Dengeki Hobby 1:8 Lacus Clyne (Captain Outfit)

The final item for our October One-Off Week is a semi-obscure figure from Dengeki Hobby. This little 1:8 scale Lacus mini was a companion item for the Dengeki Hobby Magazine June 2004 issue as can be seen on the cover image here.

During its run, the magazine often featured special items such as this one and some are more interesting than others (the Advance of Zeta figures and kits come to mind). While these bundled Dengeki items usually aren't too expensive on the second hand market availability can be a bit of an issue. Finding them is often the hard part. I picked mine up a couple of years ago in Japan for... hmm, I think it was about ¥500.

Alright, let's take a closer look inside the pink (of course) box...

As you can see this is not a cheap chunk of plastic with some haphazard paint on it but actually quite the complex design with several layers of individually painted pieces. There is a lot of attention to detail with nice gold trimmings on the sleeves and edges of the captain robe. As you can see, the head sits on a ball joint and the figure can also swivel at the waist. The rest of the parts remain static however for the pose to work.

Now, before we look at the figure, let's just remind ourselves what Captain Lacus Clyne is actually supposed to look like. Here we can see her on the bridge of the Eternal during the battle at Jachin Due during the climactic end phase of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.

And then... well, then there is the figure from Dengeki...

I guess this figure is a fine example of attention to detail but missing the overall goal. While the details in the outfit are dead on for the most part, the colours seem a bit off. Then there is that soft round face almost looking like a Chibi character. And that intense purple hair... is this Lacus Clyne or the latest entry into the Bratz line?

The figure has an unusual way to make the pieces fit together. Two big lumps of plastic extend from the back of each part of the robe and they are then squeezed together inside a rectangular block locking them tightly in place and keeping the figure together. The base then connects into the very same block. This works really well except that the rod that connects to the base feels a bit flimsy and could have been a bit sturdier.

While you can pose the figure without the robe this means it has no support and the only way to make it stand up is to lean it against something or build your own support which either way will probably end up destroying the floating in space effect which is really the only thing this figure has going for it in the first place.

There is plenty - and I do mean plenty - of Lacus figures on the market and it would be hard to find one that has less likeness than this one. The similarly sized Gashapon ranges are virtually littered with great looking Lacus figures. In this figure's defense however, 90% of them are from SEED Destiny. Finding a Lacus figure with the captain robe from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is actually not an easy task. The only other example I can think of is a 1:6 scale resin kit from Global which I would love to show off here except that I haven't built it yet...

Above you can see Lacus wearing the same outfit (sans the robe) in the great version released in 2003 in the MegaHouse Excellent Model RAH.DX Gundam Archives line-up. And for something really spectacular, how about the SEED Destiny captain outfit in 1:6 scale from Atelier Sai below? In the end, the Dengeki Hobby figure is little more than a cheap novelty, but I wouldn't hold it past a skilled modeller to kitbash another Gashapon Lacus figure from SEED that has a better likeness and do a headswap. Perhaps a project for me to consider in the future... :)

With this entry we have come to the end of the October One-Off Special. I hope our readers had as much fun as I did in going into some different directions and don't be surprised to see the blog continuing to expand into more figure lines as time goes on.

Seika Sharpener Collection EX : Aile Strike/Strike Rouge (Gundam Ace Magazine)

Back in the dark Pre-Internet era when I was a youngling yet to develop my Newtype potential and become a hoarder of Mobile Suit Gundam related junk I was often found with a pencil in my hand. The pencil was the ultimate tool to take the step into space and countless intergalactic adventures and horrible encounters were found at the spot where the pencil connects to paper. Towards the end of the 20th century the mechanical pencil had pretty much replaced them in everyday use. The sharpener business can't exactly be blooming in the 21st Century. Yet here I am with a large collection of pencil sharpeners that will never get to chew on even a single old pencil... Perhaps this is why Seika worked so hard at pumping out sharpener figures to stay relevant? We've seen several sets of Mobile Suit Gundam sharpener figures as well as other licensed products such as SDF Macross and Evangelion and who knows what else.

The product we are examining today comes from the Seika EX line of extra fancy sharpener figures which are larger than the original series. The EX sharpener figures are declared as 1:280 and there are a couple of sets with figures from Mobile Suit Z Gundam as well as Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. While none of these figures are particularly valuable they are tricky to come by since cheap junk like this doesn't always suit itself well for international trade. I found mine at Mandarake (of course...) and paid ¥1200 for the box.

This particular box is a special for the Gundam Ace magazine and although I don't know the details it most likely came as a freebee with one of their issues during 2004. The box can be seen to refer to SEED Part 2 which is a 12-piece set of EX Sharpeners which these two figures probably are intended to promote. I do actually have a box of figures from that set which I haven't opened up yet, I'll probably get around to reviewing those in the future.

One interesting aspect is that the Aile Strike is not included in that figure set but the Strike Rouge is, it is possible that it exists as a secret colour variation though I suppose. The set does feature two "Impossible to Find Items!". How reassuring...

