Chronocidal

I would too, but I do wish they'd revisit the 262 like they did the VF-27. Proportions and shape were fine, but the internal mechanism is just a massive mess of over-engineering. I don't know if it's more or less accurate to the screen version, but the model kits are just much more enjoyable to transform all around. I'd still buy at least two Mirage 262 kits though.

Just means we'll have to pick up extra sets of the armor to customize for the whole squadron.

Or depending on the preferred mode, plane addicts.

Glad it was easily fixable, looks great!

Those little 1/100 VF-25 and YF-29 kits are amazing for alternate schemes, I grabbed a dozen or so of them with that exact intent. Also helps mitigate the fact that the decals that came with those kits are of absolutely terrible quality.

I don't clearly recall exactly how that weapon in Beyond came about, but I do remember that Kirk came into possession of a piece of it by negotiating some kind of peace treaty? Or something like that. I don't remember the specific details of how that mess went, but I feel like it's entirely possible that the specific chain of events leading to the situation in Beyond may have never happened in the Prime timeline, just because of different people being in different places at different times, and dealing with things in other ways. The Franklin and crew may have always been stranded, but what if Prime Spock's meddling in events resulted in something entirely different happening to them? I think the whole mental excursion into what changed and what didn't is ultimately an exercise in futility, because I'm sure all those little questions will never be answered, but I do think splitting the timeline opened up a Pandora's box of possibilities that offer plenty of feasible alternatives for why certain things occurred, but others didn't.

See, now I'm just imagining the entire casino arc of TLJ re-written as a condensed Oceans Eleven plot, where Poe and Finn make off with a fuel tanker. That would have made so much more sense, and been so much more entertaining to watch.

I wouldn't say you're at all wrong though. Much like his Trek movies though, I don't really think the acting has been a problem, at least not compared with other more glaring issues. The writing, though, is just a giant train that keeps on wrecking in slow motion.

I just mean having three levers for that function is the doofiest interface I've ever seen That'd be like having a separate stick shift knob for every individual gear in a transmission.

I must admit, I never understood the nostalgia for the BGF levers... yeah, it's cute, but that interface design is just so utterly nonsensical. On the other hand, the DYRL-style screen was way ahead of its time. It's essentially the same sort of cockpit that's in the F-35.

Hate to break this to you, but I think you have the inlet ramp doors mounted backwards. The thicker part should be inside toward the engine. Might not be too difficult to fix, depending on how well they were glued down, but fortunately the mounting points will stay hidden.

Judging by the fact that I picked up the VT-1 on heavy discount from HLJ when it was new (I think it was around $100, depending on the exchange rate at the time), I don't think the VT-1 was ever a hot seller. The VE-1 got an anniversary re-release, but not the VT-1, so I'm guessing Yamato didn't expect it to sell well enough to justify it, despite the even lower number of unique parts compared with the Elintseeker. I'd love to pick up a second Super Ostrich if I could, especially if all the unique markings were printed on. The original Yamato VE-1 releases though were almost a proto-premium release, with a huge amount of tampo right out of the box. If they really wanted to sweeten the deal and get us to buy the more VT-1s, they need to do what Bandai did with the HMR release, and include duty uniformed Hikaru and Misa as optional figures.

I actually realized that I'd done this accidentally on my VT-1 the other day. The backpack hinge on that one will let you shift the backpack up and down maybe half an inch, depending on the angle, but it might be a side effect of the different backpack design, and how the tails don't fold flat. I'd have to unpack a regular VF-1 to see how much room there is to shift it. Also to keep in mind, doing that will play with the angles of the boosters, if you have fast packs mounted.

In all my twenty something v.2 VF-1s, I've never once had to use that clip to get the backpack to stay up. It's actually been more of an eyesore, because the clips tend to go limp, and dangle around in fighter mode.

Especially compared with the standard Hasbro themselves set with GI Joes back then. Right now, I'm happy to see Hasbro going back to the vintage vehicles and figures, because frankly I think all of the designs from the new movies suck. The only merchandise I'm interested in at this point is stuff from the original trilogy (and then, it's mostly Bandai models ), with a few exceptions made for some of the better prequel designs. I don't know where the blame should lie exactly, but the new trilogy has felt like a disaster from the merchandising perspective. At least during the Ric Olie overstock debacle they had some pretty nice vehicles to sell, and they were simultaneously pumping out OT merchandise to ride the nostalgia wave, but now I'm pretty sure my local Wal-Mart is still stocked to the brim with unsold junk from TFA. I think the only worthwhile merchandise to come out of this trilogy has been the LEGO sets, because at least those can be repurposed when you get tired of the designs.

