Executive Meddling: The series was actually going to be called Megaroad, but an executive's love for Shakespeare suggested it to be called Macbeth. After some compromising, Macross was created.
No Export for You: A large assortment of absolutely hideous legal snarls between Harmony Gold, Studio Nue/Satelight, Tatsunoko Production, and Big West means that virtually nothing of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that wasn't incorporated into the original Robotech adaptation has seen the light of day outside of Japan. Macross Plus apparently got released only due to absolutely titanic pressure from fans, critics, and other distributors for the parties involved to not completely sit on triple-A-quality material needlessly; the same may happen to Macross Frontier (especially with the DVDs and soundtracks of that show pushing sales numbers not seen in at least a decade) but so far no plans for export have been announced (and as time grinds on, it begins to look less and less likely). Macross7, Macross Zero and various video-game projects and the like stalled out completely and will almost certainly never see release overseas.
It's gotten so bad that some people with dogs in the fight have said that it may be that nobody knows who has international rights for some of the Macross property, in particular "Do You Remember Love?"
Robert Woodhead, Anim Eigo CEO, once said he does not expect to ever see a legal US release of Do You Remember Love because of the titanic, multi-side battle (yep, it's not just Harmony Gold who's in the way, but apparently Shogakukan, Toho and a few others who have some sort of interest in the film).
As noted above, it's not specifically a Macross problem, it's an industry-wide phenomenon. Macross just takes the cake for being ensnarled not only inside Japan, but outside of it too.
This legal snarl has caused some severe issues with the Battle Tech franchise. When that was new, much of the game was found to be copyright infingement of the Robotech franchise. Despite a massive redesign, they keep getting sued occasionally. The confusing part is that nobody knows if the entities suing them still have any rights to the IP whatsoever.
Not quite true. FASA had bought (or they believed they had bought) rights to the designs in good faith, and used the designs without molestation for 10 years. However, FASA and Playmates Toys got into a legal battle when Playmates created a toy for their Exo Squad line that closely resembled the MadCat 'Mech from Battletech (at the time, FASA was finalizing both toy and TV deals for their game). FASA sued. Harmony Gold had sublicensed Robotech to Playmates as a tie-in to Exo Squad, and noticed that FASA was using the Macross designs and counter-sued. Nobody quite knows what the actual settlement in the cases were, but official word from Catalyst Game Labs, FASA's successor company is that the discontinuation of the Macross, Crusher Joe and Fang of the Sun Dougram (the latter two which were not owned in any way by HG) designs was an internal decision by FASA to bar all artwork not created in-house to avoid any potential legal hassles, and not a legal mandate from a court. This policy, funnily enough, also forced FASA to stop using deisgns made bespoke for them by Studio Nue (the original studio behind Macross) to replace the offending designs for releases of BattleTech in Japan.
On a side note, Tommy Yune, representative for Harmony Gold, has stated that they're willing to license Macross Zero and sublicense it to ADV Films, but Big West took the license off the market.
On top of all that, you've got the VF-1/Jetfire issue. TakaraTomy still fears about the figure and its licensenote something that's been going on since 1985. Hence why there's no reissue of the character.
