Mog

Roy: CHICKEN-HANDS MAX!!!! Or "Hey Hik'! Lend me your gunpod for a minute. I've gotta 'dance' with a Meltrandi-frakking ace."

Guld: GET THE F*#K OUT OF THE WAY, ISAMU!!!!!

Hmm. . .good questions DH. A) Probably Low-Light - The Joes could always use another sniper. B) Another vote for Covergirl - As classic as her original get-up was, I wouldn't mind a Devil's Due version (just so we can get a new mold and an untucked shirt version). I know some folks have already made custom versions of these two, but I wouldn't mind Hasbro mixing a couple new parts to make these figures look a little bit more unique. Of course if Hasbro gets lazy and gives us something akin to the 7-pack Wet-Suit, then I'll have to find a way to make my own customs of these folks.

Thanks, m0n5t3r!! I was kinda hoping there wasn't THAT much parts swapping. But from your many pics, I can tell the articulation is off-the-charts good. Kinda bummed too that they didn't put little Eureka and Renton figures in those "clear" cockpits.

Yup, the original Motor-Viper color scheme was hella tight. The light-blue/dark-blue scheme and the whole look of uniform just meshes well together. Personally, I think I'm gonna go into hibernation until the original 25th/Modern era line comes back to the forefront. . .Someone wake me when Hasbro makes a Covergirl in her original outfit or her Devil's Due get-up.

Futile?!! DOUBLE-DEUCE AIN'T GOT NOTHING ON ME!!!

Just out of curiousity, but were Charles and Ray Beams in this movie in some sort of fashion? P.S.--Hey m0n5t3r, how's the transformation process on that Nirvash figure? Does it require parts swapping, or is the transformation fairly self-contained?

I'm surprised no one's suggested an Exploding-Ball-of-Fire Kakizaki Valk variant for summertime!

Is it even possible for the backpack sliders to be tighter than they already were on the YF-21?!

Fixed it for you. Would that necessarily be a bad thing? Regarding the bots' designs, I think part of the problem is that so many of them are grey, silver, or black, making hard to figure out who's who. Also, the absolute lack of personalities with the secondary bots kinda makes it hard to care whether they live or die.

1) Wide-angle action shots where I can clearly see who's fighting who! 2) One signature sequence of a Transformer going back and forth between modes multiple times, kicking ass, and dodging enemy fire (like say Sideswipe or Arcee driving headlong into a row of Decepticons, transforming into bot mode to destroy one Decepticon, going back into alt mode to dodge the attack of another Decepticon, using this alt mode to get behind this opponent, and then transforming back to bot mode to attack this opponent from behind). Just something jaw-droppingly crazy and imaginative as hell. They're robots that can change into cars/planes. Do something creative with that feature!

Damn, Kicker!! Ya' got any more cool customs hiding out in that massive air wing of yours?

Thanks, DH!! That link absolutely had me rolling.

Just got back from watching it. And honestly, I really wanted to like the movie. But the movie left me too disappointed. The human actors and the dialogue were either cringe-worthy or inappropriately laughable (though the military folk were for the most part solid). I don't know if it's due to the design of the bots or not, but there were times where I lost track of what exactly was happening during some of the fights. I don't know if it's due to all the shiney silver kibble or not being able to always tell who's firing at who (a nice energy trail for the Transformers' projectiles/bullets might've helped a bit), but it's kinda hard to follow exactly and precisely what's going on in a lot of the fight scenes. And I've got a nice little message to Michael Bay: PULL THE FRAKKEN CAMERA BACK!!!!!!! A few more mid-fight, wide-angle shots that last longer than a few seconds would have really helped to clear up the confusion that can happen during these scenes. Also, I'm really not a fan of watching these Transformer fights from the far-too-low perspective of humans. We get it: they're big-ass robots that tower over us. Now can you pull the camera back, or give us a nice clear action shot from above so we can take in the full grandeur of the fights? Man, I remember all the memorable action sequences from Dark Knight and that legendary opening scene of Nightcrawler absolutely cutting loose in X2, and I think to myself, "Why can't Transformers have a scene like that? Full of energy, gusto, and where you can clearly follow the logic of the action on-screen."

