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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 22:46:11 GMT -5
In the unpainted shots above you can see the knees use that same joint as Gattaiger and Z Mazinger. The sort of nylon plastic ratchet. I don't know about you all, but I am terrified every time I move Gattaiger for fear of the horrid sounds coming out of his legs. my biggest fear was the joint in hands every time i swap the fists lol Oh I read the horror stories regarding Gataiger hands and simply opted to leave the extras in the box. He can stand there with fists, no problem. I'm not gonna risk it.
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 22:40:43 GMT -5
well from what i remember the vintage Bismarck was very popular that they released another version that doesn't transform into the battle ship it was a robot mode only and i disagree Bismarck will be a very good choice if they decided to make it, and they will milk the whole market since there isn't any Bismarck figure for me personally Albegas and Bismarck are on the top of my wish list, im not into Dairugger XV at all this is on of my favorite reviews Gold thank you for your time and for your efforts, i know how annoying to dig out all those figures just to take couple of photos I think we can agree on wanting Albegas. I would love to be able to stand all four or five Voltron related robots in a row as nice in scale SOC diecasts. Daltanius, Voltron, Dairuger XV, Albegas (and at some future point Legendary.) Bismark/Ramrod is not one that I have ever had a lot of attachment to. I would get one so long as it is well executed. But not high on my wish list. Whereas Dairuger and XV are at the absolute top of it now. (Which is weird to say considering 4 of my top 5 have already been announced, released or leaked as coming soon. Voltron, Daizyujin, SOC Jeeg and SOC Mazinkaiser would appear to be in the pipeline, no? )
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 21:44:27 GMT -5
A great review. I love how you did the unboxing on camera. Added a nice touch.
One minor criticism. I don't know how much you pre-script. But if you are going to pull from history you might want to do a little more research before hand. Voltron wasn't the toy that caused the change in the safety laws. That was a Battlestar Galactica toy. 2 kids each put the nose of the Viper in their mouths and fired the missile down their throats. One died, one needed messy surgery. Voltron was one of the first toys to be impacted by that changed law. The original Popy Japanese GoLion toy was fully accessorized with tons of spring firing missiles. In order to import it to the US as the Matchbox Voltron, they stripped out ALL of the weapons, disabled the spring shooters and even went so far as to blunt the teeth in the lions mouths. But yeah it was Mattel that got hit with the massive lawsuit. Not Bandai.
Voltron did later add to those safety laws in a different way. When that Matchbox toy became insanely popular Bandai/Popy could not keep up, so they subcontracted another factory in Taiwan to make more of them. That factory proceeded to use some really really nasty lead paint, which got discovered, resulting in a massive recall and more changes to the laws.
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 16:58:02 GMT -5
Great review. I love the comparison shots. I was not expecting it to be so close in size to Ideon. Or to stand above God Sigma. Wow! That's just awesome.
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 11:06:38 GMT -5
Update on the Ultra Alloy D17 from my contact at LCM Toy: it has been delayed until mid 2017 because the manufacturer is focusing on a GoLion. "We ran out of money and need to sell some bootlegs quick to run up funds"
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 11:03:57 GMT -5
In the unpainted shots above you can see the knees use that same joint as Gattaiger and Z Mazinger. The sort of nylon plastic ratchet. I don't know about you all, but I am terrified every time I move Gattaiger for fear of the horrid sounds coming out of his legs.
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 10:52:12 GMT -5
the thing is with Voltes even tho its a special release it got reissued and it sold out every where in matter of minutes and the price increased alot in matter of days, with people getting 2 sets, however Voltron is a dream for every collector even those who never heard about Bandai SOC line toke a risk and went for it, they got introduced to the line by Voltron,even tho it got released a while ago we can still get it close to the PO price, im not saying the demand isn't strong, in matter of fact alot of us got 2 lol so i guess Bandai does know what they got so they increased the production, i gotta feeling this is not the last voltron we will see from Bandai & hopefully it will give a chance for other classic robot owned by the evil WEB Albegas and Bismarck Of the other WEP properties Dairuger XV is the next most likely candidate. It carries the Voltron branding. It won't do as well as GoLion, but enough will want "the pair" to make it a strong seller. Bandai has engineered it reasonably well in the past, and Miracle Metals proved it can be done. As much as I so want a SOC Albegas, that's a hard one to do well. And despite loosely having Voltron branding in the west, nobody ever saw it on screen. We might get it, Bandai is known to surprise, but I would not count it as a likely possibility. Bismark? Maybe an SRC? The problem with Bismark is the actual onscreen robot is rather graceless and inelegant. What you saw on screen was exactly what you could get with a cheap plastic toy of 80's technology. A flying plastic box that opens up to reveal a chunky barely articulated robot inside. Bismark is the Mark I Shellformer. It's just not that interesting of a design for a SOC. I'm not sure Bandai would choose to do an anime accurate SOC of it.
