RavenHawk

On 1/19/2019 at 2:23 PM, Einherjar said:

For anyone taking this more seriously than they should, have you seen any Furmanisms in the comic book?

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Furmanism

What kind of a sadist are you, expecting us to read these a second time to look for Furmanisms?

(and no, I didn't notice any the first time through, but I wasn't really looking; I was too caught up in how far his writing has fallen)

On 1/18/2019 at 8:58 AM, Mechapilot77 said:

hmmm... i don't think they are even at the "ready to take to factory" stage yet, and i also seem to detect that many of these small companies "do the design" or hire someone to do it, but skip some of the technical aspects  of the design engineering part of it and and expect "the factory" to "figure it out".  if each component is fully spec'd the only issue can be noncompliance with spec.  anyway, it seems they aren't at that point yet as i don't think they have a good design yet.

One of their designers (from a different MAAS toyline) said outright in an interview that he designs the look of the toy and how it should transform, and leaves it to the factory to figure out how joints should work, how parts should peg into place, and what tolerances to use. The quality of the figures and transformation completely depends on which factory they go with, and they switch between multiple different factories for different lines.

6 minutes ago, tekering said:

Actually, they've directly responded to my complains on Facebook:

And my response:

Overall, the Facebook comments have been much more positive, and not nearly as critical as we've been here... 

Full Disclaimer:

It's been a long day, so I may be reading the Facebook page with a bit of a negative lens.

Tekering, your post was polite and gracious, so my respect for that.

On to my reaction:

My read of their response pretty much lines up with what I said a couple days ago (I think... sorry if I'm misremembering).

Their response to you is typical of what I've seen in the past. Most people only praise them on Facebook (and don't get me wrong, I have two of their products and LOVE THEM), but any time someone has pointed something out that isn't right, they just respond saying that they've thought it through already and what they are doing is the right way to go. My criticism isn't that they don't respond to people, it's just that they listen but don't hear.

3 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

It almost looks like they are building it based on this monstrosity.

That's the thing. When I was a kid, my neighbors had this toy. I remember folding the legs under it to try to simulate the hover tank mode.

It looks like they are literally just taking this version, and adding in a couple details, and that's it.

The benefits of modern toy engineering over mid 1980s toy engineering... just don't seem to be there in this design.

2 minutes ago, easnoddy said:

SDF-1 has low flow.

In all fairness, I think this is actually a pretty decent cover.

I feel dirty admitting that.

6 minutes ago, jenius said:

To be fair to them, no one knows the Southern Cross market because the last company that even attempted anything for it was Matchbox... and they made pretty bad toys during the heyday of the franchise so not really apples to apples. No one really will know until people actually put money toward Southern Cross products because chatter on the Internet is meaningless. 

That's not to absolve them if you think they're doing a poor job drumming up interest or you think they're doing a poor job with their design-work. It will be tough to parse whether there simply isn't enough interest in general or 'there is no interest' due to their doing a poor job in either their marketing or design work. 

Agreed.

With MAAS' history, it'll be a good year or so before a product comes out, so I think a few extra weeks on redesigning the initial concept (and let's remember, right now all they have is some CAD models and renderings generated from them) wouldn't hurt the timeline.

If you make a clunky mediocre toy, only hardcore fans will buy it.

If you make a sleek, aesthetically pleasing toy with some innovative design and transformation gimmicks, then you can draw in people who wouldn't necessarily be hunting for a SC toy, but might just really like your design.

1 hour ago, Einherjar said:

Minmei sings and has character development.  That's just a defibrillator on legs.

Minmei had character development?

11 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

It's really hilarious, every time they put out a few good panels of mecha action, the characters turn into wax dummies.

I'm pretty those panels are from a different issue, like 5 or more months back. The good new mecha panels are a different artist, I think.

30 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

That's a good find, RavenHawk. Nice purchase.

Btw, the Porsche 928S 'metal car' is a from a line called Machine Robo DX made by Tonka back in '83. And was used as part of GoBots.

Yup. That's how young I am. Hahaha!

 

Thanks. Yeah, I saw the picture in the posting, and thought "That looks like a Machine Robo DX", but it wasn't until I got it in hand and transformed it that I realized, "Hey, that's Herr Fiend!"

Either way, it was a fun little find, and it let me add a Matchbox Cyclone to my shelf without eating into the budget for the (hopefully soon) Yellow Sentinel.

Oh, and I think I'm pretty "young" too. I had more Gobots (well, knockoffs even less expensive than the real ones) as a kid, but no DXs (those were approaching Transformers prices back then).

As I wait for new MOSPEADA (and Megazone) products, I've been slowly looking around at deals on old items to fill out the collection.

I'd just like to say "thank you" to the few folks who still post items on eBay without looking online to see what they are.

I just picked up this sweet "Matchbox motorcycle", and it even came with a "Bandai metal car".

Perfect condition? Not at all... but for a whopping $5.50 (plus $3.50 shipping), I'll take it.

