RavenHawk

 

Prototype by MEP Toys

I don't like the fact that these look (from this pic) like statues with movable arms and nothing more... but as someone who read the Sentinels books at a very impressionable age and still appreciates those storylines because of it, I'll probably buy them if they're at a reasonable price (I think Breetai is $30).

 

Again with the crowdfunding, I see...  

Harmony Gold's okay with this?

That jumped out at me as well.

 

Gun Gale Online is the only SAO property I can stand. The author (Keichi Sigsawa) also wrote Kino no Tabi, which is quite good.

I've avoided any and all of the SAO stuff, even when I'm in an anime rut, just because it is clearly (from the trailers) not at all my taste. That said, I finally started episode one of Gun Gale Online last night and am so far ok with it. Just ok. I think I'll watch it all the way through, but I feel no temptation to check out the rest of the franchise.

Just now, Seto Kaiba said:

... eh?  Why wouldn't they be?

I mean, it's the commercially successful properties that attract the attention of the bootleggers and other unauthorized third party merchandising.  Even if Harmony Gold weren't famously lawsuit-happy, Robotech can't even get real companies interested in their license anymore let alone profit-hungry bootleggers. 

Just surprised. MAAS Toys may have a history of making infringing (in my opinion) products, but at least they have a history of making products. MEP doesn't seem to have any history at all.

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

Looks decent. Elizabeth Banks can do no wrong.

 

So does this mean than MEPTOYS is actually officially licensed to use the Robotech name and characters?

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/90032

I guess some people like it... doubt I'd agree, but hey...

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/03/05/robotech-18-hints-that-theres-something-else-to-minmei-review/

I will say that I do dig the cover.

1 hour ago, jenius said:

For the record, I think a pretty awesome Mospeada Live Action Movie could be made. Yes, the plot would need to be reworked pretty thoroughly to cram it into 2 hours. The movie would bookend with massive space battles and feature a Mad Max road trip in between... could be kinda cool. 

Trilogy.

These look like a cleaned-up version of the Joy Toy Tiekui (I have a couple sets of those), just scaled down possibly.

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... have you, by chance, recently solved any puzzle boxes leading to dimensions of eternal suffering that would cause you to mistake that schlock for a good time?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the first Invid War series was solid (up until the artistic change at the very end) and better than pretty much everything that came after.

*** getting down off my soapbox ***

7 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

No more so than, say, running a technically illegal business selling unlicensed toys for a "big fish" IP like Transformers.

Now now, according to everyone that responds to posts on Facebook and many other online locations, if they just put the words "not-" or "inspired by" in front of it, then they're fine. Totally. It's like, fair use or something.

(if not evident, that was sarcasm)

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Please take care to note that the (hilariously awful) comic from Titan Comics is an adaptation gone off the rails, where the live action movie proposal that Warner Bros and now Sony Pictures have been studiously ignoring for over a decade now is for a rebooted-from-the-ground-up reimagining of Robotech.  "Robotech in name only", if you will.  It's something of an apples and oranges comparison.

 

Granted, quality-wise the difference between pre-Yune Robotech and post-Yune Robotech in overall quality is the difference between laying down in an overflowing septic tank and standing up in that same overflowing septic tank... but gains are gains.  The quality of the writing in the 90's was so bad even Harmony Gold couldn't stomach it, and we know that their standards set the bar for quality so low it's a trip hazard in Satan's sub-basement.  (When the licensees weren't committing serial copyright infringement, anyway...)

 

Not great at selectively quoting, so, apologies...

As to your first quoted part here, I have been going with the assumption here that this new comic was sort of an experiment at trying to remove elements of what was licensed and building up a storyline that might be more original to Robotech. My basis for this? Absolutely nothing. Just trying to justify things a bit beyond "Furman!"

As to your second quoted part, I agree that the late '90s comics were an insult to septic tanks, but I think there were some decent ones earlier on.

2 hours ago, jenius said:

So there ya have it, no Macross IP means hard focus on the few Robotech unique story elements and EVERYTHING else being generic. If they wanted to stay tight to the IP they'd have to use MOSPEADA since they have more rights there.

Not an argument, just a question: What makes you say that they have more rights to MOSPEADA?

I'm not feeling masochistic enough to go re-read what is publicly available about the licensing, but don't recall there being any real greater granting of rights there.

10 hours ago, slide said:

... One assumes it's certainly not enough to make a movie out of... but then again BattleShip happened

I'll deny it in person, but I actually kind of enjoy that movie. Not in a "this is a good movie" way, but more of a mindlessly-entertaining-but-if-it's-on-tv-I'll-watch-it way.

10 hours ago, jenius said:

There seems to be confusion here, losing their rights in 2021 to the  footage from the original shows has nothing to do with the movie deal since the movie deal is already isolated to the parts of the story they own AND the parts of the story(ies) that are sufficiently generic. That last part is the bigger deal since the vast majority of the scifi war with space aliens story is pretty generic at this point. 

The only way this would have had a big impact on the movie is if the movie was planned to be very close to Mospeada (we know it was never going to be very similar to Southern Cross). If that were the case, the movie studio could try to acquire the rights to Mospeada directly from Tatsunoko in 2021.... 

