Apollo Leader

I picked up the Golion set last week and have watched the first two discs. I never watched more then a few episodes of Voltron back in the day, but so far I'm getting a nostalgic kicks of sorts watching this. I know I'll never be able to watch Voltron after having seen this!

But forever now engrained in my head is the opening theme song!

"Juan... plus Juan... plus Juan... plus Juan... plus Juan... Golion!"

(I know it's "one", but the Japanese vocalist makes it sound like "Juan" )

I just watched both videoes over multiple times. Obviously something caused the aircaft to violently pitch up like that. The question is after it nearly stalled, was the crash caused by that loss of airspeed or was the crash caused by the issue (whether it be electrical, mechanical, aeronautical) that caused the aircraft to nearly stall to begin with?

Sad to see such an awesome piece of machinery to meet its end like that, but great to see that ejection system worked perfectly for both crew members.

To Starcream, the YF-23 was rolled out in 1990 and both YF-23's flew that year.

It sounds like Itagaki's beef with Tecmo has been ongoing for several years so obviously he's got a case built up though it remains to be seen if he has a valid case. Too bad this had to happen though.

As for Ninja Gaiden 2, I'll see how the demo is like, but I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually add it to my collection.

That first picture is apparently the proof that the Matchbox VF-1 was indeed suppose to be partially or entirely transformable, though it looks like in this incarnation the swing bars are still permanently molded to the rest of the airframe.

As for the Rick Hunter action figure blister pack, that's obviously GI Joe's Barbeque.

This is supposed to be the most recent pic of it, being rolled out, though the EXIF data says 1998. (I'm guessing the camera's date is wrong)

That's a picture of YF-23 #2, S/N 87-801. YF-23 #1, S/N 87-800, is the aircraft at the Air Foce Museum. I you take a look through the museum's restoration pictures, there are a few dated from early 2007. The link I provided a few days I believe are suppose to be newer pictures... just looked at them again, they are dated from just a few weeks ago on 5/9/08.

Hopefully it's on display either in the Annex or at the main part of the museum next summer... I'm tentatively planning on making a trip out to Dayton.

As for YF-23 #2, maybe it's back on display at that one museum in southern California?

So is Tamashii soppose to be Bandai's "international" arm for certain products? Besides the 1/55th VF-1's (in conjunction with Toynami), there's quite a few other things being plugged on this page including Gundam Fix Figuration and Mobile Suit In Action. Does that mean that these guys are dealing with the US and other foreign releases of Macross, Gundam, and other Bandai anime related products?

I thought the YF-23's restoration was done? There were pics a while back of it being "rolled out" and it looked spotless.

Whenever I got to the Air Force Museum's website, the only pictures of the YF-23 are of it in a much more disassmbled form so I thought it was still being restored. Where would newer pictures be?

To answer a few things from above:

1) The Speed Racer movie is based on the US English dub of the old anime Mach GoGoGo. Both were out in the late 1960's.

2) Very doubtful the VF-1 will be seen in the Robotech live action movie. Big West owns the rights to the design and I extremely doubt they would let Harmony Gold and Universal(?) use the design in this new design.

3) Regarding Macross II, part of the reason there hasn't been any serious toy developments in the last decade is that allegedly Shoji Kawamori has been against it (Macross II isn't considered canon in the current scheme of things and the designs weren't by Kawamori and Studio Nue).

For my fellow Northrop fans (don't worry, Nied, no Faux News links this time ),

Work on restoring the first YF-23 continues.

Northrop/Grumman starting work on the "B-3"?

And one more thing

F-4 Phantom II turns Phifty.

Okay, I missed this development. All I got to say is,

THUNDER!

THUNDER!

THUNDERCATS,

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Well, I guess we'll see how this turns out.

Konami enters the fray with Rock Revolution. I do like the songs that they have in the trailer (namely Skid Row's Youth Gone Wild), but it looks like Rock Revolution is going with covers for the time being. Rock Revolution will have its own unique drum.

Speaking of drums, Gutiar Hero IV's drum set has been revealed:

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/14/game-inf...-hero-iv-drums/

How many plastic guitars and drum sets am I going to have by this time next year????

Thanks for setting all this up, Kevin!

BTW- Anyone interested, I have all the pending 1/55 Valkyries available for preorder. Just visit the For Sale section....

-K

I've looked over in the For Sale section, but can't find anything posted for this preorder. Someone please post the link! Never mind, found it.

If things ever got hunky-dory between Toynami and Yamato, and Harmony Gold and Big West, then Macrossworlders would lose 90% of things to gripe about. ;p

Ha, thanks for my new signature! You did forget the whole "Vader's hands are too small" issue, though.

But yeah I can't understand why we wouldn't want some sort of conflict resolution between all these parties. It is ultimately us fans that are hurt by this mess.