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Post by faelon on Jan 20, 2017 0:42:47 GMT -5
I think Voltes while one of the top sellers, likely did not have as large of production runs as GX01/GX01R etc. and I think both will be blown away by Voltron sales. The only thing that might challenge it would be a new Grendizer heavily sold into the Euro market. I was actually thinking about this the other day, and I'd be surprised if Voltron didn't blow everything away. I'll assume the sales among the more serious collectors don't differ that significantly from other figures in this line, though realistically Voltron probably wins here too. Where Voltron really wins is with folks like myself, more casual collectors who have some positive memories of Voltron, and little to no other SOC figures. The Netflix reboot certainly helps rekindle those memories. It was interesting for me to learn about Voltron toys and the SOC line. And as cool as the SOC line is, I have no interest in buying any other figures because I don't know any of the other characters besides Megazord (which luckily for my wallet, I didn't like growing up). As previously mentioned, I wouldn't be surprised if the North America sales numbers alone make this the best selling SOC ever, and I also wouldn't be surprised if a larger percentage of that was from casual fans compared to other SOC figures. Yeah. Voltron is sitting in a rather intriguing merchandising sweet spot. It's sitting right at that cusp of nostalgia interest between two and arguably three groups of now adult fan/collectors. Voltron sits dang smack in the middle of the 80's kids who came home to him after school every day. But he is also old enough that he is well known by the 70's Shogun Warriors era kids, who may have been hitting college when Voltron hit the States, but still knew it was cool. And Voltron was very much the leading edge of the 90's group. In many ways the progenitor of what came after in their minds. From Transformers to Power Rangers. There is a deep nostalgic bond across three decades of nerdlings. And the new Netflix show just reminded everyone of that. Add to that that WEPs reworking of GoLion to its more kid friendly Voltron spread like wildfire across three continents and you find yourself with one of the best nostalgic properties that doesn't feature Darth Vader in it. I've suspected that somewhere between 60-80% of Toynami's 30th Anniversary Masterpiece Voltron sales were through Amazon. Once you see GX-71 hit Amazon, if they can keep the supply up, is where you will see the casual sales craziness begin. The non or casual robot collectors. When Amazon says "since you looked at Legendary Defender Voltron, you might like... " sh*t starts to sell. Heck a buddy of mine is a rabid Voltron fan. Not a collector, and not one to spend much on such toys.(he has kids, I don't). He has had standing orders that when I die, he gets my Toynami and my MM VV. He just asked me the other day how or where he could get a GX-71. (And he didn't freak out about the price, which was worrying.)
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Post by faelon on Jan 19, 2017 15:42:59 GMT -5
The only other one that might come close is Daizyujin/MMPR. closest? I probably give my vote to GX-31. All 3 incarnations are almost sold out.. and remaining ones are fetching above normal prices. I think Voltes while one of the top sellers, likely did not have as large of production runs as GX01/GX01R etc. and I think both will be blown away by Voltron sales. The only thing that might challenge it would be a new Grendizer heavily sold into the Euro market.
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Post by faelon on Jan 19, 2017 12:55:57 GMT -5
I wonder if potentially this could be the best selling SOC ever, it seems like fans across the world want one of these. I rather suspect that it will be. The original 980's was Bandai/Popy's all time best selling Chokogin, was it not? (If not the best than very very high on the list). Granted it was the years hot item in North America and saw sales and demand via a broad swath of retail department stores, not just toy stores. Do do we know what the best selling SOC has been up to this point? I suspect the various flavors of GX-01 combined top the chart. But Voltron should beat that easy just from North American interest. The only other one that might come close is Daizyujin/MMPR. Those two are sitting on that cross generational late 80's early 90's sweet spot that so fuels the adult nostalgia sales. BTW I R an Idiot. I was getting worried when I didn't get a ship notice from BBTS. Yep! Been sitting in my pile o loot! Gahhh!
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Post by faelon on Jan 19, 2017 11:12:36 GMT -5
On the positive side, the paint and sculpt looks gorgeous. But ugh! The Gataiger knees again.../sob! Why oh why?
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Post by faelon on Jan 19, 2017 11:10:15 GMT -5
Also fair warning. My GX-71 that was shipped from HLJ, had the foam and parts trays upside down. Meaning that the front of the box is reversed. This is the first time this happened and I did not expect that so I pulled out the foam tray thinking it was the right side up when it wasn't. Thankfully none of the lions fell out of the tray because I realized what was going on as I was taking the tray out and pulled it along with the part trays to keep them from falling down. It was really weird. I've had that sometimes with other SOC's. I've learned slide it out just enough to see which end is up with the trays, before pulling it all the way out. I also open the boxes on a bed, this way they don't have anywhere to fall, and a soft surface under then if anything does drop out.
