I swear, I'll have some things to talk about soon ...

... but for now, enjoy these links.

• Sean at Colony Drop reviews Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles and, to put it mildly, didn't think it was very good


• Collection DX review #1 - JoshB reviews the DX Chogokin VF-25S from Macross Frontier. Looks pretty sharp.


• Collection DX review #2 - Atom reviews the Beagle Mospeada (the Japan version of the Masterpiece Scott Bernard's Cyclone). Lots of photography, lots of detail.


• Collection DX review #3 - JoshB reviews Yamato's Destroid Defender, which appears to be awesome and goes on the shopping list. (Hey, I did just get my federal income tax refund ... hmm ...)

Fer reviews LSB II; HG screws up Masterpiece price.

See, I'm not the only one who likes Lonely Soldier Boy II -- good ol' Fer Goodnough praises it as possibly the best ROBOTECH music album ever. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Robotech.com has opened up pre-orders for the Masterpiece Collection Maia Sterling's Shadow Fighter. Last night the pre-order price was $59.99, the same reduced price that the remaining three original Toynami New Gen Masterpiece Alpha Fighters (red, green, Shadow) sell for there. Whoops! It was (and is) supposed to be $79.99, so all those pre-orders got canceled ... *sigh*

(Props to Roger Harkavy for alerting me to the change. And to think, that $59.99 price had me all excited last night. Phoo.)

Adrian Lozano @ OverDrive provides more photos of the Beagle Mospeada, which will in slightly rejiggered form come out Stateside as the Masterpiece Cyclone; Yaco @ Yacolog has his own to share, too.

A Link To Not Quite A Review Of Not Quite The Masterpiece Cyclone.

Adrian A. Lozano snaps some pictures and shares some thoughts on Beagle's 1/10 Mospeada Ride Armor -- the toy that, with a different head, will become Toynami's first Robotech Masterpiece Collection Cyclone -- HERE at Over-Drive-Inc.com. This is only the first part of his review, covering the teal-haired rider figure.

Bitty bits.

• A Japanese-language review of Yamato's 1/60 Destroid Tomahawk. Can't read it myself, but good god, the photos! What an awesome-looking toy.


• Collection DX's Leonardo Flores reflects on the completion of his VF-1D kit from Revell's Robotech Defenders line. Wish I could do work like that.


• Tam from anime retailer Twin Moons Anime complains about the Masterpiece Collection Cyclone price jump, in the context of having to cancel all the pre-orders since it's an over one hundred percent price jump. Mind you, as you and I know, it's now a completely different toy (you did know that, right?), but I wonder if Toynami's kept their retail partners in the loop about all this. It doesn't sound like they have ...


• Ain't It Cool News reports that the Macross Frontier movie is probably going to be a DYRL-style reimagining of the TV series story (by way of Famitsu magazine). So sorry, folks -- no further resolution.


• And finally, it's not exactly ROBOTECH news, but friend-of-the-Roboblog Roger Harkavy writes in to tell us that ROBOTECH Producer Carl Macek has a new book out. (Actually, it looks like it's been out since the end of July, but this is the first I've heard of it.) War Eagles is a novel based on a story by King Kong creator Merian C. Cooper, which he intended to be a follow-up to Kong. Looks like frequent Roboblog commenter Treiz liked it, so it's probably worth a look.

The Masterpiece Cyclone is Two Hundred Dollars.

It is also available for preorder at Robotech.com.

Considering the fact that I haven't bothered to shell out the less-than-half-that-price it would cost to snap up a MegaHouse Yellow/Lancer Mospeada figure + bike, which I so greatly desire, I don't think I'll be buying one of these suckers. (Also considering I'm still unemployed, let's make that doubly unlikely.)

Toynami & Their Promises - Looking at the SDCC Picture Gallery

Flip through this picture gallery and give me your thoughts in the comments thread. Here's what I took away from it.

1) I think this is the first time they've been so audacious as to show us all four Beta Fighters they intend to release. The Shadow Beta is pretty damn eye-catching, if you ask me. Do we have any release dates?

