Chronocidal

Looks like they're mounted to a clamp that wraps around the upper half of the wing glove.. That's just.. weird. Only way you can really mount them in that orientation though, or the legs would get in the way.

So, anyone have a battered and broken CF-171 they'd be willing to sell for parts? One of the legs on mine is freaking shattered. Like, worse than original VF-0 release shattered. I tried to take the thing apart to see why one knee was loose, and when I started trying to remove the screw covers, I discovered that they're pretty much all that was holding the knee together. I seriously want to take the people who designed this toy, hang them from the rafters by their tonails, and play piñata with their heads. This is by far the most stupdendously unnecessarily overcomplicated piece of crap design I've ever seen. Tiny senseless parts everwhere, no regard for any kind of structural reinforcement, and some of the worst hinge designs I've ever seen. So yeah.. I was able to get the legs off of the main valk with no trouble, because those were actually held down by screws, and not glued anywhere. The legs themselves are a lost cause... not only did they cover the screws with hidden screw covers (only discovered one hidden screw because the opposite half of the piece it was holding decided it was gonna just break off entirely), but they actually glued detail panels over the top of certain seams, so even if you get the screws out, the entire thing is still wrapped up in glue and plastic. Anyway.. yeah. I managed to get the lower triangles off without breaking them, so I'm going to experiment with replacement designs for those, but unless I completely rebuild the knee hinge from scratch, this thing is going to be glued in fighter mode forever... not that I really intended to take it out of that mode anyway, but it was nice at least having the illusion that the freaking thing was solidly constructed.

I'm still curious if they designed them to overlap the wings without having to extend them or not. One of the early pics showed the wings not seated in the normal position with the trailing edge against the legs, but it's hard to tell if that's the case for all of the images. As far as battroid goes.. well, having big directional boosters attached to the wing gloves that way would make them pretty useful for space combat. Structurally though, having those things hanging off of such a small pivot point rubs my brain all sorts of the wrong way. And that's entirely in-universe-wise. In terms of the actual figure, if those boosters are solid resin, I don't think the hinge pivots are going to be able to hold them at any high angle for very long before loosening up. It wouldn't matter in space (or on a stand), but standing up, the wings/boosters might drag on the ground.

Most of the droopy neck problem was caused by warped metal plates in the nose interior structure, but a decent portion also had to do with the lously plastic that got used, and sloppy molding. I posted a fix for the metal piece a while back, so that's not even a huge deal if they keep the same structure, but tightening up the molds to hold together better would make a world of difference.

There we go, finally found (almost) what I remembered. The pairing of Hikaru's VF-1J with super packs goes back before Yamato did it. This isn't the original concept-like image I remember, but the style is exactly the same, with the balloon hands, and overall level of panel detailing on the valk. The art actually makes me wonder though, whether it was an after-the-fact thing, or if it came from before the plot of SDFM was finalized. Maybe they drew up the designs for Hikaru on his 1J, so as not to spoil the fact that he'd be inheriting Roy's plane? Or maybe the original concept work was done before they decided to have Hikaru switch planes? Have to probably ask Kawamori about that one. In terms of model kits though, the pairing makes perfect sense, and Hasegawa's new 1/48 kit is the same deal. If you're making a kit to build M&M supers, you're going to mold it in white, because molding it in blue or red means you'll have to either split the production and make two separate kits (with separate packaging designs), or sell both in one box, which will bump up the price, and be harder to sell. And once you have a white kit with the boosters, you know some people are going to get lazy with painting, and decide to just make Hikaru's plane anyway.

Would the missiles and packs taken out have knocked $50-100 off the price? We'll never know. Either way, a lot of people wound up paying for things they could have done without.

While I personally like the missiles, I probably would have traded them for a good stand... I do hope though that we get later releases minus all the extras, for something like the Supernova schemes.

The VF-1J in super packs may have some roots in a piece of concept art I remember. I can't find the image, and don't know the timing of it, so it may have come later, but it was a gritty image of the VF-1J gerwalk, with the classic fat-fingered SDFM look.

Yeah, while they look nice on the fighter, battroid mode is one giant pile of nope. Those big boosters hanging off the wings is going to utterly destroy any tension those wing pivots have naturally. Not to mention they're resin, and much heavier than normal plastic would be. At least it's nice to see the boosters can be made to work without too much redesign. Edit: Scratch that, apparently even they couldn't get the boosters to work without extending the wings? That's rather disappointing actually.

Easy to make sequels when you don't actually care about any kind of continuity or plot coherence.

Mine just got dropped off a bit ago, very nice looking piece. Little smudge on one of the hip markings, and the wings are printed a little off-center, but really nice overall. And yeah, Bandai still hasn't quite figured out how to make double gear doors line up at all. I think it's partly because of the screwy complex curve around the front gear, which really is due to the design itself. Any warping in those doors, and they just won't fit well.