So... they're taking this thing in totally new directions, with increasingly less to do with what is commonly known as "Robotech?"

All things considered, that may not be a bad thing...

This reminds me a bit of when Furman took over the US Marvel run of Transformers, and started running the stories towards less of a direction of what was previously Transformers, and more as a springboard for his own original (or heavily modified) human characters. Anyone remember the Neo Knights? Furman was readying them to be their own series for when Transformers inevitably got canceled.

4 minutes ago, 505thAirborne said:

Probably a lot of Anime magic going on here, but this is how it looks in the series. 

Their tank mode definitely looks off compared to the lineart.

I know it's a boxy design, but theirs looks less... sleek, I guess. Too much legs just folded under it, not really collapsing into place... the gun/cannon looks too small and just sort of sitting on top, instead of partially nested in place, and the, uh, fold-out hover thingies (sorry) look too small too, or at least too small compared to the rest of the lower leg.

4 minutes ago, enphily said:

https://maastoys.com/2019/01/introducing-the-veritech-hover-tank-in-1-32-scale/?fbclid=IwAR10MyR8UFqrKjoXBXJYg6Oc3dmIw3pWa0F6nSqq2EqkQ7LYqiOnQ80Xqe0

My only real nitpick here is with their statements about how they listen to the fans. In my VERY LIMITED experience with some of the products that MAAS has put out, while they are very active on social media, they also are convinced that they know best. So, they do "listen" to fans who are very vocally praising them, but input which doesn't line up with what they have already decided upon or which is more critical than glowing seems to get ignored.

So, I guess they're a good fit for partnership with HG...

(again, limited experience with them, so it might not speak to the specific folks behind this particular project)

5 minutes ago, sh9000 said:

Didn't realize it was going to last that long...

Not to sound out-of-character positive on a series that has been generally very poor, but, based purely on the preview, it doesn't look like Furman is phoning the script in quite as badly as on previous issues (faint praise), and I'm fine with the inclusion on the Invid. This storyline, for me, is completely separate from anything before and, as a Robotech property, it makes sense to link the generations together more closely for the fans.

1 minute ago, Mechapilot77 said:

"87.9% Positive feedback " though so....yeah you are protected via paypal and through ebay but i've learned that too good to be true prices on ebay are usually sellers "going rogue"...could be wrong though.

I buy a lot of stuff from Japan and China through eBay, and my experience with these types of posts (relatively low seller ratings, prices too good to be true) is that they either end up canceling the orders, or you just don't get what you ordered. You wait 2 months for the packet to arrive, then it doesn't, the seller doesn't respond to emails, eBay won't do anything because it's been too long, and you're stuck with PayPal. PayPal refunds you the money, but you've lost a couple months of time, the prices have gone up meanwhile, and, oh yeah, since it's been so long, you can no longer leave the seller a negative review (i.e. an 87.9% rating would actually be like 50% if people were able to leave reviews by the time they knew for sure there was an issue).

Personally, I only deal with sellers who have about 95% or who are very responsive to initial questions about the item. I've had a lot of good experiences, I've gotten some fantastic deals, but also been soured by some negative ones.

22 hours ago, Bobby said:

Easter egg discovery - took the cover off the Megazone 23 artbook (discussed earlier in this thread) that came with the Megazone 23 Complete Box set and lo and behold hidden on the reverse side unfolds a huge 26.5"x 11" poster of a peculiar looking Garland. Perhaps most notable is the exposed front disc brakes and calipers (huge departure from the original line art). It has the silver front axle shoulders and forearm handles with no side view mirrors like the original Garland. But then has the back-calf flaps of the Proto-Garland (but in silver instead of bronze), and front brown knee-cap/shin armor (again like the original), but then overall shares some resemblance with the proportions of the E=X Garland!

I saw that too, but I don't think I really looked closely at it before. I just assumed it was one of those "Here are parts exposed and flaps open" kind of images they do to make things look more realistic (like the MOSPEADA image with all of the made up internals, or lots of scifi manuals do showing the insides of spaceships).

Since we have no new MZ23 stuff to report, I thought I'd post a bit about the PS3 game, which I recently picked up for a very fair price. I got the limited Japan-only "international edition."

Instead of just a PS3 game case, it comes in a box:

Inside, you have the standard game case:

But the fun is inside of this additional box inside:

First, we have a DVD:

It's region encoded, so I haven't been able to watch it yet.

(I thought I could play the game and watch the DVD on my son's PS3, but it turns out that his is broken and he had moved on to the PS4 already, so no backwards compatibility or region-free watching).

My understanding is that this is the version of MZ23 Part II that was created as an educational video to teach Japanese how to speak English. It uses the Harmony Gold Robotech voice actors for the dubbing. It also supposedly includes the ending from Part I that had new material created for the Robotech Movie, so it's sort of a Robotech-ized MS23, I suppose.

