SD Gundam Full Color Stage 29

Let's do another Gashapon SD Full Color set. I love giving some attention to these little guys and it is a welcome break from having to assemble stuff which seems to be the norm for Gashapons in the year 2020. This particular set is Stage 29 which was released in November 2001 and contains seven different figures in total. This goes back to the good ol' days when a gashapon figure cost just ¥100.

Although I owned most of these figures before I picked up a full set from Mandarake just to secure the stragglers and get hold of some booklets. The full set cost me ¥1200 which is a little bit pricier than I would have expected but still quite affordable. As you can see, not a whole lot of assembly going on here so we can dive right in.
   

162 : RX-78-2 Gundam (Ver.11.0)

The RX-78 is the most popular of the Gashapon SD figures, at least that is what Bandai thought so they went ahead and created a multitude of variations. You can pretty much find it equipped with every weapon ever devised for it. By Stage 29 we had reached figure version eleven so it must have been getting more of a challenge for the designers to come up with something new.

The RX-78-11 (ahem...) comes equipped with the Hyper Bazooka and a shield. The shield can be pegged either into a slot on the left arm or attached to the backpack. The figure is leaning forward slightly and has a very clear blue colour tone on its torso. the sculpt is very crisp although it is missing the red marking underneath its cockpit hatch.

I just grabbed a couple of alternate RX-78s armed with Bazookas for a simple comparison. Here we have a significantly larger figure from 1998's Stage 4 armed with two Hyper Bazookas (generally referred to as the Last Decisive Battle version) and a machine with both Beam Rifle and Hyper Bazooka from Stage 19 released in August 2000.
   

163 : MS-06S Zaku II (Char's Custom) (Ver.5.0)

The Zaku II is another mobile suit that saw a lot of releases especially in the early days of Gashapon Full Color series. Char's personal red suit had reached its fifth version once we hit Stage 29, and this is the first time it gets to go for a bit of flying.

This figure draws its inspiration from the early battles between Char and Amuro where Char would quite literally beat up the Gundam and give it a swift kicking. The head can swivel left and right and so can look in the direction of the foot as well.

Bringing the pain to the RX-78. One interesting thing about this set is that the accompanying Gundam figure is not compatible with the standard action base so it gets kind of pointless to have the Zaku deliver a swift kicking to the RX-78 when it cannot sit next to it at the same level. I guess you can attach an action base to the figure's backpack but I just went ahead and posed it with a more dynamic looking Gundam from Stage 33.

There seems to be some debate on what colour is actually Char's Custom colour. Isn't there a hobby colour manufacturer out there that can give Bandai a helping hand? :)
   

164 : Char's Musai (Falmel)

I always enjoy it when Bandai sprinkles their figure sets with vehicles and spaceships and so here comes an iconic Musai-class Light Cruiser of Zeon origin. You know, the type of cruiser that Amuro cuts down twenty at a time whenever the authors want to hammer home just how powerful a mobile suit is. Yet somehow 100 enemy mobile suits never manage to cut down the White Base for some plot armour reason...

While this figure is actually labelled as Char's Musai in the booklet (which makes it the CC-102 Falmel) it is actually up to you if you want to display it as a regular Musai-class vessel or let it don the helmet like superstructure which must have cost a fortune at the Side 3 shipyards. Gee, you'd think a metal crest or something would have done the job just as well. The figure you see here sits on a generic Gashapon Full Color base although none is actually included with the figure itself.

Here you see a regular Musai-class figure next to the CC-102 Falmel. It is a neat gimmick that rewards army building.
   

165 : FA-78-1 Full Armor Gundam (Ver.2.0)

I find it fascinating that the blue colour Full Armor Gundam crops up from time to time in figure form even though it is a really obscure design. It originally hails from concept sketches drawn up for a planned 1984 Mobile Suit Gundam side story that never got made. Several of the designs however survive under the MS-X collection name. You can think of them as another set of Mobile Suit Variations basically.

