Jet-führer
Hello all, last month I got my Yamato unassembled, unpainted, un-quality-controll-FUBARed 1/60 VF-1S kit. Lets see what happened!
I really had no idea what I was going to paint this thing as. I just ordered it because it looked like “so much fun a bear do it”. After reading a few threads where people were whining about customizers making this thing into Autobot Jetfire, I knew what a wanted to do. JetFire! That’el piss’em off!
The kit came with an assembly guide that was’t even remotely check for accuracy. I figured, Yamato had to screw up QC somewhere, might as well be here. The manual actually made this kit harder, what with all it’s shenanigans. But not to fear, I have made a page dedicated to Manual corrections for all who want to build their kit correctly. If you do not want to build the kit correctly, simply use Yamato’s default assembly guide.
The kit came in this spiffy box, with writing in Japanese that I can only guess says “Toy is the built with hands of labor. Great is the! joy”.
Hmm, it’s just all piled in there huh?
There it’s done.
My own little pilot to love and feed, I think I’ll call him George. 
Hooray! Yamato didn’t sort the pins! This was a fun 2 hours figuring out which is which. 
Oh, I’m so…. ..SCREWED!! Ha ha…blehh.
Well enough of that, lets get started. I was only a few minutes into the kit when I realized that the runners didn’t have any part numbers on them. I though “what a minor inconvenience” and kept working. Little did I realize that things were about to get messy.
Very, messy
I picked up some Tamiya model spray paint, and used regular ‘ol scotch tape to mask the parts off. 
It worked well enough.
This isn’t even half the tape I used.
Day, 7: I remembered that I should be taking photos so I could make a photo-blog thing. So I half-assedly throw together most of the photos above.
Well, painting and assembly are complete, I’m so glad that I documented the processes so thoroughly. Now all that’s left is this wonderful mess.
Which sat there for a few weeks before I did anything about it.
I did have a lot of fun with this kit, and I actually hope that we see more Toys-as-models in the future. Bypassing the QC and being able to take your time with the construction is a big win in my book. No more “Surprise! You spent $150 and the stupid thing is broken before you even take it out of the box!”. Model kits really aren’t like toys, most are kinda frail and can’t really stand up to being played with (transformed) several times. And they’re almost always made of styrene, and have no ratchet joints, or metal axles, or die-cast parts….or……..blahh blaahhh…..
Well enough talking, lets see what the finished kit looks like!
I give you JetFire!
Well there it is. Maybe not the best custom you’ve ever seen, but at least I got the construction right. It was definitely a learning experience and if I decide to build another I’ll use an airbrush and some proper masking…things…
-Tom B.