From ByronM - Gundam in 1/144 scale (15 Points)

Hey everyone,  I am just posting this to show off a cool model I built, I wasn't going to post it at all, but a couple people suggested I show it off even though it gets no points, as it is likely that some others on here would be interested in it.  It also goes to explain a lack of production lately, as even with the wife getting in on building this kit with me, it took roughly 20 hours to build.

It's also a great thing to show off model / kit wise as what is possible in a kit and leaves me wondering why other companies kits (looking at you Games Workshop!) cost so much! Like we need another reason to despise their pricing structure...

I have always loved Gundam (anime robots) and always meant to build a model kit of one at some point. So I picked one up to do on vacation a few weeks (a cabin in the woods in a prairie winter , so we spent the time inside drinking wine, listening to music, playing games, and painting figs with friends) and OMG!

This is a Bandai RG (Real Grade) 1/144 Gundam kit of the Sazabi.  live joints! Meaning you clip the part from the sprue and it them is movable without any assembly!  To me from an engineering perspective was just amazing!  The wife laughed like crazy about me talking about how cool with was that you cut a part out of a sprue and it had 9 joints that you could immediately mend and move.  I got called a complete geek several times while building the kit.

What?  The part comes out of the sprue and can move???

Yup!  It holds the various skirt pieces in place!  Amazing!

The kit was $50, has 17 sprues of plastic, including 2 that are very cool... 1 is 4 different colours of plastic on one sprue!! The other is only 2 colours BUT are different materials that form

That's a lot of plastic for $50!

HOWEVER, even the wife (who generally dislikes miniatures) thought it was extremely cool and helped clip parts, file and sand, and even applied all the decals on it (lots of super tiny silver foil decals in hidden spaces that open up). 

Even better the kit is made so that it essentially makes an action figure that is completely moveable and transformable, right down to weapons, hands, opening panels and more!! Every single part moves on the kit, heck each foot has 7 points of movement!   Better even than that it it comes in about 9 different colours (including 3 shades of red and 3 of grey/black) and you essentially clip the parts, clean them, use a marker to do the panel lines, and then snap them together and you are done!!!

Each of those little missile pods come out of the backpack and open up with 4 wings!

That‘s right no painting required (they do each part in the right colour) and no glue either it‘s all press fit!  Hence me not expecting any points for this kit.  All I had to do was paint in the panel lines with a pigment pen, then clear coat it when done.

So, 200+ parts, movable, snap together, 100+ decals.... $50!

How much would something like this be from GW??? $200? $300? The single sprue ork vehicle I just got was $55.....

If Bandai can do this level of tech in a kit that likely sells 1/10th or 1/50th or even 1/1000th of the numbers that a GW kit sells and they can do it for less than 1/4 what GW would sell it for....... sigh.... This kit is at least 4x as good as a Riptide, about the same size (at about 7" tall), and 1/2 the cost.....

If anyone is looking for a cool and challenging model kit to build, I strongly suggest looking at a Bandai Gundam figure!  It was a lot of fun to build, and being a 1/144 this is a simple one for movable parts, the 1/100 and 1/60 get even more parts and details!  I have already gotten a 1/100 to play around with.

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Whoah! Now, I know virtually nothing about the impenetrably obtuse Gundam universe, BUT that bad boy one very cool big, stompy robot. 

As you say Byron, it's completely bewildering that Bandai can produce a kit of this quality and relatively low-cost and we still manage to get rogered senseless by GW's pricing structure. It's astounding.

Even thought it comes pre-coloured, I'm going to award 15 points for the complex build and extra detailing.

Thanks for showing this guy to us Byron!

- Curt