Hi-Metal R

[Swoosh]

On 8/11/2025 at 11:49 PM, Raikkonen said:

Don't recall this mech in any of Macross... 

 

Tamashi effects - Sold seperately. 

oops, sorry, wrong post, just found that it is begin reposted to the correct forum by Admin....

[Big s]

On 8/11/2025 at 9:41 AM, grogall said:

Maybe they will retool the line and bring them up to the Hi-Metal R "Votoms" quality and make the best versions out there..... someday! 🤔

HMR R

[ValkAddict]

When the heck is Bandai going to complete the Hi-Metal Macross Destroids??? C'mon, please Bandai ... 

#someday #dreams #hope 

[Big s]

1 minute ago, ValkAddict said:

When the heck is Bandai going to complete the Hi-Metal Macross Destroids??? C'mon, please Bandai ... 

#someday #dreams #hope 

They’ll probably tease us for another decade or so

[Zuel]

Any thoughts on the KitzConcept destroids? The Spartan looks to me to be indistinguishable from the Hi-Metal r Spartan (I own one). Could they be reselling Bandai, or have some arrangement to use their moulds? Or is Bandai OEMing for them?

Compare. KitzConcept, from their website:

Hi-Metal r, from the Anymoon review:

If they are rebranded or OEM Hi-Metal r, KitzConcept is planning to release a Tomahawk as well. Could that be the mould that Bandai seems to have abandoned?

 

[Graham]

18 minutes ago, Zuel said:

Any thoughts on the KitzConcept destroids? The Spartan looks to me to be indistinguishable from the Hi-Metal r Spartan (I own one). Could they be reselling Bandai, or have some arrangement to use their moulds? Or is Bandai OEMing for them?

Compare. KitzConcept, from their website:

Hi-Metal r, from the Anymoon review:

If they are rebranded or OEM Hi-Metal r, KitzConcept is planning to release a Tomahawk as well. Could that be the mould that Bandai seems to have abandoned?

 

Interesting, it does look identical.

[jenius]

It's 3.5cm taller and has light effects, it's definitely different. 

[Zuel]

4 minutes ago, jenius said:

It's 3.5cm taller and has light effects, it's definitely different. 

Interesting. Good spot.

Assuming the dimensions are correct (and 17cm would be closer to 1/72), could it be that they've just cheekily used a Bandai Spartan for their pre-order page? But that seems risky...

Could they scale up the Bandai mould?

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Zuel said:

Any thoughts on the KitzConcept destroids? The Spartan looks to me to be indistinguishable from the Hi-Metal r Spartan (I own one). Could they be reselling Bandai, or have some arrangement to use their moulds? Or is Bandai OEMing for them?

Compare. KitzConcept, from their website:

Hi-Metal r, from the Anymoon review:

If they are rebranded or OEM Hi-Metal r, KitzConcept is planning to release a Tomahawk as well. Could that be the mould that Bandai seems to have abandoned?

 

I do get the feeling that they tend to copy ideas from others, but I don’t know if they directly resized anything or just remolded anything like how bad toynami did. As far as this one, it’s a bit tougher than the rest to tell, I’d have to see more pics

[Graham]

Yeah, I guess they have just used a recolored Bandai Spartan for their pre-order page.

All the panel lines, markings etc are identical.

[Chronocidal]

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.  

[Big s]

Looking a bit closer at the panel lines in the body right under the caution arrow and they appear exactly the same, just sized up for the new scale like the way Toynami did the Valkyrie from banpresto years ago. That would be a really wide panel line in 1/72

[Graham]

I'm guessing KC don't have a prototype sculpt yet, so just took the Bandai HMR and photoshopped the colors for their website pic. 😅

[Graham]

Hmm.........IIRC, isn't the HMR VF-19P out at the end of this month? 

[vladykins]

11 hours ago, Graham said:

I'm guessing KC don't have a prototype sculpt yet, so just took the Bandai HMR and photoshopped the colors for their website pic. 😅

 

I thought that KC had demo prototypes at a previous event, but when I went searching it looks like they had them for the Tomahawk, Defender, and Phalanx but not the Spartan. Here's a photo where you can see the three. Guessing you all are right and they still haven't prepped one yet.

[rsvictor1976]

13 hours ago, Graham said:

Hmm.........IIRC, isn't the HMR VF-19P out at the end of this month? 

It is. I had to cancel my order for the time being though until Japan Post resumes shipping to the U.S. The fees through DHL is insane.

[Graham]

HMR VF-19P Box art . 

[MKT]

^^ A very slick art of the 19P from this angle.

[Mommar]

On 9/19/2025 at 9:48 AM, rsvictor1976 said:

It is. I had to cancel my order for the time being though until Japan Post resumes shipping to the U.S. The fees through DHL is insane.

DHL is cheaper wirh the new price structure.

[sh9000]

Nice box art.  I still miss Tenjin's box art though.

[derex3592]

Ok, now I'm getting excited for this! I totally had forgot about pre-ordering it! 

[rsvictor1976]

On 9/22/2025 at 2:54 PM, Mommar said:

DHL is cheaper wirh the new price structure.

