And now for something completely different
My last post here was fairly gloomy- All real life bad stuff and whatnot. That's still going on in the background, but I'm not gonna talk about that today.
What I am going to talk about is robots. It should come as no surprise that when stressed, the wild Ace seeks out comfort and nurishment in the form of giant robot toys. So I've been trolling about on ye olde ebay staring endlessly at the high-end Macross toys. Actually, I've been on what you might call a macross/robotech binge. It's funny how my thoughts on the Robotech portion of this fandom ebb and flow. Realistically, Robotech is the reason anybody in the states really knows or cares about giant robot animu. It really set the stage in so many ways for the eventual fandom bubble that would take place 15 years later, and it's such a nostalgic part of the whole thing that I can't help but have love for it, even as a cheesy saturday morning cartoon series. I've been buying some of the old Jack McKinney novels and revisiting portions of that side of the fandom more- watching the original versions of some of the non-macross portions of it, as well. Without Robotech, Southern Cross and Mospeada wouldn't be known by anybody, even if Macross itself has a viable fandom on it's own to a degree. But that's all history, really.
This is where what I was saying earlier about the high end Premium Macross collectibles comes in. Yamato and Bandai both have continuing lines of 1/60 Macross toys that seem really, really cool. I bought one of Yamato's 2008 release VF-1A figures, and damn if it's not cool. Clickey joints everywhere, really fun transformation, lots of detail- it's pretty much as good as it gets for Valkyrie toys, and they make so many others. Their line covers Macross Zero, Mactorss, Macross Plus, and Macross Seven, while Bandai offers a comperable line that covers Frontier. What I found out recently is that some of the American toys put out by Matchbox for Robotech way back in 1985 go surprisingly well with them, too. I bought one of the old Robotech Regult/Tactical pod figures, and height-wise, it's a near perfect fit with the high end, infinitely more expensive recent toy. Details are a bit fuzzy, but it even has a few clicky-joints in the legs. That's really cool! They make one of the other Zentradi mechs in the same size/quality class, and I've been hunting for that on Ebay as well, along with another color variant of the pod I've already got. I've never been much of an army builder, but having a couple Zentreadi pods in slightly different colors I think would be really cool, along with the Valkyries flown by some of the more important characters across the franchise.
So, what I'm getting at is that I've been devoting entirely too much energy in compiling a list of very expensive, very large things I can't afford and don't have room for. So collecting as usual, I suppose.
Right now I've mostly been staring at the Bandai Chogokin DX Frontier line. I know there's some quality differences between that and Yamato's offerings, and that the current 'renewal' versions of many of them fix some of the problems the early release stuff had, but they've been limiting production so that they prices of the renewal versions have skyrocketed on the secondary market. There's been a long, ongoing argument with myself whether it's worth waiting even longer to afford the slightly better renewal versions, or to say fuck it and go for the older, cheaper ones despite their flaws as soon as I've got the funds to do so.
I already have visions of pristine glass cases full of giant macross toys. Currently, I own two, aside from of course some smaller things and a few models, one of which I've been slowly working on. The problem with that is that with all of the stress I've been under, even my creativity has been sapped. Not an ideal situation, but I guess at least this obsessing with toys let's me work out some steam in a relatively less destructive way.
What I am going to talk about is robots. It should come as no surprise that when stressed, the wild Ace seeks out comfort and nurishment in the form of giant robot toys. So I've been trolling about on ye olde ebay staring endlessly at the high-end Macross toys. Actually, I've been on what you might call a macross/robotech binge. It's funny how my thoughts on the Robotech portion of this fandom ebb and flow. Realistically, Robotech is the reason anybody in the states really knows or cares about giant robot animu. It really set the stage in so many ways for the eventual fandom bubble that would take place 15 years later, and it's such a nostalgic part of the whole thing that I can't help but have love for it, even as a cheesy saturday morning cartoon series. I've been buying some of the old Jack McKinney novels and revisiting portions of that side of the fandom more- watching the original versions of some of the non-macross portions of it, as well. Without Robotech, Southern Cross and Mospeada wouldn't be known by anybody, even if Macross itself has a viable fandom on it's own to a degree. But that's all history, really.
This is where what I was saying earlier about the high end Premium Macross collectibles comes in. Yamato and Bandai both have continuing lines of 1/60 Macross toys that seem really, really cool. I bought one of Yamato's 2008 release VF-1A figures, and damn if it's not cool. Clickey joints everywhere, really fun transformation, lots of detail- it's pretty much as good as it gets for Valkyrie toys, and they make so many others. Their line covers Macross Zero, Mactorss, Macross Plus, and Macross Seven, while Bandai offers a comperable line that covers Frontier. What I found out recently is that some of the American toys put out by Matchbox for Robotech way back in 1985 go surprisingly well with them, too. I bought one of the old Robotech Regult/Tactical pod figures, and height-wise, it's a near perfect fit with the high end, infinitely more expensive recent toy. Details are a bit fuzzy, but it even has a few clicky-joints in the legs. That's really cool! They make one of the other Zentradi mechs in the same size/quality class, and I've been hunting for that on Ebay as well, along with another color variant of the pod I've already got. I've never been much of an army builder, but having a couple Zentreadi pods in slightly different colors I think would be really cool, along with the Valkyries flown by some of the more important characters across the franchise.
So, what I'm getting at is that I've been devoting entirely too much energy in compiling a list of very expensive, very large things I can't afford and don't have room for. So collecting as usual, I suppose.
Right now I've mostly been staring at the Bandai Chogokin DX Frontier line. I know there's some quality differences between that and Yamato's offerings, and that the current 'renewal' versions of many of them fix some of the problems the early release stuff had, but they've been limiting production so that they prices of the renewal versions have skyrocketed on the secondary market. There's been a long, ongoing argument with myself whether it's worth waiting even longer to afford the slightly better renewal versions, or to say fuck it and go for the older, cheaper ones despite their flaws as soon as I've got the funds to do so.
I already have visions of pristine glass cases full of giant macross toys. Currently, I own two, aside from of course some smaller things and a few models, one of which I've been slowly working on. The problem with that is that with all of the stress I've been under, even my creativity has been sapped. Not an ideal situation, but I guess at least this obsessing with toys let's me work out some steam in a relatively less destructive way.