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 🙂