I've actually still got a pair of the MegaForce vehicles stashed away, the big blue swing-wing bomber, and the Triax jet bomber that carried a big missile-launching tank (I feel like they were called he Stratofortress, and Backlash ), along with a handful of the tiny diecast fighters. The little delta-winged Triax jets were always one of my favorite designs, and more than once I've considered building digital versions for use in a flight sim

I'm assuming all of these are single orders? I've asked multiple times over the past few months about my order for two, and gotten nothing but the repeated "Don't worry, we'll get you your order!" At this point I'd just be willing to take a single and store credit, but if they cancel the order entirely, I want it back in cash, because that's what a single will cost anywhere else.

This is the entire problem. I want at least a half dozen sets, and I'd rather they have the TV markings. I'm not going to pay 2-3 times the original price for something that I'll have to modify out of the box. I just want Bandai to issue the stupid things again instead of pretending like all their exclusive items are some precious commodity that they're worried about becoming too common.

Delta's first half was pretty decent, I thought, though it was a bit similar to 7 in style. If anything, the first few episodes boiled 7's long repetitive development phase down to the essentials so you didn't have to listen to the same songs 20 times before the plot began. The sad part is, the writing just fell off a cliff as soon as the plot became serious, and everything stopped making sense. Then it just became a near-literal clone of Frontier's plot, minus any intrigue about who the show's true villains actually were. I know the audience really isn't there for it, but I've actually always wanted to see an abridged version of Macross 7. Not necessarily a parody, because it's so silly to begin with, but just a condensing of the plot down to the essential elements, kind of a streamlining. I almost feel like you could do an un-parodying of it, and turn the plot much more serious throughout, just by changing the pacing and dialogue.

Good to know, though actually I'm dreading what sort of port shenanigans I might have to deal with... or if the game will require Win10, in which case I'll pick up the PS4 first.

I think that's still accurate, but we should all know by now that August 31st still counts as August for Bandai. I don't think the pilot for the B-Wing is undersized though, it looks right compared with how big the pilot figure in the prop was. Remember, the "official" measurements for the A-Wing and B-Wing are complete asspulls. The only reason the X-Wing and Y-Wing sizes are so solid is because they actually built full-sized versions for the hangar scene in ANH, and they all had visible R2 units, which are a fixed size. The A-Wing and B-Wing never got anything more than matte paintings, and the one painted B-Wing isn't shown well enough to measure it compared to any surrounding details. There are only so many sizes that the film models of the A-Wing and B-Wing can be, because of the components they were kitbashed from. The B-Wing's s-foils are F-18 prototype wings mounted backwards, the pods under the cockpit are F-14 external fuel tanks, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the cockpit pod was built from a Space Shuttle fuel tank. I've only ever seen full stack Space Shuttle kits in 1/144 and 1/72, so that pins down two sizes for the cockpit pod, and I'm not betting they used 1/144. The real tank is 27.6 ft in diameter, giving you a diameter of 4.6 inches in 1/72 scale, which sounds about right to me. Based on the proportional size of the pilot in the model looking a little over an inch wide, it looks like the figure is probably around 1/25th, which is kind of the standard figure that got used in a lot of the ship models. I'm pretty sure the original X-Wings in ANH used NASCAR driver figures in the cockpits. Anyhow.. I could get way too in-depth with this. Suffice it to say, the official measurements are nonsense, and I'm pretty sure the Bandai kits are designed as visual replicas of the film models, before everything is scaled to the official size, including the pilot. Oddly enough though, that actually probably gave a better estimate of the A-Wing, and the Bandai kit looks more reasonably sized (in 1/48th) than the film model. The pilot in the A-wing studio model was huge, and all that stuck up in the canopy was his head. The size in the Bandai kit looks much closer to how the shots of pilots in A-Wings looked in the movie.

I never picked up the original MPC B-Wing, so I can't compare it directly, but I was under the impression that it was quite a bit smaller, closer to the size of the MPC Y-Wing kit. Have to agree though, most ships in Star Wars are smaller, and having everything in 1/48 across the board would be a huge improvement. Considering the A-Wing is already there, it would just take two more kits. It would also make the Y-Wing much easier to manage, because all the tiny bits on that kit are microscopic in 1/72. Far as the molding goes, the quality is still there, but this one feels like it suffers from some bad parts breakdown design. It's very minimal at least, the only really obvious problem I had was the giant front intake, which is just going to take some TLC (aka glue and sanding) to get mounted nicely, and minimize the gap. The issue is that the whole intake is a giant block with a solid back surface that mates up with another solid surface on the front side of the engine block. The pegs on the front of the engine block were oversized, and because the back of the engine block is an open tube for the nozzle assembly, there was no good location to apply pressure to push the intake into place. What they should have done was leave the front of the engine block open, add a mounting collar to the back of the intake block, and then sandwich it between the fuselage halves to hold it in place. What they have is by no means terrible, but it could definitely be improved.

