Yamato or Arcadia 1/60 VF-19 Toys

Review(updated): Now includes all variants!

Packaging & Extras: (3.5/5)
Yamato’s VF-19Kai shipped in a paper thin cardboard box adorned product shots and a space backdrop. The box is efficient (32.5 x 28 x 10.5 cm) with no frills like a flip-top lid. As you first remove the toy, you may encounter a fair amount of mold release (a film of grease) on the plastic, particularly where packaging material was in direct contact with the merchandise. Expect to give the toy a good wipe down with a cloth when you first remove it from the packaging. Inside the plastic tray with the VF-19 you will receive:
1) A very nicely sculpted pilot figure of Basara playing his cockpit control
2) Filler pieces for the back of the legs (optional)
3) Filler piece for behind the neck in fighter and GERWALK modes (fairly necessary)
4) Optional shield for battroid mode (more tapered edges)
5) 2x Yamato launch arm display stand connector pieces (Fighter/GERWALK and Battroid)
6) Speaker Pod firing Gun
7) Optional less clowny face (19Kai only)
In a baggy behind the tray, you’ll find:
8) Stickers
9) Instructions
Obviously at this price you’d want a display stand and maybe some fun extras like a standing Basara figure… or something.  I’m glad they didn’t go overboard with the extras since this toy is already expensive but they may have skimped a bit.  Word from those that like to apply the stickers on their toys is that these stickers, while impressive in their volume, are of poor quality and will not look good once applied.

The 19S and 19F, Emerald Force Color Valkyries, come in the same size packaging with updated product shots and slighty different space backdrop. The contents are also very similar with the following changes:
1) A very nicely sculpted pilot figure in flight suit
6) VF-19 Gun with a collapsing portion below the barrel and removable magazine
There is no optional face (item 7 from the Kai list) for the Blazer.
The 19F also included a Yamato advertisement for upcoming products.

The 19P Zola Patrol version continues the packaging and content trends established by the previous releases with only these minor changes to accessories:
1) A Basara pilot figure that emulates his look from Macross Dynamite7
2) There are speaker pods that are attached to the shoulders to complete the 19P’s unique look.

Packaging & Extras: (5/5) Arcadia Gift-set
As the Arcadia box is a gift-set, the box gains some depth (32.5 x 28 x 15cm) to accommodate the Sound Booster tray. This set was reissued and is only different by barcode and the inclusion of a 40th Anniversary logo on the box. Arcadia added a premium feel to this package by including the flip top lid. The gift-set includes the first tray that included everything from the original releases. A second tray includes:
1) Sound Booster
2) Fighter mode attachment for Sound Booster
3) Attachment to connect the Sound Booster to a Yamato Launch Arm display stand
4) Singing Basara Pilot Figure
Also included in a plastic baggy were:
5) 4x standing figures of the band
6) Stickers
7) Instructions
With exception of the band members, all of those extras are what you would get if you purchased the standalone Yamato Sound Booster.

Charm & Collectability: (4/5)
With Yamato now out of business and Arcadia showing no interest in the 19S, 19F, or 19P, those toys have become much more sought after. At the time of this update, Bandai is preparing Macross7 DX toys. Depending on what toys they release and the quality of them, that may impact the collectability of these Yamato offerings. Still, Yamato did a lot right to ensure people would continue to want these toys. If you ignore the neck cover in fighter/GERWALK, they are perfect transformation. There is some metal in the toy which pushes the heft up to about 425 grams making it one of the more solid feeling Yamato releases. At 33cm long in fighter, it’s about 1/56 scale. At 23.5 cm tall in battroid, it’s closer to 1/66 scale. The shifting scales can be attributed to what happens when a toy needs to look long in sleek in one mode and stocky in the other. All the elements are here (heft, perfect transformation, limited production runs, common scale) to make for a sought after product.

Sculpt, Detail, & Paint: (9/10)
This toy does extremely well considering the copious quantities of anime-magic involved in this pre-CGI transformation. Fighter mode looks great. While we do get more painted on detail than some previous efforts, there’s still a robust sticker sheet and it would have been nice to have more markings painted on. The pilot figure is nicely detailed and captures Basara well with his guitar stick controls.

Gerwalk mode continues to be an acquired taste with its goofy wings in teh armpits look but the Yamato/Arcadia toys handle it well, if you’re using a display stand. While the ankles of the toys largely ruin this toy from a handling perspective (more on that later), the look captures what we’re supposed to have nicely. Curiously, Yamato didn’t get the detailing on the back of the hands correct, the colors are inverted.

