Do I remember love? I barely remember my neck not hurting from before I started stickering this robot

I remember the other night I ran into the dining room with tears in my eyes yelling, "I HATE THIS! I HATE THIS! I HATE---" Suddenly I stopped, shoving my fist in my mouth before I said the unthinkable. My wife was sitting at the table with the baby and she asked "What do you hate? Do you hate having a baby?" And I said, "No, what I was about to say was much worse, much more hurtful. I was about to say...I hate my Yamato 1/48 scale VF-1S Hikaru edition with strike parts for Valkyrie!" There was silence. Then she asked, "What the hell is a Tomato scale Pikachu strike pants bakery? What are you talking about?" I forgot she is 'neuro-typical'. THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.

I remember the first time I ever saw the "Macross Do You Remember Love?" japanimation cartoon featuring Hikaru's VF-1S saving the friggin' universe. I was living in Good Korea. I have loved that robot ever since I first bought DYRL on bootleg Japanese video CD with Han-gul subtitles on my Sega Saturn the friendly Koreans modded for me. When they weren't kicking me out of their stores those friendly Koreans were pretty cool people.

Welcome to sticker hell

I remember in early 2005 when Yamato announced they were doing a couple extra production runs of their 1/48 scale Hikaru VF-1S. I was in Antractica and I jumped on that immediately, ordering it so it would be waiting for me when I got home to the states. It was my present to myself for making it out of Antarctica with my sanity intact. Sometimes on my days off I would go out on the ice and look for new different penguin poops that weren't there the last time. It's very much the same behavior I exhibit now when I go to Wal-Mart every week looking for new crappy toy robots that weren't there the last time. It seems weird to me now how so burnt out was I that a plastic robot became something to relish moreso than the experience of being in Antarctica. Somewhere right now there is a penguin researcher in a Wal-Mart robots aisle relishing the enormous pile of penguin poop he'll get to see when he goes back to Antarctica. And he is better than me because penguin poop is scientific.

If I remember loving this toy robot so much, then why was I all crazy the other night? Because after two plus years I finally decided to sit down and put the stickers on it. Have you ever tried to apply the stickers to a Yamato VF-1 of any scale? They give you hundreds of little tiny stickers that you have to trim with a tiny pair of scissors as you read the application directions that are oftentimes incorrect. Those diagrams tell you to put these half millimeter wide stickers in places that don't exist on the real toy because the diagrams don't match the actual toy surfaces. It's as if they're trying to piss me off by making this harder on purpose. Completing all four stages of Ninja Warrior is easier than this. In fact, they should make stickering a Yamato the fifth stage of Ninja Warrior and with no time limit and I bet nobody would ever win.

I remember what especially ticks me off is that many of the stickers are redundant because the toy already has those details tampographed on. My biggest frustration was when I noticed they gave me stickers for the skull and crossbones graphic that's already tampoed on the vertical stabilizers. What was frustrating was they tampoed the skull and crossbones on the vertical stabilizer CROOKEDLY. If I'm paying over $100 for a toy I want to be the guy who puts the graphics on crooked.

I remember walking through the baby toys aisle the other day and noticing how many baby toys have packaging that says they promote hand/eye coordination. I think baby toys promote hand-eye coordination because they know one day you will have to sticker a Yamato. Holy hell these stickers are so small that your brain doesn't even register them from a distance greater than six inches. I swear that at one point a piece of lint fell on the toy and I was wondering if it was a sticker I put in the wrong place. It is because of their minuscule size that once certain ones are applied, the glue holding them on is so weak they barely adhere. I guarantee that during transformation you will lose five stickers from where your hand brushes against the toy but they're so small you won't even notice. Although I must admit that it is insanely cool that they provided tiny stickers to turn some missiles into Budweiser and Tako Hai beer cans.

I remember noticing that even the model shown on the box is only partially stickered. It's as if the guy who was supposed to sticker it to show everyone else the way got tired after the 150th microscopic sticker and gave up. I can totally understand why. Even if you disregard the 500 extra optional customization stickers and the 200 stickers for which there is no explanation, you still have to deal with applying more decals per square inch on this toy than most 80's Transformers had on their entire bodies. There are 12 tiny little "NO STEP" stickers on each of the wings and 18 stickers just in the area immediately around the cockpit. It's sticker hell, and this is a 1/48. My first Yamato was a 1/60 and I can't explain how mind numbingly insane that experience was. I've read that murder is anger directed outward and suicide is anger directed inward. I think a Yamato sticker sheet is anger directed at my hand/eye coordination.