While I actively still buy and make model kits, I rarely blog them these days. This one is a bit different though, so let’s look at it:
It’s a Bandai kit from the early 1980s called ‘Robo Chan Man’. I believe this particular kit is based on a kids cartoon of the time, probably forgotten now.
I found this at an antique store in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t very expensive, and I was surprised it was intact and unmade after 40 years.
It’s a small and simple kit, but you can see it includes a screwdriver, screw and a pull-back motor.
The plastic is thicker and more brittle than what Bandai uses today, and it’s almost impossible to easily get rid of the cut lines when the pieces were removed from the runners. As you can see it’s also two-colour only, and while it is snap-together, it obviously needs painting to look ‘good’.
There’s the finished kit. It has very minimal articulation, and the girl (called ‘Patty’ apparently) is just a single solid figure.
With his legs up he can be pulled back and released, at which point he rolls around with surprising speed! I can’t show that here so I’ll illustrate with a photo of the manual:
It’s difficult to find information about this kit online, but it seems it was one of many including some based on larger properties like Gundam. Here’s a photo I found of five of them including the one I made:
I wonder how many of these kits still exist? Mine is made now, so there’s at least one less. It’s simple and unsophisticated but this was a fun look back at the early days of Bandai model kits 🙂