ROBOBLOG III Archives

7.31.2006

Another conversation with Tommy Part 2



MP3 File


A few asides regarding this one ...
  1. Every time I hear anything regarding the Beta Fighter, I kind of frown when the subject of "buying all four" comes up. Didn't Scott Bernard's team only have the one? Do we even see red or green Betas in the TV series? I'm sure there are plenty of ROBOTECH (and Mospeada) fans out there who want four Betas for four Alphas, but that always drives this particular fan nuts when used as a rationale for "dumbing down" the Beta. On the other hand, I suppose that Toynami would be seriously counting on triple- and quadruple-dipping on this particular item to mitigate the costs of tooling this massive mechanized monstrosity ... so, I kind of get what's going on with the Beta, but personally I'd only be buying the one or two due to fidelity to the source material rather than cost. Maybe that's just me.

  2. Tommy's Unicron example is actually pretty appropriate to the matter at hand. If I'm remembering this right, the Unicron he's referring to at first was a convention exclusive statue based on the character's classic appearance in the 1986 Transformers: The Movie and the comic book stories he appeared in subsequently -- very big, kind of expensive, very limited, and geared towards nostalgia-fueled fanboys. The $50 mass market toy came a couple of years later, redesigned to tie in with the current cartoon series. So, in fact, the scenario I brought up mirrors this quite nicely, I think, and might be reason to hope if Shadow Chronicles is a hit!

  3. Michael Bradley posts the latest on the CD that Tommy & I discuss at the end of this clip here.

Oh, and real sorry 'bout the lateness. Busy weekend, lots of second thoughts on the edits, and boy my knees have been hurting (and if you've ever seen my computer chair, you'll know why that's kind of a big deal).

posted by Captain JLS at 14:53

5 Comments:

  • Comments on the interview:

    You can find corroboration of what Tommy Yune said about why Palladium dropped the license, and some things that he didn't mention, toward the end of Section 5 of The Palladium FAQ by Stan Bundy.

    Of course, this is all point-of-view from an outspoken Palladium fan, so should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

    Robotech 3000 initially caused all Robotech licensing to grind virtually to a halt, until more information was released concerning the new series. While minor items could be published by Palladium (Like my own ABP-Z4 REF Pod design published in The Rifter #5), no full-book-sized items were possible. In fact, Palladium had two manuscripts they WANTED to publish (one centering on the space colonies founded after the SDF-3 departure), but had to sit on, until the situation cleared. With the demise of Robotech 3000, the situation never cleared, and when the license came up for renewal, not only was Harmony Gold insisting that Palladium sign on for the next series' rights, sight unseen, but that those rights would be separate from original Robotech. Even more bizarre, HG wanted Palladium to agree to a SUBSTANTIAL raise in rights fees, while simultaneously insisting that nothing be published for the old series until the new series was premiered.

    Also, Harmony Gold wasn't the only one who had problems getting enough copies of the Protoculture Edition boxed set. Oddly enough, ADV had similar problems; I ordered my copy of the boxed set during one of their occasional mega-sales, in late December. It was February before they were able to deliver it. I asked them about that and they said that they'd run out of stock and had to wait for more copies to be made at the factory. Funny how that goes.

    By Blogger Chris Meadows, at 31 July, 2006 15:26  

  • For those still looking for the Protoculture Collection, check out:

    Amazon.com
    AnimeNation.com
    BarnesandNoble.com
    CircuitCity.com
    RightStuf.com
    WalMart.com

    (No referral links above, out of principle)

    Robotech.com may not have it now, but plenty of other online retailers have it in stock.

    As for green fighters, several did appear in the first episode of that story:
    http://www.robotech.com/infopedia/episodes/viewepisode.php?episode=61

    However, no one famous used them, even as a booster. Imagine buying one, and having some cannon fodder that screamed "OOOOOO-Aaaaiiigh!" staring at you from the box spine. ;)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 31 July, 2006 19:02  

  • If you Froogle on the Protoculture Collection, and check other sources, you can generally find some places that have it for sale in the $70-80 range.

    But beware the per-disc shipping trap. It seems a lot of places count multi-disc sets as the equivalent number of separate discs for shipping purposes. Given that the Protoculture Collection has 21 DVDs in it, that can add up.

    DVD Pacific has about as good a price as I've seen for it, even though they have a per-disc ship; taking shipping into account, the total price for the set is about $85-$88.

    By Blogger Chris Meadows, at 31 July, 2006 22:31  

  • Thanks, Jonathan for posting these. You did a great job and I really enjoyed hearing what Tommy had to say.

    Aikiweezie

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 02 August, 2006 08:47  

  • Notice how he dodged the question about reprinting the Sentinels novels?

    By Blogger Darkwater, at 02 August, 2006 11:27  

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