I have to admit I'm just astounded at the paranoia here. It simply amazing. Like Bandai doesn't know how to do business with a foreign company like they've been doing for years, and like Takara and Tomy before them.

Ooohhh, Toynami is soooooo evil. Everyone b1tch3s & cries that they can't get genuine Japanese Macross toys from a toy company outside of Japan. Now it'll be rolling right out of Bandai's factories, into Bandai packaging and showing up stateside with nothing but a distro sticker on the box. Finally! After decades. But Toynami touched it! Now its got cooties! Parts will fall off! It'll make my other Valks cry! I'm soooo worried! The molds, the molds! The lies, the lies! Oh, no! Yamato save us!

Gimme a break. This is just ridiculous and embarrassing. The armchair conspiracy theories and fanjaculations are laughable.

Sure, just pay more and have 'em shipped from Japan so you can keep it all out of Toynami's evil hands. Help prove to Bandai that the Tamashi division is a waste of their time and that no one in the west wants to buy their stupid toys. Call the warehouse & tell 'em Tamashi said to stop refurbishing that other tooling, we lost the North American & UK markets.

Gah...

Well put. This is a big victory for us Macross fans in that not only do we see a US release of these items at prices less then the Japanese release, but since most (if not all) of these toys will be released as Macross products and NOT as Robotech, it's a validation of the real series.

DYRL R1 release is what I'm hoping for.

There are new Gears of War videos.....

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/6236.html

WHat can i say? Freaking amazing.

Aargh, you bear me to it. Just way too busy to post any trailer links this weekend. Anyway it looks awesome... just hoping that "Seriously" is not an achievement in this game again!

Here's a Youtube copy of the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxoU8wCEr2A

There's an Imax theater here in the area showing Speed Racer so maybe I might go see it tonight.

But when I exit the theater will I be singing, "Go Speed Racer, go Speed Racer, Gooooooo!" or will I be singing, "No Speed Racer, No Speed Racer, Nooooooo!"

Wow...I'm actually quite shocked that anyone would believe Toynami anymore. Where's the Beta we were promised, or the 1/100 fast packs, or the Cyclone? Perpetual pergatory, that's where. That Beta on display at all the cons is there for one reason only: to sell the Alphas/Legioss that they still have in stock.

After all their empty promises, HG actually has the nuts to claim they will be releasing ALL the rare 1/55 variants, which could only mean the Super-O and Elint, and people actually believe it? And if I don't believe it, if I look at Toynami's track record, and realize that a business exists to make money and HG's talk about "rare variants" is marketing only, I'm a conspiracy theorist nutjob?

People have to realize that they can't believe everything a business tells them.

If you look at history (the 1/55's and the Yamatos), the two-seaters are among the last toys released...IF they are ever released. That means that all the other toys in the series have to sell pretty well first. So, IF that happens, and IF Bandai wants to risk producing the lesser known, less popular two-seaters (casual fans want the ones with guns), then they will look to see IF the moulds can be found or even still exist (moulds are regularly lost or broken) OR IF they want to pay for new moulds. I think those are all big ifs and I'm just too jaded and cynical to believe it will happen.

I could be wrong, but I think my viewpoint is perfectly valid. Instead of calling someone a conspiracy theorist nutjob, you might as well say, "Not believing the official statements of a business or government makes you a bad or undesirable person." That's really what it means.

EDIT: I still love Apollo Leader as a brother in arms and fellow Spartan! (You still playing Halo 3 online?)

Funny you asked about Halo 3... I actually played the game for the first time in 3 months earlier this week. I had quit during this time in part because because I was back into seriously playing Gears of War again and that I really needed to take a break from it since I had started becoming too obsessed with getting my rank up and trying to earn the last achievement I needed to totally beat the game.

Regrading "my fanboy conspiracy nutjob" statement, it wasn't intended as a personal jab at you, but instead was intended to be a general comment towards some of the attitudes that exist here. Whether it be here on Macross World or other enthusiast based message boards (Macross, anime, video games, etc.), we sometimes get too wound up in our hobbies and take things way too personally. We also start anthropomorphicizing these companies into these imaginary friends/protagonists (Big West, Yamato, etc.) or enemies/antagonists (Harmony Gold, Toynami, etc.) when most of us know very little about the actual people who run and work for these businesses, what legal issues they are dealing with, economic restraints and limitations, etc. Sadly I used to go off on a lot of these fanboy tangents myself in part to take out my fustrations with situations I couldn't control and situations I didn't have a complete understanding of.

