Cyclone Trooper

IT'S THE APORKALYPSE!

eyesonme78...last anyone heard, the SDF-1 was being given a 50,000 yen price tag. As of today, the exchange rate puts it at right at $520.00 US (actual current price is $519.57). And that's not even factoring in shipping on this thing. Retracting Head Tar Tar...a few of us have been thinking the same thing: 1.) Releasing a prototype (and pics thereof) over a year before it's supposed to hit store shelves (like Yamato did with the Monster)... 2.) Giving a uber-expensive MSRP on it (again, like the Monster). 3.) After the initial buzz at a few hobby shows, its never seen nor spoken of again. 4.) Yamato slipped it under Graham's radar completely. There are just things about this that seem to be a case of history repeating itself. Granted, in this case, not a whole lot of time has passed since its announcement, but still...there could be a good chance that this will end up being vaporware. Or it will end up being a limited-edition Japan-only exclusive...knowing our luck.

Now THAT is dedication to the hobby right there! My wife is currently undergoing the initial phase of a surrogate pregnancy for a couple out of New York. That pays about $20,000...but you don't get the money until you "deliver the goods" so to speak. But I dunno if begging our wives or girlfriends to carry a baby for someone else to support our Valkyrie addiction would go over well! lol *can see several MW members penciling the idea down as a last-ditch option

Oh I know. It's just that since the prototype has been making the rounds to all the hobby shows lately, I was thinking that eventually we'd get to see this gargantuan beauty in Storm Attacker mode at some point...

So... Anything new about the SDF-1? It's been over 6 weeks since the last post...

And is it me or does Roy look like he's suited up in an olive drab flightsuit? Or is it just the lighting making it look dark green?

...and once again, I have been enlightened in the School of Macross. Thanks, dude!

At the risk of sounding like a COMPLETE idiot...exactly what are boobie ducks? The only reason I'm even asking this is because Macross is a universe where names like "Pink Peckers" and "Double Nuts" are spoken with a straight face...and actually taken seriously.

Watch Yamato steal MechTech's sound effects idea and incorporate them into the 1/2000 SDF-1!

Well...if nothing else, I'm confident that the members of Macross World will be alive and well in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a bioweapon-gone-awry! ...or a really bad cold & flu season.

If you review the above image of the DYRL leg layout, you'll see that the engines are housed in a large block at the rear (or foot) of the leg. The entire leg structure wasn't needed to house the main thrusters in either version of the SDF-1.

That story was SOOOOO last week!

For the love of Minmay...DON'T encourage them! lol

Just wait...there'll be a boob-shaped wrist-rest for your keyboard featuring Klan.

Well...after all the usual media overreaction...it was announced over the weekend that this strain of the Swine/H1N1 Flu is nothing more than a "garden variety" and is killing no more people worldwide than a regular strain of human flu. Nothing to fear now...according to a small barely-mentioned blurb on the evening news. The media has since brushed this under the rug and moved on to the next big story. Way to stir up panic where none was needed, Associated Press...all in the name of ratings.

Its not about the mousepads having boobs. Its more about how Macross F is cashing in on just about any gimmick idea under the sun...no matter how ridiculous. This sort of merchandise illustrates the opinions of some on here about how Macross F unabashedly and unapologetically panders to horny young male fans...be they of high school age or young professional adults. But the US has its own version of the "merchandising whore" in the form of George Lucas, so not much can be said on our part. Over the past 30+ years, we've seen everything from action figures to toothpaste to cereal boxes to soda cans to R2-D2 phones to high-end movie prop replicas emblazoned with Star Wars. And the list could go on, taking up several pages in this thread just to list everything... But I also understand that walking that "high wire" between preserving the integrity of a favorite anime, movie franchise, or TV show and outright turning it into "the next Star Wars" in terms of merchandising can be tricky and sometimes downright perilous from a business standpoint. But given that Macross F IS sort of a rehash of all Macross storylines from the past in the form of a slickly-animated homage and geared more toward the newest and younger generation of Macross fans, its just good business sense to milk the franchise for all its worth at this point in time...no matter how stupid or illogical some of the merchandise may appear to us "old timers."

Yeah...you definitely don't want to tempt fate with Corporate America. In today's workplace, anything from the type of desktop image you have on your work computer to the color of your hair is open game for offending someone's sensibilities. A mousepad with boobs is definitely up there on that list, I can almost guarantee.

Its a cash cow...and merchandisers know that hardcore fans will pay out the nose for practically any piece of Macross F-themed crap they throw out there. Wait until we start seeing $75 electric toothbrushes shaped like Klan or Sheryl standing in provocative poses...

That's the other thing about the VF-11 and the YF/VF-19 that's always bothered me is how the head unit sort of just sits out in the open at the rear of GERWALK mode. It just stares down at the ground, not really serving any function yet again. Talk about having your head up your...er, nevermind! But seriously, the strange positioning of the head unit in this mode looks like the design wasn't fully thought out or something...

