Hi again. Finally back and found a little time at work (don’t have a home computer) to research my Valkyrie using the info you provided as a starting point and it looks like what I’ve got is the black/red Hikaru version that was released in 1984…huh! Hard to believe how expensive this toy has gotten for collecting, too. I remember buying it at the Silver Snail shop in Toronto for something like $39.95, certainly under $50, and it was the more expensive of the two models the shop had available at the time!
As for my fellow, I’ve kept him out in the open, usually high up on a shelf, ever since I brought him home (sacrilege, I know!), always in either gerwalk or jet mode, and as toys go, I think it’s weathered pretty well. Nothing broken, everything’s still tight, and he still transforms nicely. Most of the white has faded to a pale tan colour except—oddly enough—for the two inside panels of the lower ‘legs’, which are still as white as ever. Rest of the colouring and markings are still the same. Biggest difference I note between this old toy (and he’s sitting on my desk as I type this, by the way!) and some of the newer stuff I’ve got is how much heavier he is by comparison, also you can see a heck of a lot more actual metal and that he’s held together primarily by sizable Phillips-head screws. I’ve never had the guts to test whether you could actually unscrew him down to his component parts…I’m not very good at transforming toys, let alone putting stripped-down pieces of them back together.
So, a Macross Valkyrie for sure, and MAYBE a Transformers wannabe that didn’t quite make the conversion…that sound about right? (And maybe I ought to now go out and get one of those new DOTM Starscream figures I saw kicking around the toy shelves recently. He looked about the exact right size to pair against my Valkyrie, now that I think about it, and you can be sure I’d pose the Valkyrie as
kicking Starscream’s Raptor butt if I did get him, heh!
)
Thanks again for your help. Cheers!
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