I feel real sorry for people like George Sohn. The guy is clearly a fan and enthusiast like the rest of us. He's put a lot on the line trying to make a living for himself and his employess based off of something he loves to do. But yet by coming to a place like here or other boards, you would think that George was the anti-Christ. Just a day or two back, someone started a thread which called Toynami "Toynazi" just for the sole purpose of bashing the company. What are people like George or any of his employees suppose to think when they hop onto Macross World? It's one thing to criticize the company because of delays, QC issues, accuracy and appearance of the products, etc., but when we start getting this wound up, personal, and venomistic, that is just taking it too far.

Hopefully this is an adequate explination of where it was I was trying to come from with my original comments.

As for your concerns with some of Toynami's past record when it comes to the timeliness and actually following through on some of their products (though it looks like their Beta is heading towards an actual reality now AND the 1/100th FAST Packs are now very close to release), it has to be remembered here that it's BANDAI doing the heavy work here. Toynami is just being the middle man. We are going to see some real results here since we are talking about a company with the size and resources as Bandai does.

With the way things are going, it is a good idea to:

1) Square away one's debt, in particular your credit cards. In the last month I finished off a 5 year bank loan I had and I finished paying off my credit cards. This is like the first time I've been debt free in 9 years.

2) Start stocking up on food and clothing. I already have enough canned and frozen stuff to meet most of my food needs for a few months.

3) Consolidate one's driving in as few trips as possible. Bike and walk when you can. Since the weather around where I live is finally becoming more spring like I'm going to try biking to work most days that I can.

My contact at Toynamic indicated the only CHANGE with the packaging is that it will have a Toynami logo on the box. Other than that, that's all that is expected. I guess we'll see....

One thing I am curious about is that orignally Toycom was willing to pay both royalties to Big West and HG to release the Macross Plus Valkyries. Assuming these 1/55s will outsourced for production through Bandai, I'm wondering if royalties are now being paid out to both BW and HG....

Back in the day with the Macross Plus toys, BW dismissed the idea of having royalties paid to HG for the Valkyries to hit stateside....Did they bow down to the almighty dollar now???

Either way, it's all good news for fans...I can't complain...

-Kevin

If you see George, pick his brain and see if you can find out how this all came down.

I'd like to get excited about this, but I just can't, for various reasons.

1) This is happening 20 years too late. It's great that it's finally happening, but it's kinda sad that it's happening only now, when

I would argue more like 6 or 7 since that was when the Bandai rereleases were first done. It was still the time that the old 1/55th's were still going for an arm and a leg on eBay. But regardless, I'm happy this is finally becoming a reality.

2) Yamato is releasing a much nicer toy at the same time at almost the same price. I'd pay $100 in a heartbeat for a naked Yamato 1/60 perfect-variable VF-1, and $120 for the new VF-1 with fast packs is also very reasonable in my opinion. But

There are a lot of us Macross toy collecting diehards who will always love the 1/55th. Not only was this a great looking transforming toy for its day (still is), it was also very rugged and durable. Sadly Yamato has had QC issues with their stuff and their stuff is not as rugged or durable as the old 1/55th.

I really hope and pray that Yamato's Macross toys will be able to hit the states too at better prices. I pretty much gave up on Yamato's stuff a year or so ago because I am having a hard time justifying paying in excess of $100 or $200 or hunks of plastic that are going to sit in a box or tote container for the next few years until I have space to display them. I ended up canceling out on getting the 1/60th YF-21 because it was just too expensive for me to justify. $150 or so to get the new 1/60th Strike VF-1S is also now getting to be way to rich for my tastes.

3) Bandai expects me to pay $90 for a 20 year old toy that's already been completely milked and looks, frankly, pretty ugly nowadays. I'd be happy to pay about $45 for it, but they raised the price instead, didn't they? I swear these were cheaper last time.

Before shipping, it looks like the Super VF-1's will be selling under $90. I need to jog my memory, but I think I payed a little more then this in 2002 dollars. Adjusted for anflation and everything this still comes out to be a better deal.

4) And we all know damn well that HG does not seriously intend to release any rare variants. That's up to Bandai, not HG, and the molds were scrapped anyway (so I've heard). The worst part is, HG knows this, and they are lying through their teeth. They know they'll never release the Elint or Super-O, and they know they're lying just to sell the few variants that Bandai will be releasing.

I know this post is not exactly a ray of sunshine, but let's not get our hopes up and believe HG's dishonest hype.

This fan boy, conspiracy nut job stuff has got to end. Why would they post that information unless they are truly serious in persuing it? The original molds for the Elint Seeker and Super Ostrich may be gone, but using samples of the original toys along with modern CAD/CAM, this shouldn't be a huge problem.

Well Robotech.com has the VF-1S and J for preorder for $79.99. Considering that Big Bad Toy Store is preordering the Super VF-1A's at $84.99, I wouldn't be surprised if you could find the VF-1J and S for well less then $80 through other dealers.