Bandai's SD Gundam Full Color Custom figure series is the successor to the Full Color series and shifts the focus from merely collecting your favourite figures into taking them apart and recombining them into something new, something custom. Today we are taking a look at the 16th regular set that hit the Gashapon capsule machines in February 2008 which like all the other regular waves consists of then different figures with no special variations, hidden figures or the like.
Here are the figures with loose components as they came out of their packaging. The figures can usually be broken down further but this is how they happened to look fresh out of the packaging. Another point of interest is that volume 16 is the last FCC set to feature two different booklet designs, a gimmick that was running since the series' inception. The range was on its last legs at this point and so this was probably a necessary cost saving action.
151 : GNW-001 Gundam Throne Eins
The three Thrones are some of the figures I think would be great candidates for inclusion in Mobile Suit Ensemble (or Converge for that matter) but somehow they pretty much never show up in figure form. Unless you go into bigger scales like Robot Spirits your only bet is to try and source these three SD figurines, which is far from easy I might add. Number one here has a very chocolatey feel to it with some yellow colour applications sprinkled on its front and only the large GN Launcher stands out in a different colour. I understand why we rarely see these machines in Gacha form as they have pretty elaborate colour schemes but that doesn't seem to stop Bandai from releasing the Celestial Being team. You can swap out the handheld Beam Rifle for the Beam Launcher but these pegs can be a bit fiddly to work with so be careful to avoid any damage.
Throne Eins returns in this chewy candy cranberry style translucent colour in Full Color Custom 19 released only five months later. It does have painted eyes but is otherwise single colour.
152 : GNW-002 Gundam Throne Zwei
Throne number two has a bit livelier colour scheme with its starkly painted white head. It should be noted that many parts of the body are also painted white on the original design, it is mainly the outer armour plating that is orange, but this is what you get for a 100 yen figure. The figure comes with one of those oversized anime style swords that can either attach to the right shoulder or equipped in hand. It also has this underarm GN Handgun equipped on its left arm, a gun that is so unwieldy that it extends below the feet of the figure and so you get this slightly leaning pose.
Throne Zwei has a translucent version released in the same FCC set as the Throne Eins. This time the two figures are very similar in colour which is perhaps a bit boring but you might have some fun with swapping parts around between the two figures to come up with some interesting combinations.
153 : GNW-003 Gundam Throne Drei
The third Throne comes in berry red with a shiny white head. There is something menacing about its face but the effect is undermined by its quirky pose. It shares the same type of underarm GN Handgun as the Zwei and also has a pair of large wings tat extend below the feet and so you get more of the leaning pose here. The suit feels a bit naked without a larger handheld weapon, perhaps a beam saber would have been a nice inclusion (and that could have been useful to swap around with the other figures too).
We of course have a translucent version of Drei in FCC 16 as well, and again the colour is quite similar to the standard figure. There are a fair bit of translucent figures in the later sets of Full Color Custom and at least they have some playability around them but overall I think it is a lot of time and effort pretty much wasted.
The Team Trinity family on display. While the detail level is perhaps a bit underwhelming I am really happy to see these rarely encountered suits available in the SD figure line-up.
154 : MSJ-06II-C Tieren High Mobility Type
The Tieren mass-production suit is the main rank and file-unit that fills up the formations of the Human Reform League. It replaces the older Fanton/Anf-series and exists in a multitude of configurations. The High Mobility Type seen here sports a set of folding wings that attach to the waist (reminiscent of designs like the Leo equipped with a Flight Unit) packing a dozen jet engines. It is armed with the same Smoothbore Gun used by the regular Tieren Ground Type unit.
The Full Color Custom series treats us to no less than five variants of the Tieren-family. Seen here are the green Ground Type found in FCC volume 14 (released in November 2007 together with a blue Space Type), the High Mobility Type from this volume and Sergei Smirnov's Space Commander Type Tieren from FCC volume 19 (July 2008). Not included are the custom pink Tieren Taozi piloted by Soma Peries (released in FCC volume 17 in April 2008) and the blue Space Commander Type from volume 14. I should really get around to updating this image with the missing suits.
155 : CBS-70 Ptolemaios
The Ptolemaios is one of only a handful of spaceships to be featured in the SD Full Color figure family. The real thing is an elongated and delicate looking ship with huge fins that has been compacted into this stubby thing you see here. Its distinctive blue and white colour scheme has been reproduced somewhat faithfully which helps bringing out the figure's character a bit at least. By the way, notice how in the booklet its designation has been messed up a bit as SBC 70.
This size comparison with the Gundam Exia will give you an idea of the size of the Ptolemaios. I really wish the SD Gundam spaceships would come wit action bases similar to some of the flying mobile suit figures but there is no such luck here and you will have to improvise something to give the figure a bit of grace.
