Just saw this on Hobby Link Japan’s website. They have a promo running till Sept 28, 2009 (7 days to go!) wherein if you pay your item via Paypal and agree with a Paypal Billing Agreement between you and HLJ, you get free express shipping on your item. You will initially be charged for the shipping then after a few days HLJ will credit the money back to your Paypal account. Its Silver Week right now in Japan and they also announced that they won’t be back till the 24th, so I guess there might be a delay in the processing of your order.

Update: 01/24/2010: HLJ announced a tie up with Yamato Toys which allows them to sell exclusive items such as this. This is selling for 36800 yen at HLJ.

Update (11/11/2009): These Macross line of helmets can also be bought at HLJ, here, here and here. As well as at Amiami which is selling it for a much cheaper price of 30,834 yen.

Update (10/13/2009): Hobby Search already has this up for order. You can’t cancel it though once you have made the order.

Update (10/13/2009): Yamato has the product pages for the helmets up already at their site, here and here.

Update (10/09/2009):Latest update from Yamato with regards to the method and date of reservation start, estimated price, release date and other options found here. If you are outside Japan, you can always check at HLJ or Over Drive Inc if the helmets are available already. Both these shops can also offer to purchase it for you if incase it won’t become part of their inventory. Over Drive I know will charge a service fee for out of shelf purchases.

Guess Yamato Toys was really planning to make a motorcycle helmet with a Macross theme. As based from their blog post here, here,here and here. Right now they showcased two types, a Hikaru Ichijo version (red, white and black colors) and a Roy Fokker version (yellow, black and white)

Based on the article, its a real life helmet that can be used legally on the street and its based on a racing replica. From what I’m seeing it looks like an ordinary helmet with some stickers added to it. This is different from the Macross Replica Helmet that they are selling.

Decided to start an informal (meaning when I have time) translation project of the manual for the 1/72 VF-25G Model Kit from Bandai that I recently bought. It initially started with the translation of the VF-25G’s Color Guide and then ended with translation of some parts of the VF-25G’s manual. Then I realized that since I won’t be assembling this model in the near future, might as well have everything in place once I do decide to build it. Its going to be hard moving back and forth between the manual and a Japanese-to-English dictionary by that time.

There’s a saying that you only get what you paid for. So I’m quite happy that I only paid Y2400 for this toy since it was on sale at HLJ. Ok so I think its a still bit overpriced but almost anything with a Macross tag tied to it nowadays is overpriced and selling like hotcakes.

The toy comes in 1/100 scale and stands roughly 15cm tall in Battloid mode. With the aid of additional parts it can transition to Fighter and Gerwalk mode. So you could say that some assembly is required for this toy. Its very light because its mostly constructed of plastic.

Not sure why this was on sale though. Whether it was because it was the last few remaining inventory, so they’re trying to get rid of it to make some shelf space for the VF100’s version of Alto’s Armored VF-25, or because its really not selling only HLJ knows.

If I were to base this review on the Y5040 price tag that Bandai is touting it for over at the Bandai Site, definitely its overpriced given the quality of the plastic and the workmanship. Design wise its a fine design for a display model and because of the size they had to work with. Because of the high price of Oil I’m not surprised if they had decided to cut corners on the quality of this product. Plastic is made from oil so its price is pegged proportionately with the price of oil. And oil hasn’t been that low these past few years.