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.

I stole this picture from my sister for all of you.

Found at my sister's LiveJournal: a Macross Frontier cream puff. I wonder if it's as completely insubstantial as the show is, or if it is utterly derivative of other, better cream puffs that have gone before.

Yeah, you're going to just have to deal with me ragging on Frontier every time I bring it up. I really, really hated that show. It made me angry.

Taking the lead.

From YacoLog via Roger Harkavy:


CM's Corporation will be releasing their version of the two green Mospeada Ride Armors (Cyclones), Stig (Scott Bernard) & Rei (Rand)'s, December 2007, making theirs the first modern versions out of the gate. 1/18 scale, 13 cm. tall, 6,300 yen apiece. See Stig here and Rei here.

Also, their Legioss/TLEAD two-pack (Alpha/Beta combo!) is slated for release in February.

Update: Roger Harkavy informs us that Vincent Z. posted up magazine scans of the CM's Legioss/TLEAD at ToyBoxDX aaaaaaa-right here. Check it out.

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In other news, Emissaries and Robotech Roundtable creator Evan Cass has opened protoCULTURE, a brand-new link-blog devoted to ROBOTECH, comics, animation, movies, and more. I actually passed him his current top story (as of this writing) while I was on the phone with him last night. And that would be ...



Great Eastern Entertainment, probably the biggest anime merchandising company in the U.S. market, is and will be producing a whole raft of Shadow Chronicles knick-knacks, including the above pictured plastic keychain of Marcus's holo-locket, which strikes me as a bit creepy, come to think of it. The only one that's out now is a metal keychain of the REF/UEEF insignia, which is actually pretty classy-looking. See the list here. There are actually some pretty nice pieces there.

I can't wait for them to start making the super deformed keychains. Heaven knows they've done it with, like, every other property they've ever licensed, seriously.

Remember to add protoCULTURE to your ROBOTECH-related bookmarks!

Post #300 - Merch & More ...

• Well, someone's going to get to look at The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles early. This weekend Stone Bridge Press will be unveiling it for attendees at the Alternative Press Expo. According to Robotech.com, in-store dates are forthcoming. Probably pretty quick here, unless they look that one copy over and find it riddled with errors ...


• Also, in case you haven't heard, the Shadow Chronicles soundtrack is on iTunes, in case you aren't interested in having it as a tangible object.


• Next weekend, Kevin McKeever is going to be in China. Bring us back something nice, Kev!


• And Harmony Gold has signed a number of new deals with companies worldwide. In the wake of this, Chris Meadows talked this afternoon with ROBOTECH's brand manager at FUNimation, Jonathan Brands. Tommy Yune was also there. Listen here, like I'm doing as I type this.


• Revealed at the tail end of the aforementioned interview was the fact that the Aoshima Mospeada toys will have more differences under the hood than just the joints, even if they will be identical to the Masterpiece Alphas on the surface, and that George Sohn of Toynami will be talking to Aoshima and CM's (Beagle, too?) about bringing their Mospeada products into the States in an official way. Hey, if it means they'll be less expensive for me, the end consumer, I'm all for it!


• Oh, and yes, this is the 300th post on this blog. Phew!

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 1

Yes, henceforth you will be getting weekly video rants like the above. Consider yourself warned. Leave your comments and complaints in the comment jar and I'll address them in the next episode.

Note: The final issue of Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles sold approx. 8,200 copies in the direct market, not "about 6,000-something" as I state in the video. But that's still pathetic by DC Comics standards. Not as pathetic as that Ninja Scroll series being published by DC/WildStorm that was at the 6,000-something mark as of January and is still inexplicably ongoing, but certainly far from good ...