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The last of the truly vintage 1/55 Hi-Metal Macross Valkyrie toys, the VF-1S Super Valkyrie (Roy color scheme) released by Bandai in 1990 has a bit of a reputation with Macross fans as being inferior to previous releases. The main reason for this are some relatively major mold changes. Due to this, this toy remains somewhat unloved and is probably one of the cheapest vintage Valkyries available, usually selling for not much more than the more recent Super Valkyrie re-releases on Yahoo Auctions Japan (around 10k yen).

But is this reputation justified? This I want to explore in this review. Now I must say it straightaway: I like the more controversial changes. However, there are some other minor problems that may cause your mileage to vary, and that actually tarnish the toy more than the mold changes that are often so despised.

Let’s start with the box:

The box art is utterly gorgeous, and the front of the box features all the neccessary buzz-words to entice you into buying this thing (“Perfect Detailed S-Heavy Version”, “Hi-Metal”, “VF-1S”, “Variable fighter”, “Super real 1/55 die-cast/plastic scale model”). Then you turn the box around:

Why, Bandai, why!?!? Why such an absolutely marvelous front side and such a godawful back side? This looks like something someone put together on a friday evening after drinking one too many pints of whisky. Barf.

Opening the box however reveals a good thing:

The styrofoam trays containing all the various parts. One tray contains the Valkyrie, gunpod, armclip, missile tree, clip-on heatshield, and sticker sheet, while the other contains the Super parts. Some people might be set off by the Super parts’ color, but as we’ll see later it actually looks pretty decent.

The instruction sheet is not held by any of the trays, and is instead sitting in the box behind them. It is nice and large and explains everything well:

Now for the Valkyrie itself:

A completely normal VF-1S Fighter…or is it? Looking at these pictures, you can see the new head for a little bit, and you might notice that the wheels are now black plastic instead of unpainted diecast. The black wheels look much more realistic than the original landing gear. But these black wheels are not the only change to the landing gear. Let’s have a look at the underside of the Fighter:

Now you can notice two additional things: 1) the lack of the rear landing gear rear doors, and 2) the lack of triggers for the landing gear. Now fear not: the landing gears are still spring-loaded. It’s just that Bandai eliminated the triggers and added ratchetting tabs inside the landing gear bays. This is actually a useful fix of a problem that will plague every [em]other[/em] 1/55 Valk sooner or later: as the landing gear triggers are used, they wear, eventually making the landing gears extremely trigger-happy. Combined with the strong springs this means many hurt fingers from suddenly extending landing gears. However, on this Valk you have to flip out the landing gears yourself, by pulling on them. That also explains why the rear landing gears lack their rear doors: so you can flip out the landing gears by inserting your finger into the landing gear bays.

I’ll cover the changes to the head later. First some pictures of Fighter mode with the Super parts fitted:

Something else this Valkyrie doesn’t suffer from is being loose with the Super parts attached. A lot of 1/55 VF-1’s will sag while sitting on their landing gear with the Super parts attached. Not this one. The arm armor fits on extremely tightly, and is a royal pain to remove again – I had to pry it off. You might notice that the leg armor doesn’t seem to fit very well…with due reason. This I’ll explain in the next paragraphs. Gerwalk:

The Gerwalk mode is extremely sturdy. The shoulder hinges appear to have been tightened on this release, something that was reversed in the 2001+ reissues. With Super parts:

No loose gunpod on this Valk. It fits tightly into the hand. Here you can see that the clips on the inside of the legs don’t fit well. This is because the leg armor appears to have been reverse engineered from existing parts, instead of using the metal manufacturing molds. The leg armors are slightly too small for the legs, and don’t fit well at all. The holes for attaching the part of the armor that holds the inner leg clip barely arise above the leg. This means that part needs to be inserted at an angle, causing either a gap between itself and the leg armor, or preventing the clip from clipping to the leg. Simply put: the leg armor fit sucks. Sigh. One thing I must note, and that possibly balances the previously mentioned issue, is that the chest plate clicks into place in Fighter and Gerwalk mode, preventing it from sliding down when you don’t want it, while this toy also lacks the gap between the chest plate and the head hatch of recent reissues.

Let’s move on to Battroid mode. Battroid mode features the handy clip on heatshield, which doesn’t require any parts removal like on the recent reissues:

The heatshield is made from somewhat flexible plastic, and is almost invisible once attached, as seen below:

Doesn’t that new head look mean? I think it does, and I prefer this head to the old head. This head seems much more expressive:

Yeah. A fitting head for Roy Focker. Much better than that expression of eternal surprise of the original…

Back view of the Battroid:

Battroid mode, just like the other two modes, is tight and sturdy. However, the improvements to the head and joints are (again) counterbalanced by the truly abyssimal fit of the armclip. It just won’t fit properly. It doesn’t slide onto the arm far enough and doesn’t click into position like it should. Eventually, it will fall off the arm together with the gunpod because it doesn’t actually attach to the arm. Aaarghh!

Anyway, with Super parts in place:

So, what to say about this one?

It’s as if Bandai tried to improve the tightness of various parts, and succeeded on many points, but also made the fit of some parts much worse because they are way too tight, effectively negating the many improvements. The box, with its excellent front and horrible back seems to reflect this perfectly. It’s just…so stupid.

Oh, now I totally forgot to rave about this toy’s amazing articulation. So, yeah, it has excellent articulation for a design from 1982. And I come back to that improved head:

So Mean Machine!

You just so cannot deny it.