masarujasu

That's the 1986 European catalog.

I think there is a little truth to this - yes, the first edition was made from the inventory Takatoku had produced (via Matsushiro) whilst they were slated to produce the DYRL figures. "In May 1984, Takatoku filed for bankruptcy. As fate would have it, however, they were about to put the toys of the film "Macross: Do You Remember Love" on the market. After Takatoku's bankruptcy, the valkyrie molds scaled 1/55 were entrusted to the official manufacturer, namely Matsushiro..." It could be argued this inventory was very much 'Super' stock rather than 'Strike' stock, as the interviews in Figure King and Tamashii Web indicate that the decision to market the Strike, and the naming of the Strike was something that happened under Bandai's tenure. However, it also appears that the early Strikes were painted under Takatoku's watch, so they presumably had knowledge of the DYRL color scheme and designs, and were producing something somewhat new for the toyline to tie-in the movie. In lieu of Bandai's direction and hypothetically, if Takatoku never went bust it might have been called Super something, but who is to know? "It should also be remembered that, when we began discussing the distribution of the Hi-Metal version, we discovered that Matsushiro still had a lot of inventory available. So some of the Strike Valkyrie were distributed with Bandai stickers covering the Takatoku writings." "Super Valkyrie and Armored Valkyrie were made by Mr. Takatokutois, and I thought that they wouldn't want the same thing. In that case, I decided that it would be better to do the movie version of Valkyrie, which was the latest work at the time." "The name Strike Valkyrie wasn't there from the beginning. But if you change the product name to Super Valkyrie, it will be the same as the previous product. I wanted to make a difference. One more thing, just like the F-14 fighter has a nickname of Tomcat, wouldn't it be nice to have a name for each model of the Valkyrie? There was also an idea. So I consulted with Mr. Kawamori, and what he gave me was "Strike Valkyrie". Mr. Kawamori also named the Super Ostrich and Elint Seeker that were released after that." From these citations, regarding the claim, I think that: 1 - the early Strikes were made from inventory left behind from Takatoku's bankruptcy 2 - they are not actually leftovers from any released toyline i.e., the Super However, earlier in this thread @jvmacross said that the early Strikes were repaints of Takatoku Supers. @jvmacross did you mean they were yellow Supers literally repainted over in red, or just repaints in the sense of 'same toy, different deco'? @nightmareB4macross on page 3 you mentioned a rare white Takatoku VF-1S you had which was red painted over yellow chest. Do you still have this? A clue to this question perhaps? On other claims, are these the rarest of the rare? I don't think so. Might they be sought after for being 1st gen? Sure. With regards to eggshell, I do feel that the TT stamped white Valks are a different shade of white. I think the Bandai version are a more brilliant, but 'colder' white. But this is really anecdotal, I'd like to hear other opinions on this claim.

No, but I own two if you have any questions about it.

Appreciate the help, because Carousell seems mostly for meet up, so difficult to get sellers to send overseas. I am actually not the crazy one, if anyone is crazy about Jetfire and has shelves full of them and lives in Aus, it would be Cory who lives on the opposite coast.

I posed the question in a facebook group last night. One response I received below, which is the second reference to Yaohan I've seen, the first was directly from the Carousell sales post I linked earlier:

I'm thrilled to contribute!

Thanks, I had a link to it at the end of the third paragraph. There's wasn't enough notable about the MB to warrant a section, unlike the Canadian release which had the missiles etc. to discuss. Edit: Okay, I think I can worm something in. Edit: Okay, got an image in and two links total to 20th century. Hey you know someone contacted me today with photos of a Hasbro Standard label that came with a Matsu. Added a paragraph on that.

There was just one guy said he got it at Yaohan in SG.

Not explicitly, but all three of the Strike Box + Jetfire Combos have turned up in Singapore.

