Chronocidal
-
Posts
11033 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Everything posted by Chronocidal
-
Boy I hope I can twist those fins off without destroying the shoulders, since at least one of mine is getting the Skull-1 treatment. Can always cut them, of course, but would be nice if they just detach.
-
I think the topic here is much more about the proportions of the jet itself than the individual parts. For all of the changes between them, the YF-19 and VF-19 are still fundamentally the same aircraft design, with the same layout and overall proportions of components relative to each other. That really can't be said about the 17 and 171, because their proportions are really nothing alike in battroid mode. Obviously moving to CG animation changed the magical proportion shifts present in Macross 7, but that didn't stop Yamato from making a massively chonky brute of a VF-17, and getting it to transform into a solid fighter mode. Bandai made an accurate VF-171, sure. But it looks nothing like what the VF-17 ever has, in any medium. They may as well be trying to upsell an F-18C as a Super Hornet. The designs are at least that different.
-
See, the parts I'm thinking of are the irritating little aesthetic choices that actually have absolutely no impact on the transformation whatsoever. They're just shapes and details that Bandai looked at and decided, "No, we're doing something different." So.. as a fair warning, I'll spoiler it for folks who don't care to hear my rantings about little details. Just the TLDR though.. Bandai changed little aesthetic details that don't impact the transformation. Are these nit-picks? Absolutely. But there is no valid reason for why those details were changed in the first place. It's just Bandai deciding they know better, and I'm so tired of that attitude. As for the tampo, while I think it's obnoxious, for what it's worth, I can appreciate these markings more than the slop they threw on the YF-19 (at least these are symmetrical), but I still think they went overboard. What's sad? The worst part isn't even the added markings. The dingbats went and printed the UN emblem on the left wing cock-eyed. It is absolutely misaligned on every single picture I've seen of the YF-21, and that is just a bizarre level of incompetence on a product at this price point. I'm VERY tempted to just strip those off and put fresh decals on to fix it, since I think they're about the same size as the Yamato 1/60 VF-1 fast pack markings.
-
They're probably fine for main city areas and delivery hubs, but I'm in an oddly remote area that has absolutely no support from DHL directly. Anything I get from them doesn't even come from them, it gets delivered to Bakersfield, and then shipped through a secondary third-party delivery service that neither communicates with nor associates in any way with the official DHL customer account system. I am just completely SOL trying to track down any delivery dates or requests for any re-delivery or hold requests. FedEx and UPS? Absolutely fine. DHL? Just a giant pile of nope out here.
-
All aspects of the transformation and proportions aside, I feel like they absolutely went off the rails though. While they're not what most people would call "significant" departures, there is a rather large pile of details on the original design that they just completely ignored, or purposefully redesigned for no explicable reason. The worst part of this is that some of these were correct on early prototype pics, and Bandai later changed them specifically to be contrary to every piece of reference material, animated, drawn, rendered, or otherwise. They just looked that the art, flipped it off, and did their own thing.
-
Which, funny enough, I think I would have been more on-board with? They could have marketed it under the Macross 30 game license, since it included a bunch of alternate color 171s I would have loved. On that note though, this might give us the red Millia 17S I always wanted, but Yamato never did. I'll definitely bite on that one, if it happens. All things considered though, I might still grab one or two of these down the road. They won't replace the Yammies, but I'll be very curious to see how it sells, and whether it winds up in the Amazon bargain bin (where it really belongs). They'll stay in fighter forever, but I can't say the design is terrible in that mode anyhow. At the very least it'll be a nice source of spare parts to repair more of my 171 junk pile.
-
So.. on the small plus side of things.. they can remold all of the explodium parts in the proper powder blue rather than that obsidian garbage, so at least in theory they'll be less prone to shatter. (The splotchy color makes me think this is just a repainted 171 though.) Also funny that they didn't bother to mount the gun in fighter mode. Cuz.. you know. It's the wrong one. The least they could do is to mold a new one and just pretend they care.
-
So, the issue is purely Bandai's terrible design choices for the leg, and their inability to write proper instructions. I wrote a detailed guide to everything they did wrong in the old 171 thread, and listed some steps to hopefully help prevent the legs from exploding, but there is nothing that will fix the issues with the knee without a fundamental redesign of the knee mechanism.
-
"Holding up" doesn't do anything to fix the fundamental flaws in the engineering of this design. The legs are still one misguided transformation away from shattering, unless they've completely redesigned the mechanism, and I saw no change with that in the renewal.
-
Ok, Bandi, NO. You did not just duplicate the crappy knees on this. You need a slap upside the head with the Yamato version. Seriously, screw this, that is just the worst possible decision ever. None of the major issues from the 171 are even slightly different here, so there is no reason this is not going to explode catastrophically just like the 171.
-
Yeah, thankfully I don't trust DHL in the slightest either. They're always the least reliable in my area, so I'm just going to let anything I ordered ride until there's another option.
