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.