2) There's a 1/55 scale Veritech line featuring all-new head sculpts coming up -- and yes, I said Veritech and I mean Veritech. Had the ROBOTECH logo on it. Gotta wonder, are they just slapping new show-accurate heads on the old Takatoku/Bandai molds? Because looking at the -1D they had on display (especially the toy's hands), that's what it looks like.

3) The GBP armor system for the 1/100 Valkyries looks rather crap.

4) The 1/100 Battlepod, on the other hand, looks solid, if a bit static. I like it a bit better than the sorta weird, wiry Revoltech Regult that Kaiyodo released a few months back.

5) Maia's lavender Shadow Fighter comes out in December, if Toynami is to be trusted this time. Marcus's gray & white Shadow Fighter then comes out in Spring '09.

6) Yellow's Ride Armor/Lancer's Cyclone from MegaHouse was on display. I MUST OWN THIS TOY.

7) Right next to it was the Masterpiece Collection Scott Bernard w/Armored Cyclone. Offhand, I'd say this is a COMPLETELY different toy than the one that's been making the rounds for years. The one photo Figures.com has makes the red uniform parts look like they're made of cloth. The head was rather different -- looks like a swappable head thing, where before it looked like Scott had a removable helmet (easy to do with Scott's classic slicked-back hairdo). My Spidey-sense tells me this is actually the last of the three Japanese molds that have been in development -- the one from Beagle.

Ah, yeah, it is. Look at this early stuff I found linked through ToyBox DX's forums. Way to go, team. That'll show all those naysayers! Rebrand a few toys here, claim a toy for your own there ... in-house development? Who needs in-house development?

Anyhoo, the three things I'd probably snag out of this lot are Maia's Alpha (really want to do a VF-1S Skull One and Shadow Fighter Skull One back-to-back thing) Yellow's Ride Armor (LANCER ACTION FIGURE OMG!!!), and that Battlepod (because, hey, how often do you get a new Battlepod toy?).

The Beta? Ehh, don't have the room right now. Maybe later.

And you?

This is the one I want.

Atom @ CollectionDX reviews the MegaHouse Mospeada Ride Armor VR-052F (Stick Type). Looks pretty good, though I'm a little worried by the comments of having to chase popped-off parts 'round the room. Both modes look pretty cool, tho..

Note that THIS is the one that Toynami is going to be selling remarked imports of in the near future (if not now -- thought I saw one of both this and the Rey type with Toynami stickers on 'em on the ol' eBay).

Lookin' Good, Lookin' Not So Good

-- Caught the above pic from the February 29th Palladium Press Release concerning the RPG via Kevin McKeever's blog. Maia and Rick are lookin' good, Marcus less so -- is it that his eyes are too close together? Is it that he seems a wee bit too broad-shouldered and manly? I dunno. Something about that art just seems off to me. But that's OK, because I'm not all that fond of Marcus anyway.

-- Moving on to more recent Palladium news, The Shadow Chronicles RPG book either has shipped or will be shipping today. Can't wait to lay my hands on a copy! (This person seems to think, despite being charged for the book already, that it's going to miss the shipping date. Mind you, the remark seems a shade tongue-in-cheek, but you never know -- it is the internet.)

-- A.J. Wells, enjoy your second link from this blog: fan buys vintage Matchbox ROBOTECH figure of favorite character, finds it lacking. Actually, Exedore's is one of the better character likenesses in that lineup. Breetai looks like a pin-headed vampire, Khyron looks like one of the Beatles, and poor Miriya looks like a dude. Let's not even talk about the 3 3/4" range and their poor, misshapen sculpts ...

Bonus trivia: Exedore's orange Zentraedi Cizion on the action figure is probably the result him having an orange Cizion in the style guide Harmony Gold provided to licensees. Check it out.