Finally, the box also contains a special book:

The book contains a lot of images of the 3d models used in the game:

As well as character designs:

Interestingly, it also contained some original Artmic artwork/design sketches which, offhand, I don't remember seeing in other books:

I've seen this out there for over $100, and I don't think it's worth that. However, if you're patient and wait for one of the decent deals (I paid around $30), then I think most people will be happy to add it to their collection.

20 hours ago, Bobby said:

This sums up my feelings towards my ownership of the Freeing E=X Garland...

It's super fiddly. It won't stay together in bike mode or robot mode. I have it attached to a stand from a different model kit right now... and dang but it looks gorgeous, as long as you don't touch it.

That said, I'm still going to reiterate what I said before: The more I transform it, the more fun it is. It has really grown on me. If it just had leg/knee/ankle/heel joints that stayed in place in robot mode, and the legs stayed in place in bike mode, it would be fantastic, in my opinion.

But I do like the gifs.

5 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

Aldnoah.Zero ("ΛLDNOΛH.ZERO") (2014 to 2015), on the recommendation of a panel at Philcon 2018, via Hulu. The most interesting part is young male protagonist Inaho "Nao" KAIZUKA, who has an almost Vulcan demeanor, and the talent to quickly spot the scientific principle in each enemy mecha attack and its inherent vulnerability.

Premise: During the Apollo missions (1972), humans find remnants of an ancient supercivilization on the moon, with a hypergate to Mars. A scientist is recognized by the techbase and given the heritable ability to activate its power supply ("aldnoah"); he declares himself emperor of Mars ("Vers") and attracts a bunch of people to be nobles in his newfangled feudal system. During subsequent hostilities with Earth (1999), the hypergate explodes, turning 30% of the Moon into an orbiting debris belt. There's mecha combat ("kataphraktos", from the Greek "armored", developed in English to "cataphract" to describe armored heavy cavalry used in antiquity); the Versians "orbital knights" have customs with special powers, and Earth has "real robot" squads.

So, we've got tropes from David Weber's Mutineer's Moon/Empire from the Ashes trilogy, Stargate Atlantis, and Cowboy Bebop, but not Neal Stephenson's Seveneves.

Weaknesses: The underdeveloped idea that a bunch of people decided to secede from Earth, and to form a feudal society. That they developed a distinct culture in a mere 40-ish years (1972 to 2013). The motivation that they're food-impoverished (chlorella and krill), despite having vast aldnoah energy supplies, and that they're facing population pressures, despite being separated from Earth for maybe two generations. The unanswered question of how many of their devices (Landing Castles and custom Kataphraktos) they inherited from the ancient Martians or engineered themselves. Between seasons 1 and 2, the three people who should be dead but, eh, they got better.

I thoroughly enjoyed Aldnoah.Zero, and kept it on my watch list on Netflix to rewatch it again (probably in a month or so).

First of all, I generally like these types of scifi shows. Second, I enjoy ones that are more "real" robot. What I really liked about it, though, is where the protagonist doesn't just have some special powers (arguably), but is a thinking person. The victories (whether realistic or not) or though thinking through the problem and trying to find design flaws or strategic advantages.

16 minutes ago, jenius said:

1/72 is a dreadful scale for Robotech, all the other designs in Robotech (outside the Zentraedi) are much smaller than in the Macross universe. A 1/72 Alpha is like 4" tall. The Macross universe could go very far with that scale and a Robotech nut could build out a very handsome Macross Saga collection if he/she augmented with models. 

Now you have me all excited for 1.25" Cyclones.

(FYI, maybe it's the kid in me who grew up on G.I. Joe, but I always like 1:18ish for anything that has a figure to go along with it)

3 minutes ago, tekering said:

As far as I can tell, the unique 1:72 scale is the only appeal this toy has to offer.

Are you suggesting that being an officially licensed Robotech toy, meeting Tommy Yune's exacting standards, isn't enough for you? Shame on you, sir! Shame, I say!

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

More like two half-men... since neither of them is really qualified to do the job they're doing.

I think you got the correct answer, but your math was wrong. My understanding is that the Robotech store is literally just Steve, where he does all of the orders, packaging, and shipping. I'd say that equals 3/4 of a qualified person. Tommy, at his job... maybe 1/4 of a qualified person... maybe...

6 hours ago, Atheonyirh said:

Oh, those look rather interesting.

I got two sets: one in army green, one in dark gray. They look very different in photos, but aren't all that different in person. All in all, I'm very happy with them. They look great, and have a ton of customization that you can do. Unfortunately, they're seriously overpriced.

52 minutes ago, optimuspint said:

Didn’t MAAS toys have some kind of issue on kickstarer with one of their figures recently? 

They did a Kickstarter for the Mayhem Mekanics figures, but I don't recall there being any issues.

These are the ones I was referring to. Basically big (like 12" or so) mech figures and vehicles, plus solider figures (did't get any of those), where everything can be disassembled and reassembled into armor and weapons.