Yamato's Transforming Garland

As you may have noticed on the "Future Releases" bit on the sidebar, we've finally got a release date for the first of the two upcoming transformable Garland motorcycle toys from Megazone 23 Part 1 (a.k.a. the MODAT-5 from Robotech The Movie: The Untold Story) -- it will be unleashed upon the high-end collectable toy-buying public in May. This is the Yamato one, and if you order it from Hobby Link Japan right now, it's only 15,960 yen, or a little over $135 (plus shipping). Expensive? Yeah, but I expect the engineering and construction won't disappoint -- Yamato's stuff has been getting steadily better from their 1/60 VF-1 series some years back onward. Sure, it's 1/15 scale, about ten inches long in bike mode, so it's totally out of whack with most of the rest of your ROBOTECH collection, but I'm sure you realize that the collection just isn't complete without it. Personally, I'd argue that the collection will never be complete the way things are going, but I'm a crazy one -- I still demand a solid die-cast Centaur Hovertank. You know, this thing, from the Malcontent Uprisings comics series:

Go ahead, call me Captain Obscurity. They'll probably get around to that right after they've gotten me my damned Masterpiece Logan.

Back to the Garland, bear in mind that this isn't your only option for die-cast transforming bike love -- you can always wait on the Max Gokin one, but somehow I think that'll be even heavier ("max gokin" = MORE METAL!), and thus even more expensive. So of course, I'm thinking that might be the one I want. After all, what's a toy worth if you can't club someone to death with it?

Emissaries-ness will swing 'round again later today, probably in the evening.