The creators of Macross7 use stylized interpretations battroid modes. Proportions swelled as the toy went from fighter to battroid mode to create a fun, chunky look. As the vehicles transformed back to fighter mode, the chunkiness vanished leaving svelt, angular fighters. While this was part of the fun of hand-drawn anime, it’s a huge challenge to recreate as a toy. Yamato did a fine job trying to capture as much of this as they could. The feet could have been larger but they look good in fighter mode. The most debatable detail of battroid mode is the large hump in the chest, directly below the face. Bandai’s Hi-Metal toy looked much cleaner in this area (though its a parts-former that does worse in many other respects). There’s also some shifting proportions with the hip intakes in the art that Yamato didn’t capture.

The Arcadia toy has only minor visual changes and no other substantial changes from the Yamato release. Arcadia’s changes are:
1) The canopy receives a golden hue
2) Yellow paint has been replaced with gold metallic paint
3) The red was supposed to have a pearl effect or shimmer but it just looks a touch darker
Unfortunately, the red paint applied to the metallic parts isn’t a great match, it looks brighter than the red plastic. The Arcadia Sound Booster gets the same, superficial only, adjustments from the Yamato release. See my separate article on Yamato’s 1/60 Sound Booster accessory for more discussion on the Sound Booster.

The Blazer Valkyrie receives a brand new head, pilot figure, and gun sculpt. but that’s not all! The Blazer Valkyrie and 19F both drop the canards and Yamato didn’t just pop in plugs, they molded new parts with all the 19S/F specific details. Even the shield mold was updated to include its unique details. These updated details, and the pilot figure were reused for the 19F toy. The gun was included with the S, F, and P variants.

The 19F swaps the 19S yellow trim for white and adds a new head. It is otherwise hte same toy, right down to the gun and pilot figures. Was the yellow too much contrast with the dark blue? Maybe this is the toy for you.

A nice added touch on the VF-19P toy is a barely visible 19Kai face on the back of the green face plate.  For those who don’t like the idea, it’s really hard to see it.  For those who were always perplexed by how the 19P grew a 19Kai face after being doused in whale blood… well, this doesn’t answer that… but it’s neat none-the-less.  The 19P also features interior landing gear bays that are painted teal with gray landing gear (rather than the standard white). Of course, the 19P also features the speaker fins on the shoulders and they have the ability to rotate so they can remain as fins in GERWALK mode.

Design: (8.5/10)
This toy has many positive design elements:
1) Integrated landing gears complete with slide out mechanisms to allow the doors to open completely and conceal the hinge. Landing gear also angle outward and lock in place. Tires are rubber and spin. Front landing gear features an articulated tow bar.
2) Canopy opens and cockpit accommodates separate pilot figure. Pilot’s seat rotates during transformation and the pilot can be seen via a trap door in battroid mode.

3) Transformation was improved over Yamato’s 1/60 YF-19 toy (improvements later incorporated into Arcadia’s 1/60 YF-19 toys). Parts lock firmly into place in all modes. The head conceals nicely in fighter mode which is no small feat since the head on these models are large. The included cavity fillers for the back of the legs and battroid specific shield are completely optional.

4) The guns have mechanisms allowing them to be attached in fighter mode without the use of any removable parts. Even with the mechanisms to assist in fighter mode attachment, the guns angle slightly downward in this mode. The guns also feature removable magaziness for sweet reloading poses.
5) Legs conceal missiles which can be maneuvered to appear to be launching from the leg cavity in battroid mode (all variants).
6) The use of metal is intelligent. It reinforces the toy’s spine and ankles (and probably some other joints I didn’t notice). It’s not just metal content for the sake of metal content.  Slots for attaching the optional sound booster accessory is built into the metal spine.

The VF-19Kai adds a few additional elements:
7) The VF-19Kai’s shoulders conceal speaker detail which is easily revealed in battroid or GERWALK modes
8) The VF-19Kai face can be easily replaced with the version without the mouth, and both faces locking firmly in place.
So where does this toy fall short?
1) The toy requires an optional part in fighter and GERWALK modes to conceal the battroid mode’s neck.
2) There are no removable intake covers to expose intake fan detail. I’m told this was discussed internally at Yamato but the decision was made to forego this detail since the focus of this toy’s design was battroid mode and the designers were able to incorporate more articulation in the hip by not having the fan detail.

