December 19, 2001 CURRENT RUMBLE Gatcha Have It! Keith 12.19.01 Let me first say that my wife is a saint. She knew I wanted this, and she willingly overpaid to get it here by my birthday. So, I have lived with this toy for almost a week now and here are my thoughts... First, the boxes. All around really nice. A white outer sleeve cocoons the Phoenix's box as well as the one for the Firebird. Note the great design of the "G" on the window box , which is completely lost against the white styrofoam. Dumb mistake, it's a great piece of packaging and had the G been red or yellow it would have been stunning. Second - the Firebird . It's big and goofy and, well... pretty cool. It's a great "bonus" but I haven't sealed my Phoenix inside. You go first. Third - the Stand . It's ugly, but the ugliness fades as you realize that it's a pretty good stand. Very sturdy, positionable, nay... articulated, with both cradles being adjustable in addition to the three-positions of the base itself. The Center Neptune crescent is ugly, but it's in context. Fourth - the mini-Vehicles: G-1 Big with retractable wings and landing gear. Docks perfectly inside the main ship, sliding in snugly and staying put. G-2 GREAT paint job and the wheels roll easily. Excellent. G-3 Jun's bike is the smallest of the mini-vehicles but the paint job is up to par with the rest of them. The bike is a bit bigger than the SOP Yamato Cosmo Tigers. The way that the bike docks into the Phoenix's wing pod is excellent and right out of the anime. Pull down on the hatch and the strut periscopes down. Just great. G-4 As Keyop would say "Broot toot TOOT!" Cool. The little periscope thingie goes up and down and the ship clasps it just right. Fifth - the toy. Really only one thing to say "Go Get. Go get now. NOW!" The God Phoenix is really beautiful. The paint is deep, almost three dimensional and the finish is excellent with only a small bit of overs-pray visible on the front landing strut on mine. The nosecone secures firmly to the front end, and detaches easily. Never have I had it loosen up even a bit. Inside the nosecone the graspers extend with the push of a button and then extend some more with a gentle tug. They hold onto the G-2 race car quite well, even though at first they looked like they wouldn't. The bird missile pops right up with pressure to the G-5 mode pilot's bubble. Too bad it doesn't shoot off though, I would have liked to have hurt myself with it. The wings dip gently, the louvered vents slide open and close smoothly via levers on the underside. The hatches on my Phoenix were a bit loose when I got it. Especially the ones on G-4's pod and one of the rear landing gear hatches, but a bit of pressure seems to have fixed all of that and everything is nice and snug now - except for the Bird Missile hatch. It still comes open during the occasional barrel-roll. The aforementioned landing gear are really nice, all the wheels roll easily and sitting the toy on the gear gives it an excellent sense of scale. You can quickly imagine that the Phoenix is a C-5 galaxy sized thing trundling down the runway. As has been said many times before, by many people... this IS a toy that I have waited all of my life for. I never had a Phoenix toy as a child (I had to make one out of cardboard, markers, scotch tape and the back end of a Battlestar Galactica Jupiter Probe) so it has been a long wait, and it was worth it. The toy is heavy, oozing with quality, and utterly satisfying. I hold it and I feel like I'm ten. You can't put a price on that.  RUMBLE INDEX  |  CURRENT RUMBLE