Today we are going to document another Gundam-themed keyring figure set from Banpresto and it is a fairly ancient one dating back to 1999. While keyring figures are quite difficult to find I would classify this particular set as one of the easier ones to collect. Still, it took me eight years to find all the figures on the secondary market. While the prices of second-hand figures appear to have risen quite sharply in later years these should still be found at reasonable prices. I paid between ¥300 and ¥600 for individual figures with most of them sitting at ¥400 regardless of the purchasing year.
The product information card is made of very sturdy paper with some type of lamination going on. It folds out to double its size to reveal some additional product information most notably the release year and item number. The shorthand five-digit Banpresto code for this set is 75655 and it would be a handy identifier if you could actually read it without removing the figure from the paper which somehow I suspect most shop keepers wouldn't want you to do... :)
Banpresto keyring figures normally come in this partially plastic wrapping with the paper and metal ring fully exposed. As such, you tend to see some really beat up examples in shops sometimes, that have been hanging around for decades at this point. Out of the figures I bought only a few had the plastic wrapping still on but all of them were still tied down to the paper with those annoying plastic straps. After completing a set I will permanently destroy the figures by removing them from their keyrings. Each figure will have a screw driven through its head that will leave an ugly hole that you'd want to fill in and paint over, you can see it most clearly in the review of the Titans Mk-II a bit further down in the review.
RX-78-2 Gundam
Well, you know there can't be a Gundam development history thing without the obvious starting point. We are looking at a really bog-standard RX-78 here with a couple of quirks due to its keyring status. The curiously bulky style reminds me of Banpresto Pokemon keyring-figures from the same era, everything is just generally stumpy and thick. I suspect this is not only an aesthetic decision but also related to expected durability and maybe also ease of manufacturing. Even though the sculpt is a bit mediocre the paintwork is ambitious. We have lots of little detail even on the back of the shield. We also have the classic keyring figure annoyance of the shield jutting out below the feet sending the figure into a leaning pose unable to stand upright properly. You could address this by placing the figure on a small base like a clear plastic circle for instance.
RX-78NT-1 Gundam NT-1 Alex
Next up we have my least favourite figure of this lot. The Alex is a colourful design in blue and white but here it is nearly all-white and the colour choices are a bit off too. The most awkward thing is of course the pose with the wrist-mounted Gatling gun and the upside down left arm just looks awkward. I would have preferred a traditional beam rifle + shield configuration but I guess the manufacturer was in no mood of including the shield since it has a fairly complex (read: expensive) colour scheme.
RX-78-3 G-3 Gundam
While this set consists of seven figures there are actually only five different sculpts. The G-3 here is a repurposing of the Gundam figure with a grey makeover. There are a couple of wildly different illustrations out there and so pre-painted G-3 figures often show up in very different colours. This keyring figure has the palette that I personally prefer but I'm not too sure about the head-mounted camera colours, should they really be blue? Illustrations seem to differ here as well and I cannot really fault the manufacturer for keeping the colour count down in this instance. Can I also just say, I am really impressed that they took the effort to actually paint in all the black vents on the sides of the head, that is something most modern figures will skip entirely.
RX-79[G]Ez-8 Gundam Ez8
The 08th MS Team is a highly regarded television series and it features several iconic designs. While the Gouf Custom and the Ground Type Gundam are fairly regularly seen I think that the Ez8 is not nearly as popular as it should be (and don't get me started on the awesome Ground Type GM with its missile launcher). I am always happy to see its red eyes stare back at me and this figure even has unit designations on the chest and shield. The pose is a bit awkward however and my figure came with the right arm partially torn off. Upon inspection I found that the underarm is a separate component that goes into a peg-hole at the elbow, but the shape of the peg and hole did not match so I had to take it apart, cut off the peg and glue it back into place. That's a first for me when it comes to keyring figures.
RX-78GP01-Fb Gundam GP01 "Zephyrantes" Full Burnern
The GP01-figure is easily the best painted figure out of this gang. Look t all those red and black thrusters and vents with detail on them. Having said that the figure sculpt is rather funky, there is something very weird about its hourglass shape with very narrow hips, presumably so that the fins on its sides also fit. The shield has also been lovingly painted with two separate blue areas, if they had done something similar for the Alex figure I would have been very pleased with it.
RX-178 Gundam Mk-II (Titans)
"The Black Gundam" from Zeta is more like a deep blue here with eye-catching patches of yellow and red, I always tend to like figures painted with a different base colour than white. Our figure here also has a nicely painted beam rifle with a bright blue underside and dark topside with a lovely green rangefinder on top, I love it! This figure however, does not have the vents on its head painted, nor does it feature the signature Vulcan gun pods but looking at the sculpt they would have been difficult to fit in regardless. This is a great looking figure and one of my favourites from the set.
RX-178 Gundam Mk-II (A.E.U.G.)
The last figure is of course the rebel fleet-conversion of the Mk-II in its less interesting white and black colour scheme. Notice how the vents were deemed fit to paint on this version of the figure but dropped from the Titans version to save a bit on cost. It is a little bit disappointing that the two RX-78s and Mark IIs are completely similar, it would have been neat to see the alternate paint versions also picking up a bazooka or a beam saber but I understand why they don't. These are all seven figures in this keyring set and to my knowledge there is no spiritual successor to it. Gundam development history is nothing uncommon for keyring figures but there is no exact follow-up to this particular set that I am aware of.
Before we go, let's also take a quick look at the size of these figures. As you can see they slot in somewhere in between the classic SD Gundam Full Color figures and their larger successors in the Gashapon Warrior NEXT/DASH/Senshi Forte families. This makes them poorly suited as collection gap fill-ins and they should be treated as a novelty thing on the side of a larger SD-figure collection. While I would hesitate to put this in the keyring hall of fame it is a competent release and a curio thing from an era when figures were much simpler things.
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