Alpha OTS

Yeow, was that a transformation lesson. I'm still not sure I got the gerwalk mode right. I could never get the bars in the legs like they looked on the pictures on the box.

And is it common for the ends of the arms to be so loose? I'm having difficulty getting the poses I want because of the weight of the "forearms". Any way to tighten this up?

It arrived today. Boy that was fast.

Yeow, this thing is bigger than I thought it was. Any transformation step I should be particularly careful with?

I noticed that Robot Kingdom is advertising that they're selling MP Megatron unmodified. Definitely going to keep them in mind.

I personally think the two pack Prime is decent. Oh it's nowhere near the Classics Mold which is godly, but it's ok. The truck mode is on par with Robot Masters prime, meaning it kind of sucks, although it looks much more solid than RM Prime's.

My favorite part of it is that this Prime has a big surprised expression because his eyes are so ridiculously large. Most people would hate that, but I think it's one of its charms. The tommy gun is kind of neat too. He also has a spinning torso gimmick like Megatron's twirling arm.

And be on the lookout for some of the G1 Titanium Transformers which are perfectly in scale with the classics. Rodimus, Scourge and the upcoming Ultra Magnus are all very nice.

That was......pointless.

We don't know anything more about the eye of Jupiter than we did before. They should have thrown us *something*, but instead we get an episode about a spontaneous lucid dreaming suicidal pilot.

P.S.--Nice work on coloring the prototype, Totoro 242. The coloring almost makes the issues with the chest intakes less noticeable.

I think they make them more noticable.

Just got this email from BBTS:

ROBOTECH MASTERPIECE CYCLONES: Toynami brings pack the 'Forever Mint in

Box' packaging with the advent of their new Masterpiece Cyclone line.

They have announced the #1 Scott Bernard, #2 Lancer, and #3 Rand figures -

each priced at $79.99. We have an image of the Scott Bernard set and it

looks great - check them out here:

http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/menu.as...p;category=3540

Not really surprising, although I'm not sure if that price reflects BBTS's typical overpricing or not. If so, it's probably only a matter of 10 bucks.

Edit: Release date according to BBTS is November 2007.

I just finished the third disc.

The va cast gets better, or I'm becoming more comfortable with the changed voices, or, more likely, a little bit of both. Hikaru's voice sounds less whiney and a little more confident to me now. I don't know if that was intended or not to go along with the storyline, probably not, but I like that it is. I like that Minmei's songs are in Japanese which again, most likely an unintended consequence, helps explain the character's accent.

On to the fourth disc.....

These Boukenger/Overdrive toys are pretty cool. I own two of the sets and are compatible with Bandai's other toyline Machine Robo Mugenbine.

I used this link to reference which vehicle connects to the other plus it seems that Boukenger has the most reconfigurations of any Sentai Robo. Very Cool! (Click on Daibouken)

http://www.boukenger.com/products/index.html

Daibouken looks awesome. Unfortunately he's expensive even before import costs. The recolored black Daibouken looks even nicer, but is usually even more expensive.

It's a shame Bandai of America fubar'd the domestic "Power Ranger" release. It's completely different and in a bad way. It looks like an oversized knockoff and doesn't have the versatility and poseability that the Japanese set has. There's far less paint apps, gaps in the legs, the crane and mixer look like flat bed trucks which in turn look even more like rollerskates in the super combined mode, the sub and dozer don't fold in half which is a huge deal, and due to the changes they made it's very unlikely that the large red jet will be released. Only upside is that it's relatively inexpensive compared to the Japanese version, but it's clear why that is.

That's partially why I'm happy with the 5" Bandai of America sets. Inexpensive, small, versatile with more fan modes, a much better representation of the Japanese Daibouken than the official larger version, and it didn't break my wallet to boot. Although if I ever happened upon a reasonably priced Daibouken, I'd definitely snag it.

You guys keep talking about Zephyr....but is this firm news or just rumours?