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Post by faelon on Jan 19, 2017 11:04:58 GMT -5
If ET's can actually stand up it will have technically surpassed CM's, which while good looking was a floppy mess.
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Post by faelon on Jan 18, 2017 23:37:51 GMT -5
I can't believe they haven't done Gakeen yet. I mean it's one of the major classic Magnamatic robots after Jeeg and Battarack. It's their core gimmick.
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Post by faelon on Jan 18, 2017 22:39:53 GMT -5
I'll give them props for Z Mazinger. The paint and finish is gorgeous. The only thing keeping it from "Wow!" Status would be those horrid plastic ratchet knees that HLPro uses. also the face and the small horns other than than its good yes I'm much more forgiving of such things for a Manga based subject that we have never seen in motion or subjected to rigid character modeling as they do for anime and such. When the only thing representing the robot is the Manga Ka's pen and supply of recreational pharmaceuticals some of the proportions can become suspect. I'll settle for "looks good and seems properly representative of the character."
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Post by faelon on Jan 15, 2017 21:49:56 GMT -5
Y'know it dawns on me that I have never seen an actual review of that figure? How is it? a very small percentage of collectors got it, its typical HL pro good but not wow, i dont own it but im looking for one, the only wow figure HL pro did was Gattaiger (the spazer not the robot) I'll give them props for Z Mazinger. The paint and finish is gorgeous. The only thing keeping it from "Wow!" Status would be those horrid plastic ratchet knees that HLPro uses.
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Post by faelon on Jan 14, 2017 21:31:15 GMT -5
me 5, Looks gorgeous and my first SRC. Been strictly SoC for Bandai stuff but I just don't see Bandai making a SoC of Zero anytime soon. Welcome to a new and dangerously addictive arm of the hobby. SRC's are not SOC's. They are their own little wonderful bits of die cast joy. They are a little more stylized and lack the transforming gimmicks, but dear gods the posing! You can do things with these you never would have thought possible in a robot toy.
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Post by faelon on Jan 14, 2017 21:27:50 GMT -5
i really like it but im not sure if i like it enough to get it i mean with Fewture Zero im not sure I'm kind of there as well. I'm not normally a huge fan of the modernized grimdark badass take on the classic designs. But this one is catching my eye for some reason. Maybe it's that funky scrander. Ah who am I kidding. I have almost a complete set of SRC's. The only ones I've been prompted to skip are the two Armorred Core ones (which just don't fit in) and the new Jeeg (which just looks awful.) I'm gonna get this guy and a Emperor Maz.
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Post by faelon on Jan 14, 2017 21:19:36 GMT -5
I just got mine from eknightmedia.com and I am a little upset I spend 300 dollars to have them send me a highly damaged shipping box with a gigantic puncture through the font with Styrofoam poking out and taped over and the opposite side is crushed. I didn't pay 300.00 to have a semi heart attack when it arrived but after opening the box I see that there was a large amount of padding and the voltron box looks fine so far. But that's what shipping boxes are for. To take the abuse that otherwise would go right to our toys and their packaging. I also got mine from eknightmedia yesterday. Shipping box looked nice and solid. Golion box inside was pristine. Getting it from EKM turned out to be a sweet deal. More to the point, it's an amazing toy. Easily one of the best even among SOC's. I probably spent four hours playing with it late last night, and another two or so this morning. A lot of love went into this thing. I get the impression that, while waiting to acquire the license, they just kept turning out new prototypes, tweaking things here and there, getting every millimeter of the design sorted as close to perfection as humanly possible. And they must have gone through a lot of trial and error with the factory as well, cause I can't find a damn flaw. Flawless paint--and on such a colorful design. Even the few little nub marks I've found on the plastic bits are very smooth and have been painted over with matching paint; I wouldn't have found them without looking for them. The joints are all... perfect. Nothing too tight or too loose, and nothing that feels like it will break or loosen over time. I suspect this is a special case because of issues with the license, and Bandai relishing their chance to smash the competition. I can't imagine we'll see another SOC that feels quite this good in hand. But if any of the future offerings even come close, it will mean even more solid and refined designs in an already stellar toyline. Ideon and Iron Gear remain my favorite SOC's because of the subject matter. But as far as design and execution, Golion blows them away. I'm... kinda amazed. While this is clearly a true labor of love. I think you may be over estimating it's uniqueness. I'm getting a very similar Engineering and Quality vibe coming off of Daizyujin/MMPR.
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Post by faelon on Jan 14, 2017 21:12:23 GMT -5
Y'know it dawns on me that I have never seen an actual review of that figure? How is it?
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