Just did some quick checking up in the MW Gallery. There's a few more Minmay Guard sets than the ones I'm gonna re-post here. But I figure most folks can check it out for themselves. Links to the ones created by the Three 1/48 Custom Masters: * Jung's MG * Anasazi's MG * Kurt's Moon Act MG Someone even made a 1/55 Minmay Guard! Sadly, no one has tried to make a Joke Machine Minmay Guard just yet.

^^Sorry, but that picture on the box doesn't remind me of the confident, "always keeping a positive outlook on life" Rand I remember. Dude looks like he just realized that he sat on some crap.

Honestly, I'm a bigger fan of his Jackson 5 and late 70's/early 80's (pre-Thriller) stuff. Hearing THOSE songs again on the radio today reminded me what made him so damn good. I mean I never hear "Got To Be There" EVER on the radio, and I heard it probably two or three times just this evening alone. It's just too bad most folks tend to forget those R&B parts of his catalogue and focus more on the later, more pop stuff. Is he a weirdo? Yes. But dammit, the music he and his brothers made before all the zany-ness and the nosejobs was pretty tight.

What's even scarier is that the general premise reminded me of this crappy sci-fi flick called Alien Intruder. Regarding the actual show, I guess this is what would happen if some idiot decided to slap a reality show vibe onto humanity's first interstellar journey. Given Ron Moore's rep, this might be worth a view.

^^So what name should they call Charlie Murphy's character? Jack (the Ass)? Darkness? Leroy Smith? Love the first film, thought the second one was okay (got a kick out of Fiona busting out the Shoryuken), and never bothered to watch the third one.

So tell me: how does comparing the situation at a domestic brick-and-mortar toy store (a store that generally sells items at a higher price and usually gets undercut by the clearance prices at stores such as Target and Wal-Mart) relate to purchasing a (most likely) imported toy that's unquestionably geared towards adult collectors and that a good chunk of us are gonna purchase from an online retailer? Chances are most online retailers are gonna set up a pre-order for the SDF-1 to determine how many of these items to purchase (hopefully reducing the storage and slow-moving inventory concerns). If Yamato's done their homework right, they'll come across a price point, size, and design where they will sell enough of these SDF-1's to recoup their costs and make a comfortable profit. Hopefully, Yamato already did this analysis and talked with some of its retailers before showing the prototype they did earlier this year. The other thing to consider is that Yamato announced this release over a year in advance, giving us all more than enough time to save and budget for this big bad-boy. Now, no one ever said Yamato is off-base about rethinking the scale. However, a good chunk of us are voicing our opinion that we would prefer it if Yamato kept the scale as is. Also, I still don't see how 2 1/2 feet is "ridiculously large." About a third of that length is gonna be for the main guns anyways. The main reason I referred to those other toys is to point out that toys have in the past and in the present been made at that length. For many of us, the reason we want the Macross at this size is because we want it to be obvious that this is the flagship and centerpiece of our collections. It's kinda sad when the namesake of the entire franchise gets dwarfed by its own Valks and destroids. Or in the case of the old 1/3000 versions, looking somewhat out-dated when compared to the more recent Yamato releases. Now does this mean I want something "the size of an '84 Buick" as you hyperbolizes? Of course not. But I do want an SDF-1 that obviously looks taller and a bit larger than a 1/48 Valk in battroid mode. To be honest, after getting the YF-21 and the Beta last year, there hasn't been too much mecha stuff that has caught my fancy as of late. About the only thing that can drag me out of my mecha semi-retirement would be a properly done, large-scale, TV-style SDF-1.

For some outside perspective, the recent Star Wars BMF (Millenium Falcon) is around the same size as the proposed 1/2000 SDF-1. And the old G.I. Joe Phantom X-19 Stealth Fighter is roughly around the same size (and is nowhere near the biggest toy to come out of that old line ). Again, this would be the centerpiece, the capstone to anyone's Macross collection. My main reason for not wanting it is because it's in the DYRL scheme, not my more preferred TV-style scheme. If it were the TV-style SDF-1 coming out, I would definitely be already saving up for it.

If anyone's thinking of making another VF-11 custom or repaint (nylcbv already made a nice custom Jolly Rogers VF-11 here), I came up with a somewhat appropriate nickname to design and build a custom -11 around: The Double-Down.