Everywhere it appears in figure form, the blue FA-78-1 is typically a standard FA-78 with alternate colours. Sometimes the blue version is referred to as "E.F.S.F. Space Type" and there is also the rather similar looking Full Armor Gundam from the Plamo Kyoshiro series. I can never really get my head around this mobile suit. This particular figure is however easy to source back to the MS-X line because it appears here together with the Burstliner which is also an MS-X design.

The traditional green version of the FA-78 appeared in Full Color Stage 20 in October 2000 and is just as inadequately painted as the blue version omitting all white sections of the body which is a bit disappointing. The green version reappears in the SD Full Color Custom line in 2007 but this is the only blue version out there. The next closest thing will be the substantially larger figure out in the MicroWars 5 set this autumn.
   

166 : Burstliner

The Burstliner (or Bus Trainer as Google Earth suggests I refer to it...) is a companion to the Full Armor Gundam, or actually, the blue Full Armor Gundam is more of a companion to the Burstliner I guess. Hailing from the same MS-X design series we discussed above there is a Burstliner design with a white body piloted by the green Full Armor Gundam and then there is this alternate colour version for which the blue colour FA-78 was designed.

The Burstliner is a gargantuan Beam Cannon on its own propulsion unit but meant to be crewed by a mobile suit, specifically the Full-Armor Gundam. A similar concept developed by the Principality of Zeon is the Skiure which is also available in the SD Full Color figure line. These are the only appearances of these two figures to my knowledge. the only exception is a really holy grail release by FusionWorks that appeared in 2005 around the time they were busying themselves with the Ultimate Operation figure line. I have never seen it for sale.

Just like the Musai-class cruiser the Burstliner is compatible with the standard Gashapon Full Color bases but no base is included with the figure itself. it can also accommodate a mobile suit on the platform behind the mega cannon, most of the smaller SD figures should be able to ride it without problem.

   

167 : XXXG-01W Wing Gundam

A figure from New Mobile Report Gundam Wing has managed to infiltrate this set and it is actually the Wing Gundam itself, in its basic appearance from the original television series. I always have to go back to my notes to make sure that i get it right because I cannot remember which version is which for the life of me.

This is actually a rather pretty figure with lots of nice colours on the front side while the back is more of an all-white thing but that is to be generally expected from the SD figures. It comes armed with a single Buster Rifle and a shield a head that swivels so you can make it look down the gunbarrel. The wings on my figure are just tall enough to propel the figure's left foot off the ground which is perhaps not that successful, but not really that noticeable.

The Stage 29 Wing Gundam compared to some other variants; a dual Buster Rifle-wielding Wing Zero from Stage 31, the Endless Waltz Wing Zero Custom from Stage 50 (which is a reissue of the figure from Stage 19) and a flying translucent variant of the latter from Stage 63. In total there are 8 different Wing Gundams in the SD Full Color series.

Here the Wing Gundam is hanging out with some of its friends from both the original New Mobile Report Gundam Wing and the Endless Waltz design sets.
   

168 : LM314V21 Victory 2 Gundam

The last figure in this set is another sneaky insert - this time from the Victory Gundam television series. The Victory 2 is a refinement of the original Victory Gundam design and works with a colour palette more centered around an attractive blue and yellow combination.

I like that the Victory 2 has a lot of colour also on the flipside. The fact that the backpack is a different component certainly helps otherwise we might have ended up with an all-white thing with couple of blue stripes on the front side just like how Bandai usually paints the v-fins on these figures. A beam shield sure would have been nice even if it was just plain pink rather than translucent but what can you do.

The Victory 2 next to two of its more advanced successor designs, the LM314V23 Victory 2 Buster Gundam from Stage 49 and the LM314V24 Victory 2 Assault Gundam from Stage 48.
   

Conclusion

SD Gashapon Full Color Stage 29 is a nice looking set with a really good mix of suits and vehicles although I wish Bandai would have included some more action bases with the set. There isn't really any point in buying multiple sets unless you are out hunting for the Musai-class figure here.