It's a cool transformation on paper, or in a computer model, but the mechanics behind it don't work out very well in real life. See, I like the design.. but there's a few little things that have bugged me since I first tried to transform the 171, and they haven't gotten any better with later releases. I'll spoilerfy this so I don't flood the thread with a wall-o-text, but there's a lot going on with the VF-171 that makes no mechanical sense. 1. The hip swing-bar design. 2. The hip joints themselves. 3. The brainless design behind the knee joints. There is no reason for the stupid interlocks they built in to keep the legs from rotating unless they're extended at the knee. 4. The overcomplicated triangle pieces... don't think I need to explain my distaste for those. 5. The @#&*#*$ stupid wing pivots. Worst hinge design in history, and expressly for the purpose of ripping their customers off, no less. 6. That double fold backplate hinge is just a pain in the backside, period. I've had my 171EX for several years now, and it still won't fold all the way, because the tolerances were screwed up on the parts. Anyway.. yeah.. there's a lot of reasons my 171s will remain In fighter mode indefinitely. There are just enough bad design elements incorporated there to make my engineering senses weep. it's really sad too, because I really do like the 171 battroid.

Hard to tell from that angle, but I wonder if that's an early version before they added fancy things like radar. Also, I will always find the Backfire one of the most beautiful designs produced.

Oh, by "plain nose" I mean the one with the sharkmouth and eyes. Love those vintage style aircraft markings, it's the character art I'd rather not have.

They only ever seem to pull it off on things with F-15-like blocky bodies, if at all. Really, the original G1 Seekers weren't bad in that regard, because they kept the arms inside the fuselage, and had no actual limbs to fold out otherwise. They just need more blocky bodied aircraft.. I would probably kill for a good RA-5 Vigilante-style seeker. And I dunno why no one seems to want to do an XB-70 mold.

I have to wonder if anyone would trade me a plain nose-art-less version for this new one if I got it.. still don't care for the character art at all, but would hate to ruin the thing trying to remove it.

I stil think the dorkiest looking intakes were on the SV-51, since it didn't come with any covers to hide the tiny little compressor blades. I like the attention to detail with the included intakes, but I personally don't ever remove the intake covers on anything anyway. I hate having to track down extra pieces just to transform things correctly, so leaving the covers in saves a step there. I just think they look better than the shallow intakes. Ugh, I'm looking forward to this so much that I probably want to get two, but I realize my collection of valks is hitting critical mass. I might have to sell off some duplicates if I don't move into a house with some place to display/store them all.

Actually, I hope they do make one, because it would save people a lot of work making that custom set in gray. Doubt they would make a set of packs just for a custom version that was never seen on screen, but it would be interesting if they actually made that combination super/armor/lance set.

Hah, drat, guess I should have waited after all. Oh well, I'm running out of Frontier stuff I'm interested in anyway.

Never had that issue with the models either. Talk about the right hand never letting the left hand know what it's doing.

That's what doesn't make sense though... it's probably not cheaper. They'd potentially save a decent amount of money if they molded the parts in the right color from the start so they didn't need to keep repeatedly tampo printing the same parts to cover up the wrong colors. It probably just comes down to lack of foresight in the original molds, and not thinking ahead about which parts should be molded on separate sprues so they can be color matched (which is further complicated by the wacky paint schemes that change between every release). At least they finally got the lower wing gloves on a separate mold for Michael's, but Ozma's VF-25S had to suffer through the "we molded this in the wrong color, so we painted the entire thing" nonsense.

Honestly, I only halfway blame Bandai for all the paint-related problems on these. Let's face it, the valks in frontier weren't really designed with any thought given to how they would ever be produced as toys, let alone why military-machines would be painted in such ludicrously complex and maintenance-heavy schemes. Still doesn't absolve them of their pants-on-head tendencies to mold things in the least efficient way possible to make them the correct colors, though. "So this part is orange with a white stripe across it right? Great! Let's mold it in white, dip the part in orange paint, and then paint a white stripe across it! Nothing could possibly go wrong on a transforming toy with tons of moving parts!" The little mis-colored panel on the Ozma YF-29 is the epitome of this really.. the plastic was the right color.. then they painted the entire piece black, instead of just the stripe.. then went back and repainted the part they shouldn't have covered up.. in the wrong shade entirely. Makes me miss the way every other series painted their valks: solid colors with a few stripes and panels.

No, they should go back in time, and start whispering in the Bandai exec's ears while they sleep that all Macross releases should be web exclusives. And then post assurances here that despite our initial reaction, it will be better for everyone this way.

Given the construction of that area, and how easy it is for those hip covers to catch on things, I would imagine it's very easy for those bits to crack. I've caught my hand against the covers several times while transforming.

Good, I might still have a way to get one, since I passed on them before. Really wish I could get a version with just the sharkmouth markings though, the nose-art is probably my least favorite thing about it.