MegaHouse Chess Piece Collection : Qubeley Mk-II Set (Bandai Museum Limited Edition)

Welcome to the October One-Off Week here on Gundanium Gateway. This is a little special where we will be looking at seven different products normally not featured on the blog. Some are really proper one-offs while others are coming from sets where it makes little sense to review them all in one go.

So... we're kicking off One-Off Week with a special set from the Bandai Museum shop. These two figures belong to the Megahouse Chess Piece Collection family. This is a line of... well, chess piece-style figurines mounted on tall plastic bases with felt underneath. Mobile Suit Gundam is only one of the various licenses which have been featured by MegaHouse in this series.

This particular item was a Tokyo Bandai Museum G-Base shop exclusive item. Released apparently in 2004 I don't know what the price would have been back then. I found mine at Mandarake for a mere ¥1000. The Chess Piece Collection figures aren't particularly valuable but can be very tricky to find. Used items sold on eBay are often damaged (missing limbs, broken off parts etc.) so it is a buyer beware situation not helped by the poor availability of information about these figures online. Hopefully in the future we can feature them more properly also on the Gundanium Gateway site because their style is quite unique.

While the regular Chess Piece Collection figures are sold in blind boxes this particular set is preloaded with the two Mk-II Qubeleys featured in the Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam television series. Each figure comes in a plastic bag of the same type that would be used in a regular single-figure blind box.

As you can see there is not a whole lot of assembly that needs to be undertaken. Chess Piece Collection figures are normally fully assembled, it is only figures that have difficulty fitting in the boxes that tend to be disassembled and then only slightly. The Qubeleys are manufactured from slightly soft plastic and the funnel bits of completely bendable material to allow them to wrap around the limbs of the mobile suits. The funnel bits are attached to the back skirt which is annoying since I don't really want to display them.

As you can see from these images the two Qubeleys are adorned with a black Queen symbol on the back side of their bases (the Neo Zeon logo sits on front). This arrangement wouldn't be very useful in an actual game of Chess now would it...

Chess Piece Collection bases ususally feature 3D artwork such as battlefield terrain or debris or even effect pieces like thruster jets. These two bases are completely flat because the figures are in space. You can see a couple of painted blotches on there, which is supposed to represent a starry sky. It feels a bit underwhelming.

The bases are made of harder plastic than the figures themselves and come with a nice felt piece underneath.  The height of each base is related to the chess piece rating of the figure, so that Kings have the tallest bases and Pawns the lowest. This can be annoying when you want to display different figures together. Getting the figures off the bases is also rather difficult and is probably best avoided.

Comparisons

The two Qubeley figures are simple colour variations of the standard retail Qubeley, which was released in the fourth Mobile Suit Z Gundam-themed Chess Piece Collection series in Spring of 2004.

While the MegaHouse Chess Piece Collection figures are not to scale, the overall size of these figures would fall somewhere in the 1:300 range. Large mobile suits such as the Qubeley, Messala and The-O are slightly smaller than that. Below you can see the Chess Piece Collection Qubeleys posing with figures from the Gashapon Mecha Selection (also non-scale but usually considered to be around 1:285), Seika Sharpener Collection (1:280) and Assault Kingdom (1:220).

Elpeo Ple's Qubeley Mk-II from Gundam Converge, MegaHouse Chess Piece Collection, Gashapon HG Mecha Selection 5 (ca 1:285) and Mini Figure Selection Plus vol. 2 (1:400).

Ple Two's Qubeley Mk-II posing with its namesake from Assault Kingdom (1:220) and Paptimus' The-O as a pencil sharpener from Seika (1:280).

The mobile suits available in the MegaHouse Chess Piece Collection line usually feature very expressive and dynamic poses and as so are not for everyone. If you are a fan of the style though it would make perfect sense to also pick these two candidates up if you can get them at a fair price. It should also be noted that the Qubeleys are the only two representatives from the ZZ Gundam show (unless you count the mobile suits carried over from Zeta).