Thank you. It's a relief to get this brain-dump done and dusted. Yes, agree this is a strange and contentious one. The extrapolation I made is from the other surplus Jetfires without armor. Not to be argumentative, because I respect your opinion and knowledge on the matter, I will put the references here and hopefully over time we can gather enough evidence to prove this avenue. https://www.carousell.sg/p/vintage-collectible-complete-set-macross-1-55-vf-1s-strike-valkyrie-bandai-hi-metal-1124497437/ Reasons I believe this could be legit surplus: Smooth box Tatsunoko Pro sticker Strike stickers on body and armor Takatoku instructions Owner claim of witnessing purchase https://www.carousell.sg/p/macross-strike-valkyrie-1125376618/ Reasons I believe this could be legit surplus: Smooth box Tatsunoko Pro sticker looks to have been there but removed Strike stickers on body and armor Takatoku instructions https://www.carousell.sg/p/vintage-toy-vf-1s-strike-valkyrie-256734215/ Reasons I believe this could be legit surplus: Smooth box Tatsunoko Pro sticker Takatoku instructions MIB Unused https://www.carousell.sg/p/vintage-macross-vf-1s-strike-valkyrie-243517863/ Above two links of Strikes just to show that they seemed to be packed with the Takatoku manual. https://www.carousell.ph/p/macross-vf-1s-strike-valkyrie-1-55-scale-150106551/ Mismatched armor referred to as early 90s by seller. And the owner of this image below told me they had all been purchased as is:

Thank you for the high praise. Almost everything has already been discovered and recorded by others. I've just put it in one place, and pinned the red string so to speak.

I finally completed the article on Jetfire that I'd promised nearly a year ago. I had to quit World of Warcraft to do it! Anyway, please have a look. http://tfscraps.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-40th-anniversary-of-valkyrie.html Many thanks to TheLoneWolf and nightmareB4macross for their discussions here, and pointing me to the appropriate threads.

The 'made in Macau' bit is a heading under the Ultra Magnus blog entry, those figures were also available in the US distribution. The Jetfire blog entry is separate and links to a full article where the author writes that the 1985 (MB) and 1986 (Hasbro) branded figures are the same Bandai toys. I don't think I've ever heard of Jetfire being made in Macau, although it's well known in the Transformers community that Takara was sending/sourcing TF molds all over the place for different reasons (Taiwan, Korea, Macau, China, France, Mexico, South America etc.), I don't think Bandai necessarily followed suit. https://20thcenturytoycollector.com/posts/2012/05/12/transformers-jetfire/

Yeah, still on my to do list. I'm not aware of a Jetfire release made in Macau. Can you elaborate on that?

Yes! I have considered it. I've just written a massive essay on Shockwave which was essentially Jetfire's Christmas '84 nemesis, and researching the former has uncovered a lot for me about the latter. I think it would be fitting to do the same for Jetfire. One thing I dropped the ball on re: the photoshoot discussion - Jetfire actually does come with little red decals (2 ovals/2 circles), but they are really badly cut and the Kaufmann specimen looks to have a cleaner and fuller set used for whatever shoot it was involved in. I photographed a freshly applied decal from a spare sheet below to illustrate how bad it looks. So that raises a doubt on whether the Sears photo shoot was with Hasbro-supplied photography or done in-house, because any retailer can apply these decals if they are fastidious enough. Though many are not, for example, Argos catalogs missing key decals on Jetfire, as well as erroneous toy configurations on other figures: https://retromash.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ArgosPage4.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5d/25/00/5d2500c13d735b46a8b84a8e49367b3c.jpg So to fill the gap we really can only look at other Hasbro issued documentation, this time the 1985 European catalog, where Jetfire is actually the Autobot leader (due to Optimus Prime's rights sitting with another company at the time). https://www.battlegrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/transformers.jpg This is different photography from the 1985 US catalog. An easy tell is the missing stickers on the dorsal fast packs. This photoshoot took place at the same location that Hasbro used for the 1984 toy-fair catalog. So it's a different shoot - but not due to geography - it's still at USA HQ. So to summarize known shoots: Packaging 1985 pre toy fair 1985 US catalog (same as 1986) 1985 Euro catalog