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Ore no uta o kike! Uen ai shinku abauto yuu ai tatchi maiserufu!

Yeah! Shake it baby! Wait... She`s starting to turn around

GET RIDE! VALKDRIVER

Wardrobe Malfunction!

Reba West sings "My boyfriend is a Coordinator"

So far we have some cool threads about Valks, scale comparison. What about posting your character pics?

I`ll start it off with;

Mao and the Secret of Macross Zero

Roy fails his morale check badly.

But as a small consolation he makes his undergarment soilage check.

OFF TOPIC ALERT!

Not a Trekkie, but I thought Bird of Prey were the Klingons, not Romulans?

I believe he`s talking about the D'deridex-Class Warbird that appears in ST TNG. Sometimes called a bird of prey. The B`Rell class Bird of prey that you see in the early ST movies IS a Klingon ship, but based on a Romulan design. Later on you see huge Klingon Bird of Preys in TNG, but those are K`vort class cruisers.

This is a case of lazy CGI animators scaling up ship designs to make new ships. This also happens alot in Macross and other Anime. Usualy by accident though, not to make new ships.

Well, I went down to their physical store today and got the last five. Scored this:

1 Hikaru (clear)

2 Hikaru (normal)

1 Minmay (clear)

1 Minmay (normal)

Really happy about the two Minmays.

F.

congrats, I take back what I said earlier. That gives you some powerful trading material.

Bariaburu Faita

I dont think the CMS sets deserve such harsh criticism. Of all the "random" trading figures being sold now, they are the most predictable.

A sealed box will always contain a full set of normal hair(baring packaging errors) You only miss out on a clear hair/alternate if you get the chase. They are also packaged in a set order so you can pick exactly the figure you want. Even the chase figure is easy to pick out.

And the clear hair variants are much better than the bronze/metalic/all clear variants that other sets have. Very easy to paint the hair if you dont mind about the collectors value.

The one valid gripe I have seen is the below average quality of the paint job, especially set 2. Oh yeah, and Roys face.

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Caveat Emptor indeed. Very strong warning. From my experience, when a high demand trading figure suddenly shows up at a single store, the figures have a high chance of being pre shaken. I have never delt with this store, but due to the ease of picking out the hikaru and minmay figs...

Just these 2

Well, if this was a snake it would have bit us all in the A$$ Its all true folks. Open up this months Dengeki Hobby and look under the article on the CMS Myria 3pack. Yep, a green fligh suited Hikaru. These will be sold at the Tokyo Super Fest 33 July 4th. But they were ALSO sold at TSF 32. And none of us knew... Excuse me while I go book a bus ticket to Tokyo;)

Bariaburu Faita

Uh, isnt the Tokyo Super Festival 33 next month? Like on the fourth. He`s talking like past tense. And how did he get them if he`s in Singapore.

Bariaburu Faita

There is still an element of luck..

I took out an unopened box that could be either Minmay diorama or the cockpit (based on the position -- as mentioned in the other thread) and shook it. It "felt" heavier than its neighbour (the other Minmay diorama), and made just one sound -- the Minmay diorama has several thin pieces that produce very characteristic sounds.

I opened it.. and found the Minmay diorama.  For some reason, the other pieces were stuck to the box in such a way that they didn't move when I shook it.

There's no 100% in life. 

True, there is no 100%, but by being careful you can get close to 99.9%. Another way to tell the difference between the Minmay diorama and Secret is the speed of content shifting. The diorama is very tightly packed, especially if the parts are stuck. So it will take more effort to shift the contents in any direction. But since the secret has no other parts to rub up against the sides, it slides freely. Shake the box, and feel how the diorama box has more inertia resisting the shake.

But its not all that bad, getting the alternate minmay diorama is good. Lots of people prefer that color over the normal "frosted" look. Plus lots of people that got the secret need that variant to complete their sets and might pay a nice sum to take it off your hands.

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Ok, since the board seems to be overwhelmingly pro-shaking, I`ll give you all a couple pointers.

First, get out a Sara figure and the Secret.

Notice how Sara is thinner than the box. So when you shake the box side to side you get allot of movement, and get the sound of soft PVC muffled by a plastic bag hitting cardboard; "Paf Paf" Also, due to the stand and various loose bits you get a "Rattle Rattle" along with that.

Now note how the Secret has a high stand attached, so there is very little clearance between it and the box, so there is very little noise when you shake it side to side; "shif shif" And being one solid piece of ABS there is no other noise.

Sara is fairly tall compared to the box, so only a slight bump when you shake top to bottom. Plus the rattle.

The Secret, on the other hand, is short and has plenty of room to accelerate to noisemaking velocity. And since its a solid piece of ABS vice PVC, you get a nice "Ka-thunk Ka-thunk" sound when shaking top to bottom.

So these principles can be applied to just about any figure. Keep in mind the material composition, physical dimensions, and parts count and you will never be surprised as to what you get. Weight alone is not enough to base figure identification on. Use your brain, and other senses.

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Hello fellow Makurosu fans.

Sorry to derail any ongoing discussions but I have a question to post to you guys that I felt fit into this thread.

Is box shaking bad?

I got up early on my day off from work to hit Yodobashi Camera and sure enough, they had a freshly opened box of CM`s set 2. Take out bottom left and shake... rattle rattle. Pause, then take out bottom right and shake... ka-thunk ka-thunk. So 546 yen later I have the cockpit secret mini. Hit Toys r us next and also walk away with a secret. This took a bit more time since all the boxes were out individualy on a shelf.

I thought of continuing my rampage but thought, this feels kinda wrong. When do I stop? I made a complete set of the first set, including all 4 Mao as well as 2 secrets in the same way. If they are for my own use, is it ok? What if I were to Ebay them?

What about stores that cherry pick all the secrets and leave the others for unwary customers to buy? I`ve learned never to buy trading figure boxes or gachapon from stores that employ fanboys. Thats why I frequent Toys r us, supermarkets, and other normal stores. Some are a bit more honest though, Animate was selling some unopened boxes for half price. And another lesson I learned the hard way was to never buy unopened boxes for 100yen. They will undoubteldy be all the same character.

And how many of you out there also shake boxes? And those of you that don`t live where the boxes are sold individualy, would you shake if you had the chance? Ah the trials and tribulations of toy buying, who would of thought of the moral delima that this hobby would bring.

It seems CM`s corporation is encouraging this, making the secrets so easy to identify by shaking. As well as putting the figures in a specific order. Should they randomize the boxes to make it more fair? Make all the figures weigh the same? Lets get some good discussion going on here. (unless you really are just interested in the panty discussion;)

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Greetings fellow figure addicts.

I just got my box of figures and was quite happy to find the mystery minmay fig. Apparentlly its not excessively rare since several others here also got the fig. I was originaly thinking that if I got all the normal hair figs I would be happy, but after inhaling the mindcontrol fumes from the paint on the figures I got the urge to get all the figs;) So is there anyone out there willing to sell/trade their clear hair Mao? Either winking or not is fine. FYI the normal hair Mao I got is winking.

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The Anime Red Comet Barron

"Scan your assigned TV channels, find the Anime and record it down and anything else is rubbish"