A couple of weeks back we looked at a pair of self-distributed publications covering the history of Bandai's various Gashapon SD figurines, or rather, some of the brands in this long running series. The first book went through the original SD Full Color series while the second volume focused on other issues and mainly the overseas editions from Bandai USA. Still, neither edition covered some of the other major series, the most glaringly obvious example being the SD Gundam Full Color Custom successor series. I don't know what caused the author to skip over this series but I do recall reading how the book series expanded wildly beyond his plans and so it probably became an impossibility on the current budget. I suppose there is the possibility that he might actually not have access to all the FCC figures but that seems highly unlikely.
Whatever the reason might be, we have a third volume in this series with a completely different title, format (landscape instead of portrait) and concept. "The POP3" is a much smaller tome clocking in at 60 pages, where the original two books were 156 and 74 pages respectively. And where the previous books went into covering each figure with detailed photographs this book is a simple collection of Gashapon mounts; those stiff cardboard sheets that go into the front slot of the Gashapon vending machine.
If you are unsure what the purpose of this book might be a quick glance on the first page will tell you everything about it immediately. Here we see images that grazed vending machines in October 1997 and February 1998 and the first two SD Full Color Stages went and became part of Gashapon history. The price of ¥100 for a figure permeates through all the sets you will see in this book - the two exceptions being the two larger SD Full Color DX sets - it wasn't until Gashapon Warrior NEXT came around that ¥200 became the new norm. Prices continued to climbed with Gashapon Warrior DASH upping to ¥300 which was then true for most of the Gashapon Senshi Forte period until the last two volumes that spiralled to ¥400 and ¥500 before the saga was concluded.
There isn't a whole lot to say about the contents of this book really, each image speaks for itself. It is barely even useful as a figure identification tool, since the images are quite tiny but acts more like a collection of memorabilia to feed the nostalgia of us older collectors. Seen above are Stages 8-10 of the Full Color Series, with volume 10 being the first of two "revival" sets that reprinted older figures (the other such set being Stage 17).
As the Full Color series soldiered on, the mounted artwork became more pronounced and eye-catching. The early sets feature photographs of figures in action but these were later replaced with fancy expressive artwork with images of the figures itself almost added as an afterthought. Here we see some wild Mobile Fighter G Gundam battles taking place on the artwork for Stages 32 and 33 and the special 200th figure release in Stage 34.
More cool artwork on display here for Stages 47 through 49 and Stage 51, which was a Zaku Special release. What happened to Stage 50 you might wonder, well flip the page and scroll down a bit...
As you can see there are two different styles for the artwork made for Stage 50, which was a special jubilee edition which also included little coin-like bases for the figures. I don't know why the two different styles exist or if they existed side-by-side or one after the other. Notice also the promotional images of other special releases, the infamous Colony-can filled with Zakus (that I have never seen) and the clear-colour version of the Falmel Musai-class spacecraft playset.
The original Full Color Series ends with Stage 63. However, there was one additional SP release promoting the Bonds of the Battlefield arcade game released several months later. The set recycles older figures and the artwork focuses on showing off the slick arcade cockpit set-up for the players.
Next, the book shows off the handful of Full Color Extra-series released that were released interspersed between the regular Full Color waves. These sets show off Gundam characters from the various SD cartoons and games.
On the right hand page you can see the images for the two DX-figure sets that feature larger figures like mobile armours and vehicles. Each figure also comes with a tiny pilot figure which makes them very collectable.
Here then finally we have the only documentation so far of the SD Gundam Full Color Custom series in these books. I don't know if there are other books out there that cover these in detail but so far this is the only book I have managed to find myself. Maybe our intrepid author will come back in the future with additional volumes in this excellent series of publications?
As the Full Color Custom series drew to a close the later releases were loaded up mostly with single colour translucent figures, mostly in red, black or blue with other colours much less frequent. The mounted artwork also places focus on playability and encourages buyers to pull the figures apart and reassemble them into fantastic creations of their own.
We have some nice coverage of the smaller sets that followed Full Color and Full Color Custom as well. Seen here are the first three volumes of SD Gundam Impact which is an odd and short-lived - pretty abysmal too if I am being honest - series of tiny figures with very basic paintwork and presented in stiff action poses.
Impact was followed by another short-lived experiment called Bind which features two types of figures. Half the set would consist of tiny fully painted mobile suits in official colours and the other half being single colour figures of mobile suits where a limb or other part would have been swapped out into something fantastic. The idea was to collected the full set of these and then combine pieces from all of them into a single large monstruous creature of sorts. The single-colour figures would typically be variations of the figures that were painted up in normal colours although they would typically not be present in the same volume. Seen here are the Gashapon mounts for Bind volume 3 and 4 on the outer left and right. The two centre panels showing off full artwork are intended to be displayed as additional artwork on the top and/or sides off the vending machine based on what the text above the image explains.
Here we have some more images of the crazy Bind-series of figures, showing off waves 5 through 7. The last panel depicts the first of the last of the classic SD Gundam figure sets; Brave Battle Warriors which can also be seen below.
After the four volumes of brave warriors - complete with horses and companion soldiers - the book closes out with a couple of art panels that are supposed to go on top off and on the sides of the Gashapon vending machine. I can't really get my head around if these were created specifically for the book and if so, how you are meant to use them (since you couldn't cut one out without damaging the other). I'll have to assume this is simply documenting promotional material of some kind. All in all, this book does a decent job of closing the gap regarding the missing content in the author's previous books but I really do hope we get to see a fourth volume that goes into the uncovered figures in more detail in the future!
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