The new DHL Duty Paid shipping that Nin-Nin is offering costs 10404 yen. The toy itself is 18900 yen. I don't think that new price structure is any better. 

Edited Wednesday at 03:10 AM by rsvictor1976

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, rsvictor1976 said:

The new DHL Duty Paid shipping that Nin-Nin is offering costs 10404 yen. The toy itself is 18900 yen. I don't think that new price structure is any better. 

I don't know the base price of the shipping for this toy since I don't know the box size.  I can say the base price for shipping Mafex Andrew Garfield from HLJ was 2200 yen plus 15% of the items price (3300) total and Nin-nin are known to be dirty so it sounds to me like they're frakking you.

[rsvictor1976]

2 hours ago, Mommar said:

I don't know the base price of the shipping for this toy since I don't know the box size.  I can say the base price for shipping Mafex Andrew Garfield from HLJ was 2200 yen plus 15% of the items price (3300) total and Nin-nin are known to be dirty so it sounds to me like they're frakking you.

I just checked HLJ. A similar item, the HI-Metal R VF-2SS sells for 14000 Yen. HLJ wants to charge me 9500 Yen for DHL + 4200 Yen for Duties + 3300 Yen for Carrier Handling Fee, for a total of 31000 yen. HLJ actually wants to charge me more for shipping than the item’s value?!

[Mommar]

They haven't been charging me a carrier handling fee and 4200 is 30%.

[Mommar]

I did my own calcukatuon for shipping an item, don't know what the handling fee nonsense is but either theirbcalculator is broken because the shipping and duty fees are both doubled or Japanese companies have difured out there's enough confusion they can screw us.  Those numbers are not correct.  Duties are 15% from Japan, not 30%, and I priced DHL directly. 

[Convectuoso]

I know I pre ordered this, I just can't remember where

[Chronocidal]

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.

[WhatBoutMyStar]

20 hours ago, Mommar said:

I did my own calcukatuon for shipping an item, don't know what the handling fee nonsense is but either theirbcalculator is broken because the shipping and duty fees are both doubled or Japanese companies have difured out there's enough confusion they can screw us.  Those numbers are not correct.  Duties are 15% from Japan, not 30%, and I priced DHL directly. 

Country of origin for purposes of the tariffs is based on where the product was made, not from where it is shipped. From what I've read on places like myfigurecollection.net, which has an extremely long thread consisting of hundreds of posts on the tariffs issue, HLJ is one of few (along with Good Smile's online store) that accurately marks the country of origin as China compared to the overwhelming majority of others (like amiami, Mandarake, etc.) that have historically put down Japan as the COO for everything that they ship.  From what I've seen, DHL also has a processing/brokerage fee of $17 that they tack on in addition to the tariffs for their handling of the paperwork or whatever to clear customs. From what I've read, I think UPS' processing fee may be even higher, but I'm not completely sure.

Edited Thursday at 08:25 AM by WhatBoutMyStar
edited to fix typos

[derex3592]

DHL shipping from AE for the Zola Patrol was $34 for me. Just paid it. Seemed about normal from pre-covid days for one package from Japan to me. Maybe a hair more. Nothing to cry about though. I like DHL over the other options in the past couple of years. 

[vladykins]

17 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

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.

Weirdly, they are pretty efficient for me, but that may just be the amount of foreign-based items flowing into the DC area. 

Recent DHL for me was about $35 when I got the Sentinel Tread- no big tariff bump. 

[jenius]

DHL is great for me I'm the Los Angeles area. Just asked AE to ship but haven't received an invoice yet.

[Chronocidal]

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.

Edited Thursday at 09:58 PM by Chronocidal

[Mommar]

I ran across so much hyperbolic non-sense looking around it was hard to discern who actually knew what.  I figured after HLJ shipped my Andrew Garfield  Spider-Man I'd get a clear picture.  I straight asked them about the different charges.  Brought up that AG Spider-Man was being charged 15% but the new Scarlet Spider was 30% and was told AG was made in Japan but SS wasn't... okay.  So then I asked even if that were true why is it that the baseline charging for DHL more than doubled along with whatever that service charge was.  I received a curt reply, they don't make those numbers... and that was it, no more responses.  What Derex and vladykins quoted is precisely what I paid for AG.  Now it would be nearly $100.  So I have no clear picture.

I know Big In Japan has offered to put down COO for the 19P as Japan, don't know what the baseline price is going to be anymore though, they haven't responded to me.

 

In terms of shipping quality, for where I live in Albuquerque my preference in order is FedEx, DHL, UPS and USPS.  FedEx and DHL are nearly identical, UPS has two stations with their own little fifedoms and it always takes 24-48 hours to ship between the two before they will deliver to my area of town.  I've had multiple packages from USPS reach the substations five minutes from my house completely disappear.  I was already primed to pay a lot more in shipping to avoid that constant headache.

[jenius]

DHL charge for the 19P from AE was 5200 yen which feels steep but relieved it wants the crazy amounts some have been quoted.

Edited Friday at 05:57 AM by jenius