3) While GERWALK mode locks together nicely the range of motion at the GERWALK joint and in the ankles make it so this mode nearly requires a stand.  Trying to over-extend the GERWALK joint in the hip would quickly break the joint (see below) and trying to angle the feet forward renders the ball joint in the ankle very loose very quickly. As a workaround for this conundrum, you can pivot the upper ball joint outward to use the exterior of the foot housing as a brace.
http://youtu.be/5RMAdW7En10
http://youtu.be/j6LzyU4XrY4

Durability & Build: (6.5/10)
I broke my Yamato VF-19Kai on the first transformation. It feels like there should be one more *click* of movement in the GERWALK joint to get the legs into the proper position but there isn’t. Since the joint is very stiff out of the box, it’s difficult to judge when you’re forcing it and about to break a peg and when you’re doing the natural motion. Now that you’re aware of the danger, you should be able to figure out when to stop.
As discussed above in the design section, and he most common point of frustration, are the toy’s loose ankle joints. This issue is most problematic in GERWALK mode where the ankles have a hard time keeping the toy upright but can also cause issues with some poses in battroid. To prevent the joint from becoming sloppy, it’s highly recommended you don’t try to point the tow or heel downward. The ankle seems to be designed to allow massive amounts of camber/toe but not very much tilt forward/back. The 19S/F/P ankle is made of entirely unpainted metal and the rod leading to the ball joint no longer has an indent toward the rear.  I suspect the no-paint approach was Yamato’s effort to help increase the amount of movement the ankle can handle before it starts loosening.  The lack of an indent might mean Yamato changed types of metal for their second release but I think it’s more likely just a case of different parts being available at a latter construction date. 
A purely superficial flaw is that the paint of the blues and reds on the metal parts is not an exact match for the color of the plastic.
The quality of the plastic seems a step above Bandai’s DX toys (though Bandai stepped up their game when they went to the ‘renewal’ lines). Early Bandai DX toys frequently have dark and light color swirls within the shiny plastic, that was not a problem on these Yamato toys. 
One last item that has been getting criticism is the razor thin back edges of the VF-19 toys’ wings. The edges are so thin and sharp you could slice cheese with them and this has led to a lot of fear that the wings will get knicked in the normal process of transformation. Some people have also complained about minor warping of the wings because they are so thin.  One final note, the head lasers on these toys feel like they’re made of ABS to me (although hopefully I’m wrong and they’re POM). You should use caution around the head lasers, especially the “blazer” valkyrie (19S) which has very thin guns up top that are also exposed in fighter.
More than a decade later and we’ve seen a number of these toys fail the longevity test so the score has been revised downward. There are two primary concerns for broken plastic:
1) The elbows. Many people have pulled their toys out after years being stored in their boxes only to find that the elbow has cracked. The culprit is unclear but it may have to do from minor lateral pressure applied to install the shield has caused the elbow to break.
2) The shoulder axis have also been known to crack.
Both of those failures will severely dampen your enjoyment of these toys. Hopefully someone makes 3D printable replacement parts available.

Articulation: (9/10)
This may be the first toy I’ve reviewed that is actually easy to pose on one foot in battroid mode (if your ankles don’t go loose that is). The new ankles are an absolute joy when tight. The arms also feature a clever mechanism to simulate a full elbow joint (it’s kind of like the arm has two elbows which makes a lot of fun poses possible). So why not a perfect score? The head isn’t on a ball-joint so it can’t be cocked (although it does swivel both up and down), obviously there’s no back articulation or waist. I don’t know that I’ll ever give a transformable toy a perfect score here so this is probably as good as it gets.  I would have also liked for the articulated hands to have been able to look like they were holding the barrel of the gun.

Total Score: (42/50)
So for those of you taking notes, this toy does score several points higher than Bandai’s Hi-Metal effort. Of course, the Hi-Metal toy is roughly 1/3 the price of this bad boy and I think it still nicely fills a niche as an affordable and fun alternative to this extravagant luxury item. Honestly though, I did’t feel like Yamato was flogging me too much with the MSRP. Sure, I hated to pay it, particularly given the terrible exchange rate we had at the time, but when I saw how far advanced this is from Yamato’s old 1/48 VF-1 toys, and I remember buying them at their MSRP, things made sense. I certainly feel that this is a better purchase than Yamato’s very good 1/3000 SDF-1 toy that was released.  Fresh out of the box these toys can be EXTREMELY tight.  Transformation might seem like a real pain the first time through.  After the second or third things will become a little better but even my most heavily handled toy (the 19Kai) feels as tight as I would want it to. If you already own a Yamato VF-19Kai and Soundbooster the Arcadia version doesn’t seem to offer enough for me to recommend another purchase.

NOTE: This review has been updated
April 29, 2015: Added pictures and content relating to Arcadia’s VF-19Kai + Soundbooster giftset
November 30, 2011: Included pictures and content regarding Yamato’s VF-19S Emerald force toy.
April 8, 2013: Added an HD Video review, a transformation guide, and content on the 19F and 19P.
Original post: May 25th, 2011