Robot Claw

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 🙂

Bernard sent me this:

It’s a cardboard R2-D2 model kit! Here’s what was inside:

Six cardboard runners with pieces, an instruction book, and a tiny tube of glue (which I never used). It also includes a cardboard tool to assist in assembly, which is fairly useless (I used tweezers myself).

The model is assembled by punching out the pieces and putting them together using a tab/slot system. Most pieces have slots that need to be punched out, and this can be a little tedious since some of the slots are too small and need to be enlarged before use. Some pieces are scored to bend, and this works better than I expected. I had actually purchased a different kit from the same manufacturer before and assembly was a nightmare, so I was nervous.

The initial steps included a lot of framework and placement of curved pieces. Unlike the other kit I mostly failed on, this all went together surprisingly well and in a couple of hours I had finished the main body.

The legs were a lot more finicky, and there may have been some cursing trying to get all the pieces together well. Once or twice I had to cut off tabs since (curved) pieces didn’t go together correctly, but I was able to do this in a way that was transparent to the final version.

After about 6 carefree hours I’d finished the four main sections, and it was time to put them together. This was also a bit nerve-wracking, since the potential for damage seemed high. But my worry was premature, and this final step was almost effortless.

And here he is! Doesn’t he look great? He’s about a foot tall and surprisingly sturdy considering he’s cardboard. As I said I didn’t use glue, but everything is together tightly and I don’t feel I need to be fragile moving him around.

Here he is compared to the two of my other recent R2 pickups: a Lego version and a vintage action figure.

Overall this kit gets a resounding thumbs up. As it turns out when Bernard sent it to me I had already purchased one myself, and I’ll therefore be sending him back one so he can make it for himself.

As for mine, I could just put him on the shelf, or in my office… or I could set him on fire and post dramatic photos on this blog! Let me know in the comments which is preferred?

Yesterday I made this Star Destroyer:

It’s a cardboard model kit, and only cost $20. The reviews were good and I was looking forward to seeing what it looked like assembled.

First impressions are excellent. A 30 page manual, 16 ‘runners’ with over 200 pieces printed on thick card that punched out easily. It even comes with glue that the manual says is only required if the connections were loose.

The print detail was excellent, and the pieces are clearly marked making assembly – at least initially – fairly easy. I could have done without punching out the hundreds of tiny slots though!

It’s a massive model, and very sturdy. Assembly up until the point in the above pic wasn’t too difficult, but after this things changed a lot. Putting the main hull pieces onto the superstructure was an exercise in frustration, since it was extremely difficult getting the tabs lined up.

The hinged pieces I think could have been better designed as well. Far too often the print separated from the backing revealing the cardboard as seen above. I probably could have fixed these easily with a bit of glue, but I didn’t care enough.

The spherical parts were almost impossible to correctly assemble. The design of these overall was dubious, and they were very loose even when I attempted to glue them. In the end I just left them as you see above.

The whole kit took me about 4 hours, and here’s the finished model:

At first glance it looks great, and as I said with a bit of extra work it could have been near perfect. I think this is a kit that shouldn’t be rushed (which I did), and would look very nice if every part was assembled with great care. That said it’s almost too big: where would one display this?!

I found it fit very nicely – after some rigorous disassembly – in the recycling bin 🙂

Overall I’ll give this a thumbs up despite the epilogue above, since I think the design is fundamentally strong and because I have another by the same company that I have high hopes for…