Absolutely no disrespect, but I don't think that I completely agree with you here. As I understand it (and I may be wrong), they lose their rights to the all of the copyrights associated with the original animation, artwork, and designs, as well as the trademarks to "Macross", related logos, etc. That means mecha and ships (including the SDF-1) will have to look significantly different (as opposed to being derivative works) and no logos that are associated with the classic series. While scifi wars with space aliens are pretty generic, as you said, and much of the story would fall under scene a fair, I don't know if that would apply to the key elements. Let's look at the current comic, at its fundamental: alien ship crashes on Earth, humans reverse engineer the tech (so far still generic), aliens come to retrieve the ship (probably still generic), humans use the rebuilt ship to fight them, space fold to the edge of the solar system, and then make the journey back to Earth, fighting them along the way. That last bit I think is unlikely to be considered generic, in my opinion, and seems key to what I would imagine would be taking place in the movie.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

And yet, Tommy achieved more concrete success in the first few years of his tenure than Macek ever did and had a much higher average quality level...

Folks romanticize the "good old days" until they look back without the rose-tinted glasses and realize that Macek was the man with the reverse-Midas touch and virtually all of what came out before 2001 was of comically poor quality.

 

What successes of Tommy's are you referring to? Shadow Chronicles, the Toynami licensed figures, or the Wildstorm comics license? I agree that he may have done a decent job of bringing it back into the spotlight.

However, my intent in my statement the other day was about quality level. I think that the things which he personally touched (i.e. the stories that he wrote or "directed") were very low quality. I think that there was better quality writing going on in the early '90s, and I say that as someone who recently re-read a chunk of that material.

3 hours ago, Lorindor said:

I got a reply on my PM to MAAS Toys. HG hasn't approved their Kickstarter plan and MAAS are waiting for more information from HG. I think they want to wait with going public with information until they know something for certain.

This just seems... hmmm.... how to be polite about it... foolish.

Their entire business model is based around kickstarter. They claimed to have the license, but terms such as funding and what would be a go or no-go weren't discussed? I really think MAAS had some very preliminary conversation with HG, and then jumped the gun claiming to have a license and rushing out a mediocre design.

1 minute ago, slide said:

 

I guess the movie-deal will be officially sunk in 2021 when HG loses their rights? [on the logic of: if they don't hold the rights, they can't sub-let them to a third-party]

Well, they can license whatever they own, which at that point will presumably just be whatever they would argue they have added as original creative content not present in the original series, and the name itself (which I believe may be the only trademark they'll retain). So... something, but not much. Sort of like what you'd have left from Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles if you removed all the MOSPEADA mecha.

7 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

Pretty sure the movie deal killed the franchise's progression.   When someone buys the rights to the movie it can put a freeze on most things.

I was more referring to Shadow Chronicles, which I don't think could lay any blame on the movie deal.

4 hours ago, easnoddy said:

These could be so much better. But the prices are RIDICULOUS. You could get a Marvel legends figure for that price. The morphers were better than this.

Interestingly, they've gone up on the prices compared to their similar Macross ones, while also having fewer molds in the set.

The Macross set was $12 each (or a dozen for $120) and had 4 distinctive molds, with one mold being used with 3 different heads for 3 different figures. This one is really only 2 molds, plus a couple extra heads.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Anything said on why they mysteriously went silent for almost two months with no warning?

I wonder if they got cold feet now that even Harmony Gold is admitting they might not be able to secure a renewal of their license, or if Harmony Gold said crowdfunding of any type is right out so they have no way to fund it.

Not a word.

I didn't scan through all the old stuff on their site closely to see if things were reworded, but the quick glance I took seemed to talk about interacting with the community and the fans, as opposed to talking about crowdfunding.

Still, as I've griped before, they're not so great at taking feedback from the community if it isn't pure praise.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

"Slightly better than what we had in the 80's" is all we can fairly expect from Robotech-branded merchandise... the franchise hasn't really progressed since '86 anyway.

Frankly, if we want to go by how the franchise has "progressed" since Tommy took over, I'd say it's more of "regressed", and I'd be inclined to expect "drastically worse than what we has in the 80s or 90s".

Looks like MAAS is back to posting on Facebook, after being silent since Jan. 16. Still no comment on Southern Cross or replies to questions about the project or kickstarter.

If they were cheap, I'd be tempted to get them, just because I'm thrilled to see any MOSPEADA/New Gen stuff any time it come out. However, at $14 per blind box figure, or $180 for 15 figures (I guess to ensure that you get at least one of each), that's just silly.

15 hours ago, Kuma Style said:

Never watched this as a kid, but I really do love the look.

10 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Awesome.

Skipped the original release, but this time around I'm in for some Go-Lion action. Never understood the allure of vehicle Voltron, but to each his own.

I honestly remember the lion Voltron episodes much better than the vehicle Voltron ones (by A LOT), but I always loved vehicle Voltron more. To me, as a kid, it was about vehicles turning (or combining) into robots, and not animals. Dinosaurs were, obviously, an exception.

1 minute ago, slaginpit said:

Incredible how much this thing has dropped in Value.

 

WOW. I paid 300 for him when he was going for much more.

I think its an awesome combinor.Not sure why its getting so much hate .

Has it gotten any negative reviews, or did sellers just over stock on it?

12 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

What was the Black Friday price?  He's in stock for $200 at TFSource.

Don't remember for sure, but I think it was around $125 or $140.