I’ve bought a bunch of JoyToy Dark Sources action figures, in my preferred 4 inch size (they make 3 inch ones too to go with their mecha). They are the most poseable figures I’ve ever have, rivalling the 6 inch guys and the details are remarkable, with paint washes that really bring out detail. They don’t even need stands, their articulation and balance is so good.
I’ve also been putting together some smaller 1/100 macross kits. Here’s the Battroid, and I’ve just finished the jet mode too (separate kit).
That’s really fun. I like how he’s not adding motion blur to make you think they’re animated or alive, (even though the frame is bursting with dynamism), they’re just great vignettes of still life toys.
That Optimus Prime is pretty rad. It looks like the heroic leader I pretended he was instead of the barely articulated truck thing that I actually had. I feel like Transformers are just now catching up to our childhood imaginations.
That’s some really good photography. There were ones going around a while ago featuring marvel characters, which I really loved. Don’t have time to look for the link right now, though.
I got inspired because I joined a Facebook group called 1:18 Dioramas and started going through the stuff people were posting there. People are putting a lot of work into some nice custom stuff. I’m gonna try to do some more but I have some learning to do first.
I’m really looking forward to transformers toys that self-transform and hope they become mainstream before I keel over. I’ve seen some stuff on youtube that’s really cool and expect to see more as battery technology improves.
Of the probably 30+ transformers that I’ve gotten over the years, this prime is just head-and-shoulders above anything else in almost every way and he’s not even close to the top-of-the-line third party stuff that’s out there—I’m just too cheap to break the $100 barrier on an action figure/toy.
To be fair to the Transformers toy line, they’ve been making highly articulated poseable transformable toys since around 2004, when they made the MP01 Optimus. He was huge, and heavy, lots of diecast metal, and had a decent truck mode, I bought him for $100. They then made Megatron, who was not as successful, and also huge, and I had no more desk space at work, and my wife didn’t want to see robots, so I stopped there. A few years later they rescaled the Masterpiece line to be smaller, but I had stepped out of that game, they still needed too much space. In 2007 they rebooted the original line to be lesser complex 16 cm ish playable toys, all plastic and no diecast, called Universe and Generations, and these were great toys with realistic vehicle modes. After that they went all scifi with the next iterations for a decade.
Like Stepsongrapes says, the latest official Masterpiece and third party MPs are super complex, can be really finicky to transform (depending on make/model) and are big. Nice display pieces, but man, a chore to transform. That’s why I’ve taken my collection to exclusively third party Legends, 4 inch bots that look great, still transform, and can be tucked away in the cupboard where my wife doesn’t have to see them. They relatively inexpensive, super articulated and poseable. And when my wife has to tell me a boring story about her work I grab one and transform it while I listen to keep my hands busy. If you told me when I was ten I would have the entire cast of TF and poseable robots to boot I would have wet myself.
Only a few here are in vehicle mode but you can see from the Porsche and Datsun there are no compromises in that form. (NewAge and Magic Square and the two brands to google for these)
The transformable 1/72 Bandai Macross kits are supposed to be very good. They are in my model kit wishlist along with crazier stuff like the 1/72 falcon (to get this one first I need to finish my three huge model kits to free space, and not get another beast in the meantime).
I also found out that there are 1/20 macross kits and they went into my wishlist too (but in the “unlikely to ever get there” category).
Yeah, I have some pretty strict size requirements so 1/100 is the best I can do, with the bonus that they then fit in very nicely with my Transformer Legends jets which are about the same size, as well as my Revell + Bandai Star Wars kits. The one I have above is the Revell 1/112 XWing, although the pilot is actually a tad larger than the Macross 1/100 pilot, so not sure what’s going on there.
I have the Bandai M.Falcon which I haven’t built yet, as well as a Ywing, Xwing, Ties, and Awings all at 1/144 scale (so tiny! Fighters are about 10cm) which I can tuck away in my cabinets once done. Even though the added detail of a 1/72 kit is nice, they take up monstrous room unless you only want one to make a statement in a room on a desk or something. Me, I like to have lots, and then hide them away so when we have guests it doesn’t look like a toy museum (not that I’d mind, but you know…)
it’s funny, I hadn’t made a kit since I was about 14 yrs old. Lockdown was the perfect excuse to dive in again, this time doing it all right, with paint and panel lining and water decals… I used to just glue 'em all together and call it done.
We have a hobby desk thread in the game forums for stuff like modeling, if you want to show your stuff over there!
One of my goals is to collect Bandai Star Wars 1/72 kits (from the original trilogy, to go with my hopefully future Millenium Falcon. The Bandai 1/72 stuff is amazing.
To be fair, I don’t follow Transformers that closely. I like them but my heart was always with GI Joe. I was aware of the Masterpiece stuff but not some of the others. Sounds like heaven if you’re a fan of them.
This made me laugh pretty hard. Wish I had some toys for that situation. I usually practice doing goofy walks around the kitchen until she laughs and forgets what she was talking about.
