My Robotech Stuff

by Nathan Stout (of According To Whim.com)

While we all wait for the next part of my 2012 Robotech Experience (I'm up to the cartoon episodes 7-12) I ran into a little bit of a road bump. This last weekend I was down at my mom's lake place and took the book (Battlecry)... yep, I left it... well at least I think I did. I am still searching. Anyway I decided to have a filler post since I was going through all my collectibles and ran across the Robotech stuff. Today's post is all about my Robotech collectibles. I don't have a tons but I do have a bit. Let's take a look, shall we?

First off is a little shadow box with some Macross pewter (or some such similar metal) figures. I have Rick, Lisa, Roy, Max, and Gloval (who you can't see at this angle). I have a couple of the little Mospeada riders from the Gakken Alpha and some Battletech miniatures from the 80's (when they used the Macross designs for their stuff). There is also a 1/144 scale Super Battloid model there. Just in case you were wondering there are some D&D minis, Ral Partha minis, D&D game pieces that were painted, Warhammer 40K minis, and some Jurassic Park Lost World micro figures. Oh yeah, there are some Star Wars minis there too. Oops, I almost forgot, there are some Heavy Gear minis on top. Now on to the bulk of the collection:

Here we see some toys and a pile of sad model kit parts. In the back is the insanely huge Master Piece Beta, a Gakken Cyclone and some Macross Models still in the box (more on those in a minute). There are bunch of the 90's re-release of Matchbox Robotech toys (from the Exo-Squad line). There is also a super poseable and a smaller Gakken Alpha (which only transforms from Armo Solider to Armo Diver), a super deformed Valkyire from the 80's and the rest are model parts. The 1/72 gray colored Veritech is the oldest model I own and has so many layers of paint on it you can't use it for anything but maybe a wrecked plane. There are many different kits here from 1/144 to 1/72 kits as well as some tiny deformed kits I got years ago and I can't remember where.

As for the new/sealed model kits... you may know (or may not) that I have a business where I sell import model kits. The site is RenegadeAnime.com and I have a bunch of stuff there. Macross models are one of the main 3 lines I carry (along with Gundam and Yamato). I am almost out of all my Macross models but thank goodness Bandai is re-releasing most of the old kits for the 30th anniversary of Macross! That means I will be getting a LOT of kits for sale. I might have to even make a few myself (although I am not very good at it).

I also have the Robotech Legacy edition DVD set as well as the Perfect Collection CD set. The Legacy DVD set is the first DVD set they released (not the remastered one). As you may have read from me I don't like the remastered versions with added crap. I prefer they older set. As for the CD set, you can read about it and the other stuff I used to have (like the F.H.E. VHS set) at this post from earlier in the year.

Finally I have some of the comics, fanzines, and all of the original RPG books. At one point I had probably 90% of the comics but sold them. Now I have very few since I can get what I need online. I have the first 10 issues of the only Robotech Fanzine out there: Protoculture Addicts. What a great mag! I will post a blog about it one day soon. Also, I love the Pallidum role playing books. They were my real re-introduction back into Robotech in early 90's. The artwork is great and I had lots of fun playing the game. Last year (at our other blog) we had an RPG week and I talked about my Robotech RPG fun there. Check it out. It's very entertaining!

I have had other Robotech collectibles over the years that I got and sold or what-not. Out of all the Robotech stuff I have had I would have to put the following at the top of my 'favorite list' (in no order): RPG books, Protoculture Addicts Fanzine, and Soundtrack. Those are my favs but I like it all!

What do you have? Anything cool or unusual? Leave a comment!

Macross Isand Junkie

by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)

As you all know I am fan of Robotech. I have enjoyed it for many a year and it has (for me) become far beyond a cartoon with dubious animation at times. I remember it around the first time back in the 80's but I wasn't that into it at the time. I am guessing I was more into G.I. Joe and He-Man than Robotech. It really wasn't until I was a freshman in High school that I got into Robotech. I think what initially happened was that my best friend in High school (Eric) got ahold of the RPG book and I think we launched from there.

Over the next several years it was a search for anything I could lay my hands on. Robotech's hey-day had passed and there was little new product coming out. I scoped out my local comic book shops (Heroes Workshop off West Berry and Lone Star Comics near Hulen) but didn't find too much in thoes early days. I remember that Heroes Workshop had a big cardboard SDF-1 and I was always amazed by it. I did find some issues of the Canadian Robotech Fanzine Protoculture Addicts and ate them up.

I got all the RPG books I could afford and the novelizations as well. When money permitted I would go wild at one of Lone Star's sales and stock up on back issues of the comics. Most were good but there were some strange ones too. Me and Eric and some of his friends would play the RPG. This was great fun but for some reason I was almost always the GM. Once I found 2 Peter Pan - Robotech Cassette with book sets at Pic-N-Save (which is now Big Lots). I loved those pieces of shit! They were so patched together and the narrator would constantly get the names wrong and when he read it was like he was reading the story for the first time (he would get inflections all wrong). None of it matter because it was Robotech and I enjoyed them thoroughly.



Through those first few years I got ahold of the F.H.E. version of Robotech. It had six VHS tapes with six episodes mercilessly editing together. They would only show one opening and closing credits and slap six episodes all together (cutting out quite a bit as I later found out). F.H.E. also released a couple of other versions of the series (with fewer episodes on each tape) but it appears my set was the last VHS set they produced. I would take a tape deck and record audio snippets off the show and make a 'mix tape' of audio sound bites. Years later I got the F.H.E. laser disc versions of the series and it was a totally different experience. The episodes were complete and there were scenes that I had never seen before. I gripe about those crappy VHS versions but they did offer some fun years later with the missing scenes I got to see off the laser discs.


Let's take a break with this cute chick giving us one of Minmei's songs...




Through all this I got on this kick to get Robotech Perfect Collection CD (or record it didn't matter to me). I contacted the company only to find out that it was out of print. These were the days before eBay so I was SOL. One day I was browsing something (online or in a magazine, I can't remember) and I ran across something that showed that a new soundtrack called Robotech: Perfect Soundtrack was about to be released... in less and a week! I was so excited. I got my order in ASAP but the production was delayed until early 97 and once I did get it I see why it was delayed. It had 2 discs and they were marked wrong. Disc 1 was Disc 2, etc... It still didn't detract from my utter delight. I got to enjoy songs I had never heard before including the ones I simply didn't remember from the Robotech The Movie soundtrack. As it turns out it wasn't 'perfect' there was another set that came less than 10 years later with even more.



In 1999 I built a website called Robocon.org. I already had a page about Robotech on my webpage so I moved it to the new Robocon.org and added more stuff to it. Robocon was the 10th anniversary of Robotech convention that took place in 1995. It focused on my take on Robotech as well as the voice actors that had attended the convention and so on. I had a couple of phone conversations with Tom Bateman (the organizer and protoge' of Carl Macek. He got me some info and gave me blessings to use it all on the site. He had been planning a Robocon 15 in 2000 but it fell through. In 200? He contacted me again (along with Tommy Yune I believe) about giving Robocon.org to Robotech.com (the official portal for Robotech). So they could use it for the upcoming Robocon 20. I agreed and they suped up my site and integrated it into their own. I still have my site archived here. You can compare the changes they made to it here (their official version). I found it funny that they kept the front page (the one with animation that says: 'Welcome to the Future of the Human Race' from my old site. I basically took that from my existing Front Mission fan site cause it sounded cool (I just changed 'Future of Warfare' to Future of the Human Race'). I also find it cool that the site is still up and intact after all these years.



Robotech has been good to me over the years and I feel I have been good to it. It's a nice relationship, eh?