Ramifications.

(I stole this picture from Macross World which means I'm probably going to hell, for a variety of reasons.)

Unless you've buried your head in the sand, you have probably heard the news that Toynami will be releasing Bandai's upcoming anniversary rereleases of the ol' 1/55 scale 1980's Takatoku transformable VF-1 Valkyrie/Veritech toys worldwide. (Robotech.com ran the story, oddly enough, with no mention of Bandai at all. Which is weird, but par for the course when it comes to Robotech.com.)

Thought #1 that comes to mind looking at the preorder page at Robotech.com is that boy, $80 seems steep, especially when I'm pretty sure I bought a Super VF-1S rerelease about five or six years ago, the last time Bandai played this game (for the 20th anniversary of Macross), for about $60. But hey, these are still FANTASTIC toys, and are probably worth about, oh, say, $65 even without Fast packs and missile-firing armor pieces.

But what gets to me is the real big-time ramifications of this -- this is a Harmony Gold licensee releasing, worldwide, Big West-licensed merchandise.

Wrap your brain around that one for a minute. Let it soak in.

Bandai manufactured these Valkyries under license from Big West.

Toynami is distributing them under license from Harmony Gold.

I believe, in fact, a new day may be dawning, boys & girls. I can't help but think that between the ROBOTECH feature film in development at Warner Bros. and Big West and Satelight wanting some of that big international money for the obviously very expensive Macross Frontier, Big West and Tatsunoko (and, by proxy, Harmony Gold) are finally having to get their legal ducks in a row in order to finally begin the important business of making worldwide cash off of all that Macross material and merchandising that's been bottled up in Japan over the course of the last decade. This, my friends, would appear to be Step One.

Your thoughts?

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While I'm back in the office, so to speak, here's another ROBOTECH anime music video I made. Enjoy.