Chances are good that if you find something bizarrely off or wrongheaded on a piece of vintage ROBOTECH merchandise, it probably has its origins in the 1980's Style Guide. It is quite the font of misinformation that could have been straightened out by reviewing the show itself. (I'm half-shocked he didn't wind up with the teal trim instead of the proper green on his uniform, now that I look at the figure again.)

This is the kind of stupid trivia I thrive on. That's why it goes before the recent toy news you might actually give a crap about.

-- Moving forward in time to much, much more recent toys, Josh tells us that the Megazone 23 Part 2 Proto Garland is awesome, and (deep breath) Cyclones, Cyclones, and more Cyclones -- the MegaHouse one looks awesome but apparently has a more "intentional disassembly"-style transformation, Yaco provides some excellent comparison pics of various Cyclones, and Beagle is apparently still going to make their 1/10 scale version. Which means if we still get the Toynami version that's been shown off for years, that'll be four different Cyclone toys in the span of about a year. Crazy.

-- Also, I see that someone (it says "Roger" -- could it be our old pal Roger Harkavy?) told Yaco that the Toynami Betas are going to be $150 each, not the $80 that BBTS listed them as initially. I see that they have corrected themselves accordingly.

-- And on a personal note, I just won this item off the eBay ...



I don't care how much of a two-dimensional raging maniacal tool he is, I still kind of like T.R. Edwards. He amuses me.

Cyclonic Consequences

With the Toynami Masterpiece Cyclones now slated for the summer, MegaHouse's take on the Ride Armors will be the first modern transformable version of these mecha to hit the market, hitting the streets of Nippon in February 2008. See more photography of Stig & Rei at MegaHouse's website. Both will be released simultaneously and set you back 6,090 yen apiece -- though right now you can pre-order 'em from >HobbyLink Japan for the Early Bird Discount price of 5,510 yen (just shy of $50 at the current exchange rate) each.

I think I kinda like 'em, myself. Something very toyetic and less collectors' artifact-like about them than a lot of the modern stuff, y'know? Like they're not trying so hard to be models for people who can't build models ...

Roger Harkavy is a font of useful information; he delivers the goods, like Santa.

Matt Alt talks to Mospeada mecha designer (and Appleseed director) Shinji Aramaki for Otaku USA here. This is part one of two, which also appears in the November issue of the corresponding print magazine. Part two will be out next month.

Yaco provides a side-by-side comparison of the Toynami Alpha Fighter and the Aoshima Legioss here. Shame the Aoshima toys are so shoddy -- Yaco's photography sure as heck makes that blue Legioss look nice.

And Toynami's new offerings, previously tentatively slated for right about now, are now, according to ToyFare, slated as follows:

Shadow Chronicles Alpha Fighters -- Winter
New Generation Beta Fighter -- Spring
New Generation Cyclones -- Summer

Interestingly, they're saying it's going to be Scott Bernard, Lancer, and Sue Graham's Cyclones again -- just like that first announcement.

Also, the article says something about a Shadow Chronicles video game. Is this Wizard Entertainment not knowing what the hell they're talking about again, or have they just spilled the beans? Hmm. One must wonder.

All courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Roger Harkavy, who continues to make me look bad/lazy.

New Masterpiece Preorders

BigBadToyStore.com has opened up preorders for the second and third Toynami Masterpiece Collection Cyclones, Lancer & Rand's, with tentative release dates of 1st and 2nd Quarter 2008, respectively. See them here -- or rather, see where they should be, since there are no pictures up. They still only have pictures of Scott Bernard, who's coming up in November.

This comes in the wake of news of Aoshima's upcoming 1/48 Legioss (Alpha Fighter) toys in July, CM's Legioss & TLEAD (Alpha & Beta) combination, and Beagle's 1/12 Ride Armors (Cyclones) coming up next year. (All links point back to The Masters's Robotech Companion blog.) If you're a Mospeada/Robotech: The New Generation fan, you're going to either need a lot of money during the course of the next year, or you're going to have a lot of choices to make.

(Screen grab nicked from Robotech Research.)