Had to dig a bit for this one, seems like a lot of the merchandise discussion had either died off, or filtered into other threads. So, because I wanted to treat myself for my birthday, and because I found one on Amazon, I decided to splurge and pick up one of the SDCC exclusive Bandai B-Wing kits. What I did come to discover was that the differences for the exclusive were more than just the little LED lighting kit for the engines. Nothing too fancy, but there are a few alternate parts to replicate the details on one of the alternate filming models, and an alternate pilot figure. I almost felt a little tiny bit bad about opening an exclusive. Almost. Overall, the kit took about an hour and a half to build, give or take 15 minutes spent tracking down itty-bitty parts. This one isn't to the same level of the Y-wing kit by any means, but it's quite a bit more involved than any of the other fighter kits I've built. Lots of tiny parts, and lots of fragile probes sticking out of various assemblies. Fortunately, the assembly order can be tweaked a little, and the cockpit and lower weapons pod are both easily detached while you work on the rest of the kit. Length came out to a little over 9 inches, so it's a good sized kit for 1/72 scale (or is it?? more on that at the end). Comparatively, the X-wing's wingspan only reaches from the lower pod to the engines. So, in terms of quality... I think either they're slipping a little, or the nature of it being and exclusive means certain things might still be tweaked. Everything goes together pretty well, but there are a few assemblies that took some tweaking before they would mesh, and some oversized pegs that needed trimming before being pressed together. Also, I was disappointed by a few of the assembly methods, which I think they could have done a better job of hiding seams. The rear half of the cockpit pod, and the big seam all the way around the front intake duct are particularly noticeable. Bottom line, yes, it goes together well out of the box, but it will take more work than some of the other kits to really shine, including a decent amount of gluing, sealing, and sanding certain seams. The exclusive version came with an alternate pilot, a small LED pack that can be mounted behind the engine bulkhead to illuminate them, and alternate hull plating to expose this particular bit of the lower wing. Interestingly, the exclusive version does not include the large orange circular squadron markings usually seen on B-Wing photos, so I'm assuming this kit is meant to represent what I understand is the second filming model (I think there were only two). All in all, a pretty easy build, with minimal frustration or confusion, although I think the amount of tiny parts was unnecessary, and some of them should have been molded in place. It's a nice size, and I think it fits in pretty well with the X-Wing.... ...BUT. I give up. If I could do it, I'd go back in time and slap whoever decided the "sizes" of all these craft, and scale them based on something visible in the movies. Yes. THESE ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE 1/72 SCALE. From left to right, that's A-Wing, X-Wing/Y-Wing, and B-Wing. I would have absolutely no qualms calling these 1/48, 1/72, and 1/100. To be fair, the B-Wing works better than the A-Wing. There is plenty of room in the B-Wing's cockpit pod to fit the X-Wing pilot, with some minor tweaking. But seriously folks, you're not fooling anyone. I'm just resigning myself to the fact that outside of garage kits, we're never going to get Star Wars ships in anything close to a consistent scale, as long as they keep clinging to those "official" ship sizes. Anyhow. There she is. I'll be buying at least two or three more once the normal kit is released. As a side note, the stand is... nothing like any of the other stands for any of the other ship models. If I understand correctly, it's actually a figure base with a special attachment to plug into the back of the ship, because the base itself includes a pair of claw-like grips that would probably function as a waist clip. I might have to see about making a different stand that'll let me mount it on the standard Death Star surface plates, just for consistency. Bottom line, it took way too long to finally get a respectable B-Wing kit.

If you limit yourself to the more popular/common releases, you can still find some deals occasionally for the older Yamato VF-1s, especially if you're willing use Shapeways replacement parts to repair first editions with broken shoulder joints. Also, keep in mind that Arcadia's premium releases tend to push people to sell off their non-premium versions, and you might find some cheaper ones, either here, or on Japanese re-sale sites. The VF-1 is probably the only one you'll find in the same price range as 3rd party Transformers though, as it was the cheapest to start, and the most popular by far. The only other Yamato/Arcadia valk I've seen in recent history to approach that ~$150 price range was a VF-17S I found here on the boards a few months back.

My entire fleet of VF-1s is still waiting for some super packs. It's not like I don't want the rest of that list as well, but come on, Bandai, get with it.