Looking over the VF-11 Thunderbolt thread, I've noticed a trend in just about every Valkyrie design rolled out since the VF-11 where the head unit's laser barrel is in a rear-facing position on the dorsal side of the mecha while in fighter mode, and is usually at a fixed 30 to 90 degree angle, depending on the type of Valkyrie. The older VF-1 series used the head unit as a kind of rotating laser turret in fighter mode, as evidenced during Max's aerial battle with Milia in DYRL. But it seems that the later generations of mecha simply abandoned that design idea. The head-mounted laser cannon(s) are simply sticking up out of the hull more because there was no other place for it to go, rather than it being functional in fighter mode. An enemy would have to be within a relatively small cone of fire to the rear of the Valkyrie for the laser to hit its mark. And that leads me to another question. Since Zentraedi technology has been incorporated into newer designs since Space War I, does this fixed rear-facing laser function in much the same way as the rear guns on a Regult? I, personally, would find it annoyingly difficult to manually fire a weapon like that to the rear of my Valkyrie at subsonic speeds without a dedicated gunner or the weapon being completely computer-controlled. The other question I have is about the penchant for for all these newer Valkyries to have "talon-like" feet (again, everything from the VF-11 to the VF-25 feature this type of foot/thruster). Is there some feature about this pointy-toed design that would improve thrust or something? Or was this nothing more than an aesthetic choice on Kawamori's part? Later designs---especially with the Macross Plus/Macross 7 designs---are far more angular and blocky in some ways. Like with the YF-21/VF-22, the legs are hidden behind two huge slabs of paneling that comprise nearly the entire underbelly of the mecha in fighter mode. The VF-22's gunpod is a huge blocky affair that just seems out of place compared to the fighter's aerodynamic profile...at least that's MY opinion. Just questions that I've had for years and just now decided to ask...

...and of course these will be followed up by a Klan-Klan keyboard wrist protector. Your wrists will rest snugly between the foot of cleavage it will feature.

Wow...I wasn't intending to do the whole "Chicken Little" thing here. I was just passing along the bit of news about countries seriously considering closing their ports and bringing international trade to a grinding halt. I wasn't exactly trying to sound like a Harbinger of Death! IF some countries had (or will) do such a thing, and Hong Kong or Japan happens to be some of them, then any shipments may be delayed until the crisis subsides. I swear that was all I was saying!

I haven't seen any other posts on here about this yet, so I thought I'd share something I heard tonight... Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you know that the World Health Organization has just raised the "threat level" to Level 5, the second-highest level before the Swine Flu is officially considered a full-blown worldwide pandemic. Some countries are treating this like its a real-life version of Stephen King's The Stand, while others (including here in the US) are only just starting to take the threat seriously. Tonight on the news, there was talk about how this will affect the world economy, since many countries are banning travel and imported goods outright until this whole thing either blows over or takes a turn for the worse. I realize that this isn't exactly the cheeriest of subjects to bring up, but if anyone has something in transit from overseas, don't be too shocked if it doesn't arrive in a timely manner. But honestly, in light of the current situation, I'm going to doubt that whether or not your Yammie arrives on time is going to be the biggest of concerns...

I think you have to look back as far back as the 1920s to see where the "evil robot" trend started. "Metropolis" from 1927 showed us a dystopian society where the role of humans and machines have been strangely reversed...humans acting like cogs in a massive industrial machine, while the robot is a status symbol by the rich and elite. These were common themes back during the Industrial Revolution...and many writers expressed the fear of machines making humans "obsolete" in their works here in the US. Since then, we've seen this same tired theme played out in everything from Terminator to The Incredibles... Since then, many American science fiction writers have made the "evil robot" idea a standard, though it HAS evolved somewhat over the decades. In Eando Binder's "I, Robot," the evil robot idea was taken a step further by making one of them "abnormal" in the respect that it respects humans and does not view them as obsolete meatbags. Issac Asimov actually disliked the whole "evil robot" idea and wrote several stories pursuing this "good robot" theme. His story "Bicentennial Man" was about a common household Threepio-like robot with a positronic brain who is allowed to break his programming and pursue creative endeavors over a 200-year period in his pursuit to become human...even grafting cloned organs onto his metal body near the end of the book. Yes, Gene Roddenberry "Carl Meceked" Data from Asimov. Asimov is responsible for the slew of "good" robots in modern American pop culture (C-3PO, WALL-E, Robby, Rosey, Data etc.). He disliked the idea of robots enslaving their creators or some other ulterior motive so much that he invented the famous "Asimov's Law of Robotics." I was born and raised in the US, but have always had an Eastern view on all-things-robotic. I would love to live in a world where we stand side by side with artificial constructs. I'm also one of the few who believes that if robots gained sentience (artificial or not), then they should be treated as people and not property. But that's also a theme that stories like Bicentennial Man and the Animatrix have addressed. Would humans accept robots as artificial lifeforms with their own set of "human rights" and freedoms as we enjoy? For many Americans, the idea of having to show the same level of common decency to a "goddamned machine" as you would show to your loved ones or your boss is simply unacceptable. And it may very well be a combination of Hollywood and genuine American arrogance that fuels the "evil robot" genre nowadays. I just had this discussion with my wife and she said she would definitely have a problem if her boss was a robot that she had to answer to... Besides, evil robots (like their evil human counterparts) are just more interesting to watch in movies than their kinder, gentler brethren.

Okay...then I now know why some sources are giving such large population numbers. It seems some sources indicate that the 70,000+ people aboard are all civilians while the military accounts for an ADDITIONAL 1200 to 20,000 on top of that. While others indicate that the 70,000 INCLUDES the military in the total number. The 90,000 seemed a tad out there for me too. I always thought it was in the 56,000 to 70,000 range.