-
You know what's irritating now.. I could easily use a few of those new compound curves to refine the OMS pods on my shuttle, if I can get them in white. I've been trying to come up with a better arrangement of elements, and that might make a really nice option for those curves. That Countach is really tempting though.. but sadly I probably do not have the spare funds to pick anything up at the moment, just from other priorities. Will have to see though.
-
I mean it really shouldn't surprise anyone that Amazon is trying to unload this one. They're probably absolutely swimming in returned copies that Bandai won't support.
-
Yeah, that's an absurdly similar-looking Spartan. I'd be interested in seeing a final comparison of the actual product with that promo, really. The only differences I can see are the baton-holding hand's wrist is slightly different (probably because it's a swapped part), and the curvature of the round hatch on the side of the torso looks more bulbous on the KC version, but it could just be lighting. The weirdest bit is that even some of the molding flaws along the assembly seams look identical. Just reminds me of that story about the crashed B-29 bomber that Russia reverse-engineered so hard that they reproduced broken bits and battle damage in the production aircraft.
-
I'm betting the price is blown out by all of the larger elements involved in ship builds. I don't imagine the keel is built up from normal bricks, and those sorts of ship models have always gone for a premium because of the unique parts involved. That Cobra looks like a beauty though! I should probably think about that one before it poofs, but I'm still debating burning my VIP points to pick up the Shuttle Carrier 747. Plus I'm still really tempted by that Countach.
-
Yeah, this is basically all I want at this point, though I'd be perfectly happy if they did a dual TV/DYRL release for the CF. I really can't be forced to care what ship name is printed on the tails (and I still think it looks lousy on the side of the thighs anyhow), which is why one of my Roys is converted to a DYRL now (swapped the control panel from a spare Kakizaki, and repainted a spare DYRL Hikaru from a VT-1 in yellow). If Bandai really wanted to cover the bases, they could just include multiple swappable tails, but I'm not going to get hung up on the individual marking differences. I think the only other ones I might get suckered into are if they make M&Ms, but that's only from my OCD, as I've collected every other M&M pair produced since I started collecting.
-
Oh we did, that was my post about how mine exploded. Really, it was more of a post-explosion autopsy. If someone could get one apart in a slightly more coherent state, you might be able to get some good measurements of it. I would love to find a way to produce a functional replacement, or even just a permanent fighter mode mount for the rest of the leg, but that still requires getting the lower leg apart in the first place, which is a serious roadblock. You almost need to remake the entire lower leg from scratch.
-
See, this is the biggest nail in the coffin of Bandai's marketing strategy. The people who actually care about the things they're bothering to re-release? They already went through the effort to import the originals. You're not doing anyone any favors, Bandai, the people who want them already have them. All they're doing is deflating the market value of the original releases at this point, because the market is flooded with the few releases they're willing to keep churning out in favor of completing any of the lines people actually want to buy.
-
I have yet to see anyone successfully disassemble that disaster. The leg is screwed and glued in every way imaginable, and you're far more likely to break it into a hundred pieces than actually get it apart. I can't say the method doesn't exist, but it might take some very creative sawing and drilling to get the pieces apart in anything resembling their original shape. The best case is probably breaking it apart without distorting the parts so you can at least get measurements for what it should look like.
-
Oof, no, those are the pylons that come with the Legioss. Maybe making more of those for the kit would be an option? The hard part is probably finding a material that'll have the right properties to attach correctly without breaking.
-
Maybe if you're talking purely about developing new products? But if they have the choice of using their production space for something they (think they) can sell in a (theoretically) untapped market? Yeah, they're going to cater to the place that might theoretically actually bring in new customers. Otherwise, there's no explanation for why their releases for the past couple of years now have mostly played out like a greatest hits collection that everyone in Japan probably has multiples of by this point. We're obviously never going to see any data, but I would be really curious to see the sales numbers of all these re-pops based on region.
-
Yeah, Bandai looks like they have basically completely abandoned any product they can't sell overseas.
-
The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next
Chronocidal replied to mikeszekely's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I gotta say, the missiles crack me up, because they might be the original mold used on the vehicle in the 80s. Now, I never owned the Triple T, but I picked up a set of extra missiles Hasbro sold for their vehicles (mostly for spares to equip my Hurricane), and it came with two of those tiny ones. Hasbro really loved those barbell-shaped weapon mounts, they also got used in the early 90s for their "Flying Fighters" jets, so I was thrilled when I could load up my Joe jets with all the extras those came with.- 18067 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- transformers
- toys
- (and 5 more)
-
Yeah, the doofy backside of the cockpit has always bugged the crap out of me on the Legioss, for both aesthetic and aerodynamic reasons. I get that it doesn't really matter when you have micro-nuclear reaction engines, but it still looks stupid.
-
I think my biggest gripe with the entire design is just what insane nonsense they made the lower legs into. Like... just why did they make them do that? And is it even necessary, or are they just really fond of showing off how many moving parts the legs have?