JB0

I hadn't thought of it before he said it, but sketchley makes a good point. The island is under VASTLY different geological circumstances after the fold than before. It's gonna stretch out and relax now that the Earth's gravity isn't pressing down on it, and it isn't going to be particularly stable for a while until it works out its new situation.

I just want to note that the Lancer's a cool-looking little ship and I'm sad that it's kinda rubbish.

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I mean, I can only speak to my local Targets, but despite my desperate scrambling to preorder figures the minute they were available due to FOMO, I've seen pretty much every Buzzworthy release in stores, with more than a few turning into shelfwarmers... I mean hype for the Origins figures drove some kind of initial surge, but they seemed to restock and wind up on clearance, and Kup, toy-colored Dinobot, Towline, and all the N.E.S.T repaints were definite shelfwarmers.  Oh, and to this day I can still walk into Burlington or Ollies and pick up $6 Silverstreaks that Target wrote off).  The only Target exclusives that seemed genuinely difficult to get were before they started using the Buzzworthy Bumblebee branding, like Thrust and Runabout.

The ones in my area dedicate minimal shelf space to Transformers, and don't even regularly stock the little space available.

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

So, is South Ataria Island still floating in the vicinity of Pluto?

Makes me wonder how much it would take, but could they conceivably convert that into a satellite city?

(if it's even possible; probably not but as a pengbuzz I must ask, since it has buildings in place as well as facilities.)

I was under the impression that they rapidly stripped much of the useful stuff before they left, once they realized it was gonna be a long trip in the slow lane.

Regardless, even if the island wasn't stripmined, and managed to hold itself together... most of the buildings and infrastructure were not designed to accomodate deep space. They aren't airtight, and they aren't well-insulated*. Be easier to knock it all down, dig it all up, and rebuild from scratch.

* Pluto's orbit is cold enough that for most of the plutonian year, the world's favorite KBO has solid nitrogen on its surface. When the local weather forecast is "frozen air", you need REALLY good insulation.

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

Apparently Target decided to cancel some of their exclusives when some of the previous ones didn't sell too well.

Imagine that! Who knew that if you never stock a product, people won't buy it?

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

the "plate tectonics specal" that involved the ship kicking the ground so hard a chunk of the Earth's crust could be flipped up to use as a shield

That... that's somethin' else right there.

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Dunno... the dates that we have are primarily for events depicted in the series proper.

Episode 6 depicts the Macross in the vicinity of Saturn in the first half of April 2009, and episode 7 depicts the ship approaching Mars in the first week of October 2009. Little of what happens in the middle is touched on.

If we were to assume (unwisely) a uniform velocity for the entire 173-day period between the events of episodes 6 and 7, it would take approximately 47 days to cross the asteroid belt based on observations that suggest the belt is approximately one AU across. Of course, this is unwise because constant thrust does not equal constant velocity. The ship would accelerate briefly to a specific speed and then coast at that speed until needing to decelerate on approach to a target.

It is worth noting that passage through the asteroid belt was likely little different than empty space. The asteroid belt is not very dense at all, and we send space probes through it with fairly low levels of care. 

The Pioneer 10 and 11 became the first to pass through the belt in the 1972(essentially to find out if it was safe to throw the larger and more expensive Voyagers through), so that had been known for about a decade when Macross came out. This is likely reflected in the ship's passage being too uneventful to warrant an episode. 
 

(Their stopover in Saturn's rings is... well, let's say "scientifically implausible", but that was learned much closer to when the show came out and it would've been difficult to find accurate reference material.)

8 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

I could have sworn I read once that a lot of the urban centers had extensive bomb shelters due to the recent unification wars.

Probably true, it makes sense. But the zentradi bombardment would've been harsher than anything they were designed to deal with, both in terms of yield per blast and in number of blasts.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Earth pets like dogs are still rare and valuable animals into the 2060s.

A world without dogs?! Truly horrible.