In the newest EGM, the Xbox 360 Microsoft Vice President Peter Moore was interviewed and asked point blank about the Zephyr. He dismissed it as internet rumor and nothing more. The rest of the interview reads like a fair take on the current status of the gaming industry, unlike the last EGM interview with the Sony rep who was living in la-la land. Take that as you will.

What I was dissappointed most about was that Armored Core 4 got a 4, 4 and a 6.5.

Heh...heh...Yamato riding Yamato....

Imagine the 1/48 riding a SDF-1 of this size (with lighted up engine at the back)...

[attachmentid=40994]

For some reason that reminds me of Slim Pickens infamous scene from Dr. Strangelove.

I finally got a proper review of these up on my site (click here).

Fair review. *thumbs up*

You do mention that the series 2 cups are more durable, but it wouldn't to hurt to say that they don't have the issues of posing in fighter mode that the series 1 cups do. Although that's just my personal experience. I have two of my VF-1J's in swooping fighter poses and they've been like that since I bought them, compared to my VF-1S who's cup promptly cracked 15 minutes later.

I wholeheartedly agree though: if you're going to get just one, get a VF-1J.

I want a new, GOOD combiner in good colors. I think the last thing we (in the states) got was the RiD Contruction bots, right?

I'd like to see something like Defensor remade or the Aerial Bots.

Energon(toyline history: RiD -> Armada -> Energon) had a construction combiner, an aerial bot set and a combaticon set. Feet and hands are composed of energon weapons though and don't look conventional. They are pretty poseable and the individual bots are pretty nice. Although each set only has 3 unique molds with clones of the limb molds used to complete the gestalt. Pretty decent, although the limbs do take a little imagination. There's a classics repaint coming of the construction combiner in a Devastator color scheme that I'm looking forward to.

There was a Devastator themed recolor of the RiD Constructicon set that you mentioned done about a year back that was a Target exclusive and is my favorite Devastator set.

There was also some reissued micromaster combiner sets released thru KayBee over the last few years that included Devastator, Defensor, Superion and a train set. Very nice, very small, but not much articulation.

Someone on another board posted this link:

http://wildcats.pupui.jp/mt/archives/2007/02/cms.html

Anyone know what this is exactly? Is it a custom or is it a proto for an upcoming line?

Wouldn't be the first time he's been banned for this kind of behavior...

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:DM0KL1...p;client=safari

I knew that handle looked familiar.

And I still want a Wave. I just don't want to pay $130 for it.

Anyone have a picture of the 1/5000 next to a 1/100 Toynami Valk?

Hrmmm......a walking Macross without a spark would be a Zombie Macross! And of course, he would want trains....

"Trains....uhhh....trains!....uhhhrg.....trains......."

I tried the demo and to me it was ok. I was never into the GTA games, and this reminds me of GTA.

With a new baby in the house, game time is very limited these days.

It's actually more like GTA meets Hulk Ultimate Destruction. Once you power up your guy, he does superhuman things; jumping from rooftop to rooftop, picking up cars, etc.

I'll probably pick it up when it comes down in price. I have enough games I haven't finished as is.

Yes, but you're comparing an apple to an orange.

The Macross doesn't walk. The Macross is NOT a robot; it does NOT have a spark. Expecting any of these things out of any physical representation of the Macross is just simply silly.

I'm a fan of transforming mecha too, but there's no way I would buy this very expensive niche product if I weren't a Macross fan.

Where's the cheapest place to get one of these from?

Well, it is OOP. It used to sell for US$150 or more here in Singapore. The most recent one I saw in a shop was a pre-owned specimen going for about US$130. So looks like you got a fairly good deal if the toy is indeed MIB.

I got a little worried that I jumped the gun too quick. As soon as I saw it I grabbed my credit card because for some reason that $180 BBTS(minus shipping) price tag was still in my head and I was in impulse buy mode. Glad to hear this was reasonable.

