-y mode that looks impressive even when it burns up.

Hahaha! I swear, it took me a full 5 seconds to appreciate what exactly I was peeping. But importantly, thank you: this provides good (albeit still incomplete) insight into how the backpack connects to the body proper. This angle alone makes it clear just how daunting it would be to add a functional and value-adding (value-preserving?) accordion mechanism to reduce the gap that currently exists between the backpack and body. That said, this tight shot is unfortunate and perhaps misleading because its angle and depth of field obscure important contextual clues related to size and proportion.

Please upload/tag some pix of what you're talking about. I want to see your point, but I don't own the 1/100. "...completely ignored every source for what the YF-21 looks like, and straight-up redesigned portions of it:" absent a compelling and overwhelming practical/financial reason, that's just not how the toy design process works from a simple R&D point of view because reinventing the wheel is just too darn expensive. In my experience, the norm today is to 3D scan an existing figure to resize and tweak. If Bandai did exactly that, then it would make sense that they would be handcuffed later into making certain accompanying and compensating design choices.

I don't own the 1/100...but that scale is stupid-tiny and can take certain liberties because of the fact that it's a model and is expected to be handled as such. Regardless of what my wife says, size matters. 🙂

Re: transformation cheats: designers have to choose their battles carefully. An ankle swivel? Easy decision all-day long. Retracting nose for the best reimagination ever? Wish I could comment on that but I don't own it. Retracting backpack: you have no good reason to trust the voice of a stranger (me) on the internet...but I run a fabrication business on the side (currently a money pit because I'm still in R&D) and all of the telescoping backpack solutions I've come up with thus far are the definition of "bad idea" because of X, Y, and Z. It's difficult to explain all of my imaginations in words alone and I'm not prepared to model anything, not even crudely, because there's no ROI, so maybe I'll end my contribution to this sub-thread here. I may change my mind, though.

You're absolutely right. It's a pickle for designers because there aren't any silver bullets at this scale. Go larger - to what size exactly, IDK - and you suddenly have all sorts of elegant options where panels and tabs can be sized practically. Where a figure can be "lineart accurate" *and* able to support its own weight in all three modes.

I'm not 100% satisfied with its current design - although I'm stoked it's coming my way - but telescoping or "accordioning" the backpack towards the figure's midline in order to provide full articulation in the shoulders and arms isn't a viable solution here. Not at this price point using these materials. And especially not for a figure in this scale. Not that I'm slavish to the animation, but your proposed solution is not in the line art and it would be a remarkable reimagination of the valk's transformation. More importantly, no one - not even "cheaper, faster" 3rd and 4th party - would attempt that engineering in this scale. Look closely at the figure's dorsal surface in battroid mode and just imagine what would be required to collapse the backpack enough to free the shoulders and arms. Then imagine how many additional hinges/plates that feat would require. Then imagine how those additional moving parts would impact figure stability in fighter and guardian mode. It would be even beyond the nightmare experience of transforming the 171. My take, but someone convince me otherwise.

I’m betting the gap was a design choice for play value: close the gap -> introduce steric hindrance on the shoulders and arms -> “OMG!? There’s no poseability in the arms! WTF Bandaid?!?”

Hahaha! Never, never, NEVER sell the preciouses! :-)

I’m such a hypocrite. I forgot I wrote this. What did I do the other night? Ordered one from Luna. 🙂

I’m giving them a shot for the first time. I’ll let you hose me once. Once. Hoping they come through. Their uniquely-protracted order window is curious.

Mine arrived yesterday - on my 50th birthday, no less. Transforming it was an exercise in patience with pieces popping off left and right. The metal hinge assembly on what becomes the backpack in battroid mode was *incredibly* tight on my copy. I’m glad I had Scorched Earth’s transformation guide on YouTube to warn me what I was getting into. I’ll be surprised if I transform it even one more time.

How about Boeing? This tech could be the solution for when planes jettison "door plugs." If only they had hired Yang. 😉

Got the same notification, but I only knew to look for it because of your post. Many thanks! I went with DHL just to be done with it. With shipping rates being what they are, I think 2024 will be my year to shop for sale/clearance items rather than pre-ordering. I might even try to cancel one or two pre-orders. [I've had a Gigapower Dinobot pre-ordered since 2022. TFSource says the figure should be released around March. We'll see.]

It was a lot of work, but it's been wonderful having everything reside locally on a server. It was a good solution for us because with my AppleTV purchases over the years, we currently have somewhere north of 5000 titles (when you include TV and movies together). My only complaint is the cost: the initial server was thousands and thousands of dollars, and thankfully, we've had to upgrade only once due to storage limits. We've had to replace only one drive thus far, but because of how she arranged additional drives to serve as backups (don't ask me, I don't know the details), we didn't lose any data. I wouldn't recommend following in our footsteps because it's a slippery slope in terms of always having to buy additional storage space. I buy a lot less media than I used to, but with the release of 4K titles we're chewing through disk space even faster than before. I'm not looking forward to the cost of the next upgrade.

I wanted to but I just learned that with my turning 50 in a couple days, the gov’t is allowing me to play catch up on my Roth IRA by authorizing an additional $7,500 in contributions over the typical annual cap. I gotta max out to make up for the decades of neglect.

Amen!

A sexy beast below MSRP? Don't blame you a bit.

That’s my strategy at the moment. I tend to get up in the middle of the night to work a bit. I’ll play the refresh game and see if I get lucky.