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