156 : UMF-5 ZnO
Halfway through the set we bid the Anno Domini-timeline farewell and dip our feet into the Cosmic Era and two mass-production type suits from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. First out is the amphibious ZnO which is kind of an alternate take on the Z'Gok in a very bright green colour. The paintwork on this figure is really basic and unimpressive. The main draw of the figure is that the arms rotate and you can play around a bit with creating aggressive stances.
The ZnO has already been released in the older SD Gundam Full Color series as part of Stage 43 (August 2003) and this side-by-side comparison really tells you everything that is wrong with the new figure. Look at the old figure's accurate colour scheme, graceful limbs and menacing expression. The new figure is a really disappointing downgrade.
157 : AMF-101 DINN (Rau Le Creuset Custom)
The DINN is a mass-production suit intended for atmospheric flight. It has huge bird light wings that it can spread and an aerodynamically shaped cover for its head that folds into place when in flight mode. We see Rau Le Creuset pilot this light grey machine during the strike on the JOSH-A facility and it is for all intents and purposes simply a recoloured variant of the commonly seen violet colour. It comes armed with two MMI-M7S 76mm Heavy Assault Machine Guns that are truly precious, I have seen more than a few DINN figures missing their guns or the flight pack on the second-hand market and my heart always sinks a little bit when it happens.
The flight mode of the DINN can be recreated by removing the head and put the backpack on top of the torso in its place. It does a decent job of transforming the figure and greatly extends to its playability factor.
The DINN family is well-represented in SD Gundam form. From left to right we see the original version of the standard DINN released in the old SD Gundam Full Color line (Stage 62, from January 2006), the updated version from Full Color Custom 11 (July 2007), Rau's custom DINN and an AWACS DINN also from FCC 11. Lastly we see the AMA-953 BABI which is the DINN's main replacement in SEED Destiny, also released in FCC 11. That set is a real goldmine for DINN-lovers but unfortunately quite hard to find these days.
158 : RX-78-1 Prototype Gundam
For the last stretch we have three models from the Universal Century-era and they are all MSV designs. We start with this Prototype Gundam which - apart from its telltale colour - doesn't really stand out that much from the classic RX-78-2 figures. You can usually also recognize it from the distinctive looking XBR-M79-04G Beam Rifle that it carries. The paintwork is a little bit rough but at least they made the effort unlike with the ZnO above.
Here the Prototype Gundam poses with a randomly selected RX-78-2 and RX-78-3 Gundam G-3. To my knowledge, there are no other versions of the RX-78-1 seen in the SD Gundam family which is a bit surprising, there may be some limited version out there that I am not familiar with but otherwise, this is it.
159 : YMS-09 Prototype Dom
Another prototype is coming up, and this time it is the land-skimming Dom in a sexy black livery with a nicely printed Zeonic stripes on the lower torso. The original artwork has the suit painted up in two different colours, a dark grey/blue tone for the armour components and a lighter grey colour on the exposed unprotected parts of the arms and legs. It is hard to replicate such a colour scheme on a super-deformed figure but there are a couple of sections where light grey paint applications would have spiced it up a bit. The figure comes with a massively sized backpack with a storage rack for the classic 360mm Giant Bazooka. The proportions look a bit silly in my opinion but it looks much better when the bazooka is held in hand.
Again, I just selected two different MS-09 Dom family members at random for this comparison, the leftmost being the original MS-09 and the middle figure a rare MS-09K-2 Dom Cannon Type (from FCC volume 15 released in January 2008). It would have made sense to also include the YMS-09D Tropical Test Type Dom from FCC 17 here, hopefully I'll get around to revising this part of the review eventually.
160 : MSR-00100S Hyaku Shiki Kai Mass Production Type
The last slot is also dedicated to another rare design (although this has been rectified lately through both Converge and Mobile Suit Ensemble), the proposed mass-production type of the Hyaku Shiki. The suit is armed to the teeth with a hand-held Beam Rifle as well as what I think is a Pulse Laser attached to the left shoulder and either a Beam Gatling or a six-tube multi-purpose launcher on the right shoulder. The mass-production type concept normally only has a single 6-tube launcher on the right shoulder, I guess the idea here is that you can configure the suit to display as either the MSR-00100 Hyaku Shiki Kai or its MSR-00100S mass-production variant.
Man, the SD Gundam figures just kept getting smaller and smaller as the series progressed. Here we see the MSR-00100S with two of the older base Hyaku Shiki variants which are considerably taller.
Conclusion
While I think that the figures in the original Full Color series are generally more attractive (and better painted for the most part) there is no denying that the Full Color Custom series expanded the range of available mobile suits considerably. FCC volume 11 is an excellent example of this, with eight never before seen unit types to add to your collection. The Full Color Custom figures are unfortunately not as common as the first generation Full Color series and so you will need a fair bit of luck to dig them up.
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