The Gundam Ace figures come in a compact cardboard box and each is contained within a separate box inside it. The delicate fins of the Aile Striker backpack are made of soft and bendy plastic to keep them safe from breaking, but as you can guess this makes them prime candidates for warping. Even though the Striker packages came with extra cardboard wrapping to protect their shapes the way they came out of the box (as seen below) means you can look forward to lots of trouble trying to bend them into their proper shape again.

Except for the backpacks, the Strike and the Strike Rouge figures are really sharp and on point. They have very detailed paint applications even besting those of Gundam STANDart and come with panel lining and some washes out of the box. Awesome!

The one thing I do not appreciate about these figures is the gigantic footprint they leave. While it makes them very stable and allows for some decorative mini-scenery around them I still wish they were smaller. The pencil sharpener itself is as you can see very content with a much smaller base.

Just look at these unit markings, absolutely amazing. I can't think of anything in this scale that can best these two figures.

To get a feel for the Seika EX figure size here the Aile Strike poses with some members of its family. We have a Sword Striker from STANDart on the left (1:220 scale), the compact Perfect Strike from Gundam Converge (center) and the Launcher Strike from Gashapon HG MS. The latter Gashapon series is often said to be around 1:285 scale but the individual figures vary wildly as all figures tend to be about the same height.

I like both the older Seika Sharpener figures which are somewhere around 1:400 in size and the larger EX line. I am slowly working on expanding my EX collection as best I can so that it can be featured in more detail here on the blog. Below you can see the two Strikes with a representative from the Zeta Gundam set and the SEED Part 2 set.

MegaHouse Cosmo Fleet Collection : CBS-70 Ptolemaios (10th Anniversary Gundam 00)

The fifth entry for our October One-Off Week is an old figure getting a reissue as part of this year's ongoing Mobile Suit Gundam 00 10th Anniversary. We've previously looked at some 00 Anniversary items from Gundam Converge and Mobile Suit Ensemble and I think it is a fun little distraction to give a show some extracurricular highlighting like this. Of course brand new items are more entertaining. I saw that MegaHouse recently also released another 00 Anniversary figure of Lockon Stratos in their Gundam Guys Generation line, now that's what I call a real jubilee item.

The Cosmo Fleet Collection is an old blind box figure series of various spaceships from the various Gundam shows. It saw seven volumes or "Acts" between 2006 and 2012, typically featuring six different ships in each. There were also some special box sets and limited reissues and the series also morphed into Cosmo Fleet Special which features twice as big and much more detailed renditions of spaceships although the series has only seen eight releases since it started in 2014.

If you happen to think that the cover art for this blister pack looks familiar it is because we have seen it before. The Ptolemaios was first released in Cosmo Fleet Collection Act 5 in 2011, and the blind boxes feature the same illustration of it except that the 00 Gundam is not in Trans-Am colours there. I wish I had the original figure to compare here but Cosmo Fleet Collection Act 5 is something of a holy grail. The set is extremely hard to find and when up for grabs it is not unusual to see prices between $500 and $1000 for the full set...

The good news is that if you are looking for the Ptolemaios figure the reissue is virtually identical to the original. The main differences are that the new figure has a nice Celestial Being insignia on the front and the companion 00 Gundam figure is coloured in Trans-Am configuration. Also, the translucent action base is different from the opaque black plastic which was used the first time around.

The Cosmo Fleet Collection figures all share the same type of modular action base. The ship sits on a peg with two ball joints and the mobile suit has a peg under one of its feet which fits into the end of a long stick which has a ball joint in the other end. The base is perfect for displaying the ship in virtually any angle you want to, while there is not that much you can do with the mobile suit without it looking weird. I usually just remove the MS from the display completely.

One word of warning here; the ball joint that sets into the hull of the ship has a tendency to get stuck in there. You will still be able to rotate the ship as normally but if you try to remove the ship from the peg the peg can break apart very easily. This results in the ball getting stuck inside the hull effectively ruining both the ship and the action base in the process. However, the soft plastic material of the figure usually allows it to cling to the peg even if you only insert the ball about a third or so into the slot. This keeps your figure much safer (unless you plan on displaying it on the edge of your bookshelf or something...).

The mobile suits that come with the Cosmo Fleet Collection figures are not to scale but still very tiny. The paint job and detail on it is ok and it isn't something you would want to study up close anyway. It is what it is, so to speak.

Ptolemaios posing together with the STANDart GN-0000 00 Gundam (with the bonus 0 Raiser parts).

The Ptolemaios figure is a very attractive design in itself, and this figure really does it justice. Of course it would have been beyond epic if the 10th Anniversary Ptolemaios had released as a Cosmo Fleet Special figure at twice the size. That thing would be guaranteed to fly off the shelves although the price tag would have been a bit nasty. As it stands, you can still find this Cosmo Fleet Collection figure on the market for about ¥2500 which I think is a decent price. Especially when you consider that the original figure is nearly unobtainable and the other option of getting the 1:400 scale Ptolemaios from Gundam Collection would, if you could find it, set you back some ¥20000 or so.