11 hours ago, Areoborg said:

Wouldn't a metallic hydrogen be more like a solid rocket fuel, rather than a liquid fuel (or mostly liquid with the hydrogen slush)?  Its not like you can close the valve or anything like that, unless you're going to rely solely on the presence of an oxidizer to turn it off an on when using it in space.

Metallic hydrogen's a liquid, much like metallic mercury.

Oh, hey, I got a cool thing from this brand the other day! Some kind of car kit... I didn't think they sold models?

I'm not really sure what purpose the variable Monster actually serves.

It's a Monster that transforms into a jet, sure. But it isn't aerodynamic enough to make sense in atmosphere, and you can just boost around in artillery mode in space, so... why? It is a Monster with more points of failure for no gain.

8 hours ago, sketchley said:

Did someone say chainsaws on a VF?

https://www.deviantart.com/studiootaking/art/VT-1CS-Silviculture-Valkyrie-Lineart-605492693

It... it's beautiful.

42 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

One reason there aren't rocket launchers that fire chainsaws...

... is because people lack VISION.

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

The original nes had to be played before super metroid came out. due to so many improvements, it's hard to go back to nes if super metroid was first. 

NES metroid is my all time favorite. I like it more than super metroid bc it had no map.and you can get lost.

 

Precisely. People that come to Metroid 1 now are expecting a game that plays like Super Metroid, when it is a very different beast.

I really like that the rodan legs can be configured for toon or toy accuracy. 

Pity the stand blade isn't clear plastic, or at least detailed to look like something.

United Chase looks really cool, which isn't something I ever thought I'd say about a Rescuebots toy.

Meanwhile, my local Target has nothing of interest. The only robot from the current subline is Armada Megatron, who just isn't doing it for me.

What they do have is FOUR PEGS OF REACTION FIGURES. Who even wants these? Why do they exist? And why is Target dedicating so much shelf space to them? The world may never know.

29 minutes ago, Scyla said:

Don’t say that! I might have to buy it now. 

Yessss. Do iiiiiiiit.

Man, that is almost really cool. I understand the limitations of the cost target, but so many of these lowest-end toys would be really cool if they had just one or two more dollars to spend in production.

The VF-1 is for diplomacy.

The Monster is for gunboat diplomacy.

On 12/8/2023 at 10:34 PM, mikeszekely said:

However... if you ignore everything I just said in the previous paragraph, Magneous is actually kind of cool.  He's got decent articulation, a straightforward transformation, and a vibe that's basically "what if Optimus Prime had a love child with a Rock Lord that grew up to be a bad guy?".  So while you probably should skip him, if you don't you might find that you actually like him.

That is almost exactly as cool as I expected. Definitely gonna add this sucker to my shelf at some point.

27 minutes ago, tekering said:

at roughly 1:450 scale, the Mega Sofvi works with my smallest Mobile Suits, at least. 🤓

I love seeing a photographic example of how friggin' BIG Gunbuster is.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They thought they'd be squaring off against, and potentially peacefully interacting with, alien infantry for the most part so they constrained the designs of their anti-giant weapons to the approximately 10m height they were expecting the alien giants to be.

That assumption wound up being convenient for policing post-war Earth, though. They already had the needed equipment ready to go.

On 11/30/2023 at 11:32 PM, mikeszekely said:

While I think Hasbro might have intended it to be fire, I like to imagine Code Red is loading pizzas into it because it's firing molten cheese at his enemies.

Headcanon accepted.

The odd proportions kinda make me wonder if this might not have begun life as an (admittedly ill-guided) attempt at making a new Ratchet/Ironhide mold that had more of the original toy in it.

1 hour ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Considering the Nightmare Plus is still running around during the events of Delta....yeah, when the age of man is over in the Macross universe, the testaments to it's existence would be warehouses of VF-171s waiting to be deployed once again.

 

The holy trinity of military equipment. B-52 bombers, M2 machine guns, VF-17(1) transforming fighterbots.