Looking at some ebay auctions I did ok. Not a steal, but definitely less expensive than I would have done through a buy-it-now auction.

I was looking at sites that might sell the Boukenger Daibouken sets and came across robotkingdom.com. On a whim I decided to see what was in the Macross section where I saw a Konig 1/100 Monster for $109. Knowing what BBTS was selling them for when they had them in stock, that seemed like a deal, even with the $30 overseas shipping, but BBTS is notorious for overcharging rare items.

So how much of a deal did I get?

I just noticed it's no longer in stock there now. I hope that means I ordered the last one and not that it was an inventory error.

I posted this on another forum, but I thought it might be of some interest to the people here as we enjoy mecha with gimmicks too. I'm not a Power Ranger fan, but I am a fan of Voltronish things, and it's only by random chance that I came to be aware that the deluxe Japanese version of this mold existed which is highly detailed and expensive. Walking through the toy aisle, I saw a mini domestic version of that deluxe. For $9, I thought it was worth investigating. I pick it up, look at the back and see that the other vehicles that combine to the basic mini "zord" set I had in hand also are capable of making their own "zords". So that's three mini-voltrons of a sort.

So I picked up "Set A" which is 3 vehicles(truck, bulldozer and sub), "Set B" which is 3 vehicles(jet, hovercraft and car) and Set "C" which is 4 vehicles(steam shovel, driller, cement truck, hook crane) for a total of 10 vehicles.

Caution: These pics taken with a crappy camera which is very good at making my desk look much more damaged than it actually is.

From left to right here's Set A, Set C and Set B.

And let's combine that into only two mechs. I believe these are as close to official as the official modes for Drive Max and Drive Tank as you can get. So let's combine one more time into only one mech.

And this is what the packaging says the total super combined mode or Ultimate Drivemax/Daibouken should look like.

Here's a variation that looks a lot better, but the black car isn't as solidly connected to the back as it could be.

And here's what the teeny tiny instructions say the total super combined mode should look like with everything solidly connected. Since there's options, let's see if there's combined vehicle modes.

Again, I believe this is as close to offical modes as is possible with this set.

And let's try a complete connected train ala Brave Tiger.

And with the red jet so there's no loose pieces at all.

This is more like Lego Voltron, cool, so let's try some variations.

And the last two I came up with. I added a couple very minor paint details to cover up the screws in black plastic and to make the red truck look like it had a real cockpit.

Now for the negatives. Lack of paint apps, especially if you've seen a picture of the Japanese version of the normal sized toy this is based on. For the smaller size, eh, I can deal with that. I added the ones I thought it needed without much effort. Other negative, due to the lego-ish nature of these sets, you can see above there's some partforming going on. Things break apart then reassemble elsewhere. So insteady of things folding in half, they instead break apart and then peg to another hole with some pegs and holes still being visible. Last negative, articulation is pretty basic, and in Set B zord mode pretty much nonexistent.

I used to own a vehicle Voltron and this reminds me a lot of that set, only much smaller(which I prefer) and with more articulation and WAY WAY WAY more combination options. I thought it especially neat that they managed to have a unique head for each individual set zord AND the A+B+C zord. So all together it was about $27. Definitely worth checking out if you're a Voltron fan of the vehicle sort.

After watching collectiondx's

review of the Garland on youtube, I decided not to get it. Really floppy

Holy cow, I didn't realize the figure could fit inside in bot mode. That's pretty nifty. The transformation looks ok, but I see those bars everyone's talking about. There is a little too much weight and stress on them.

If this ever drops substantially in price, I'll give it a try, but as of now, I'm just not enough of a fan to fork over that kind of cash.

Jeez, you guys make it sound safer to get a Gakken!

It is, but that's the trade-off for a more inexpensive Alpha than the Gakken.

This news gets me worried because once they finish doing what they have planned this year, why would they release new accessories for a figure line that's over a year old and no longer as easily available?

How well do those super poseable strike packs fit on the 1/100's anyway? Does it take much trimming?