Robot Claw

While in Japan back in January I picked this up:

It’s a weird superdeformed Hatsune Miku model kit that I previously didn’t even know existed. Even better it was only about $20! Today I made it.

So far so good, lots of pieces in many colours. However I immediately noticed that the runners were all single colour, that the plastic was somewhat brittle and that there was a frankly unacceptable amount of flash on many pieces:

I usually make kits by Bandai (Gundam) or Kotobukiya (ZOIDS, Frame Arm Girls) and the QC on those kits is so high that I can’t recall ever seeing flash. Furthermore they have multicoloured runners, pieces made of all sorts of plastic (or even rubber or metal) and everything goes together perfectly.

Here, not so much. Assembly was tricky and at times difficult, seams were often visible and due to the brittle plastic a few pins even broke off when I tried to attach pieces. But I soldiered on and in a couple of hours had mostly finished:

Look at those tiny legs! The kit didn’t come with a stand and while I initially assumed the hair would function as some sort of standing mechanism this wasn’t the case. In short, she can’t stand at all and even though she looks ok complete she’s definitely supported by the books in this photo:

Yes she’s cute, even unpainted. But it was a frustrating build, and not half as good as the other Miku kit I made a while ago. But I have to say assembly was fun, if only because I had a helper…

So Ptimo was a bit second-rate compared to the (admittedly far more expensive) other kits I usually buy. Would I recommend them? No. Would I buy Ptimo again? Well… it turns out I already had:

Yes this was another Japan pickup, and yes it is (incredibly) a Rilakkuma model kit! It was newer and more expensive than Miku. Here’s the parts:

Unfortunately this kit had the same flaws as Miku, especially in ease of assembly. Kuma’s head in particular stubbornly resisted going together seamlessly and of course once completed he was incredibly difficult to stand unaided:

But they look great don’t they?!? Though it was a fiddly kit to make, with frustrating imperfections, I’ve got to say I’m happy with them both for the uniqueness. Overall the better of the two kits.

Lastly, speaking of Miku kits, I also in Japan bought the astonishing Frame Arm Miku kit (on the actual day of release no less). This will be my next build and assuming it doesnt disappoint you can look forward to seeing it here…

I haven’t posted about a model kit in a while, so here’s the latest I’ve made:

This is a character from Dragonball Z (a Japanese manga) done as a plastic model kit! Here’s the runners showing all the colours:

Much like the recent Miku bust I’d made the instructions were bilingual which I suppose makes the kit more accessible. But as usual the almost-completely pictorial assembly guide made it an easy build despite some tiny pieces.

Notably the kit includes a ‘muscle building’ system which just means his mottled skin is made by overlaying a lighter piece onto the darker background:

The precision is as usual for Bandai – excellent – and this works very well.

The head contains about 20 pieces alone and the final kit probably a couple of hundred:

It’s quite large and very posable, although as usual I chose not to display it in battle mode with energy ball attack.

Overall a fun build that looks great. If I was a bigger DBZ fan I’d certainly buy more from this range.

It’s been a while since a craft post, so here we go!

BFS sent me this. He’s always sending me these metal kits since he knows they’re a chore to put together and he uses me as his proxy! There seems to be two companies making them, the ‘metal miniatures’ guys (that you see in stores everywhere) and these less common Chinese models, which are more difficult and have slightly lower quality control.

To put it bluntly, this thing was excruciatingly frustrating to assemble. The pieces were miniature and mostly black or very reflective gold – both colours seemingly chosen to make it impossible to see the sub-millimeter tabs and slots with the naked eye! Furthermore the instructions left a lot to be desired.

I struggled on though, cut myself more than once on sharp edges and made two critical structural errors that essentially doomed the thing. But I was able to pose it in a more or less finished state regardless:

Verdict: way way too fiddly. Save this one for when you’ve built all 500 other similar kits 🙂

I bought the above in Japan. It was a new release and as you can see quite cheap for what it is. Which is a Gundam? A girl kit? A girl Gundam?!? Who knows!

I love the colouring and the pearlescent plastic and the soft parts and the fact the manual is – for the first time that I’d seen – printed in both Japanese and English! Look at all those eyes though…

She was an easy build because Bandai has long since mastered these sorts of things. As a bonus she comes with a stand!

She’s a little creepy isn’t she? Maybe it’s just the lack of a pose. She’s got joints everywhere and her wings can spread out fully behind her so I suppose I should make her a little more dynamic. Overall a great kit for under US$20 and a lot of fun to assemble.

We also purchased the above in Japan, and it even cost more than the Gundam! As you can see it’s a ‘Real Scale’ plastic bonsai kit, which seems a bit of a lie since it’s actually quite small.

The instructions are very cute but also very short since the kit itself was only 5 pieces! I was a bit mystified by the manufacturing though: how did they get the tufts of green into the brown plastic like that?

Assembly was trivial and I skipped the painting advice in the instructions. Even so, I think it looks pretty good assembled:

That’s a normal sized Lego guy next to it for scale. See what I mean about small?! This was expensive for what it is but I suspect it may have been partially ‘garage’ built (i.e. handmade) and it’ll look good in our curio so I’m glad I bought it.

I think the next one of these posts may focus on electronic crafts. Look for it in a month or two 🙂