Banpresto Ichiban Kuji : Red Comet E-Prize - Char Aznable Memo Stand

Day four of the October One-Off Week and what better way to dig into obscure and bizarre items than going for a trip into the Banpresto Ichiban Kuji back-catalogue? Each year Banpresto is providing a ton of licensed products into the Ichiban Kuji lottery prize pools for "lucky" winners to dream about. Prizes typically come in differently sized sets where the A-Prize is the most coveted or extravagant item and once you come down a couple of letters into E-H territory you can expect tiny Chibi characters, straps, cheap paper artwork and the like.

The item we are looking at today is a Category E-prize from a set dedicated to Char Aznable. I don't have an overview of all the other stuff available in this set except that figure C is a really nice Gaw-figure doubling as a measuring tape(!) and the figure I am reviewing here is one of two Category E-prizes (as the number two in the corner of the front cover tells us). The companion item for the Z'Gok is a chunky figure of Char's Zaku II as it delivers a swift kick with its left foot as can be seen here to the left.

While the figures in this set aren't particularly valuable or sought after they can be tricky to find since they don't show up on the market very frequently. I picked up the Z'Gok from Mandarake paying only ¥200 for it, even though it is a ten year old figure at this point.

The figure is packed in your typical plastic bag. There's the figure itself, a cheap and ugly looking stand and five pieces of stiff paper with Char's logotype on the back. Just what you need for that busy day at the office...

The Z'Gok is made out of soft and durable plastic and features no articulation or gimmicks. You can attach it to the horrible oversized base if you want but thanks to its large feet it is unlikely to fall over very easily (unless perhaps you manage to get a warped figure).

The overall design of the figure is a bit deformed and buffed up. It doesn't feel like a Converge or an SD figure but it is definitely compacted compared to its original dimensions.

I'm not entirely positive that the Z'Gok is going to excel at your office, at least not as a memo stand. I have a feeling most papers will slip out of its grip before long and what is it with the Universal Century timeline anyway, doesn't 3M and Post-It! exist in their universe? :)

Still, I think this is an amusing figure and its size and style means it poses quite well with Gundam Converge figures, adding some variation to their line-up

MegaHouse Gundam Girls Generation : Aida Surugan

Day three of the October One-Off Week and we turn our eyes towards the seemingly forgotten-by-now television series Mobile Suit Gundam Reconguista in G. Taking place in yet another odd timeline (the Regild Century) everything in G-Reco is far off the beaten track which is probably why it seems to have become a bit of a dark horse in today's toylines. We've only seen a handful of Shokugan or Gashapon figures from this era and most of them are of course the main Gundam-esque G-Self mobile suit. At the time I was pretty certain we would be drowning in similar G-Self figures with different backpacks but it never happened. Instead the series slipped away from the shelves already in 2015, with the exception of the one we are looking at today which came out in 2016.

The MegaHouse GGG or Gundam Girls Generation figure series (there is also a Gundam Guys Generation counterpart) is primarily dedicated to Gundam Build Fighters characters. The first six figures feature Aila, Rinko and China from Build Fighters and then Fumina and Mirai from Build Fighters Try. Aida comes in at number 07 and there is also a GGG DX figure for Kudelia Aina Bernstein from Iron Blooded Orphans.

Although GGG is a non-scale series the Aida figure is approximately 17 centimeters tall which puts her around 1:10 scale. This size is somewhere in the middle between typical Gashapon character figures and the larger 1:6/1:7 scale figures from MegaHouse and Banpresto.

The packaging of very good quality and even features a little extra starfield cardboard piece as a backdrop for the figure when stored in the box. The sandwiching of the figure between two plastic inserts keeps it neatly and safely in place.

The figure comes with a hexagonal translucent blue baseplate which has two pegs which go into the right foot. Since this is a small figure there are no stability concerns here and MegaHouse also did not design any additional support is pieces. And as you can see from the pictures, the sculpting and paintwork is really spot on. The texture of the flightsuit is especially successful and looks very convincing.

The Gundam Girls Generation figures do not come with any articulation or optional bodyparts. While not uncommon for other figure series to feature alternative parts such as alternative faces or expressive arms the only tweaking you can do here is to let Aida carry her helmet or not.

It is too bad that this awesome figure has no companions to display with. I have never seen any figures, including garage kits, of other characters from G-Reco. There is supposedly a bust of Bellri Zenam released as a resin cast in 2015, I have so far never spotted it on the market. Sometimes I wish Gundam figure collection was more like Star Wars, where every non-essential background character present even in a single scene seems to get their own figure eventually. With Mobile Suit Gundam it is usually the same couple of faces all over again.

There aren't a whole lot of figures from the G-Reco universe available. Except from a couple of super-deformed figures in Gashapon NEXT and Converge we also have the G-Self as an Assault Kingdom figure and the Megafauna Assault Cruiser which somehow made it into the Cosmo Fleet Special Collection.

Overall, if you enjoy Gundam character figures and figurines this one comes highly rcommended. It has really good detail and paintwork, although the 1:10 scale means it doesn't really pose well with many figures out there. GGG figures are only a couple of years old and are generally available on the market. Prices vary greatly with popularity; Fumina tends to sell at around ¥8000-¥9000 but I picked up Aida for ¥3000 which is a much more agreeable price.