Gashapon HG EX Mobile Armor Selection (Clear Color Version)

The Mobile Armor Selection series accompanies the HG Gashapon figure series and only really saw two sets released in 1999 and 2000 respectively. The first set also got this variant release in clear plastic as a special gimmick. The figures in this set correspond exactly to the Mobile Armor Selection Part 1 but have been re-moulded in single colour translucent plastic. As such I think they offer limited value to collectors unless you happen to be big on translucent figures in particular and their general rarity is also reflected in their price on the secondary market these days. I picked this set up just to review it and it cost ¥2500 which is a little bit higher than the standard colour versions but hardly anything that will break your bank.


The blind box design is also carried over from the Mobile Armor Part 1 but with an alternate colour scheme. Notice the promotional blurb for the fourth set of the old Gundam War collectible card game on the backside there. If you are interested, you can read more about the regular colour figures from Part 1 in the old review here: LINK


Each figure comes in a couple of plastic bags and requires a little bit of assembly. The plastic material is similar to the soft PVC used for the regular colour figures and as such you can expect a little bit of bending here and there, especially on thinner components. Each figure also comes with accompanying mobile suits or vehicles in corresponding scale. While the Gashapon HG figure series is not a strict to-scale series most figures are somewhere around an approximate 1:280 size meaning they are larger than the Gsight figures for example yet smaller than the more common 1:220 scale used in figures such as Assault Kingdom and Universal Unit. The mobile armours depicted here are much larger and so are massively shrunk down and not to scale with each other either.



MAN-08 Elmeth (translucent green ver.)


I'm not going to discuss these figures at length, there generally isn't a whole lot to say about them. I've propped up all the figures you see in these images atop of various bases primarily from the Assault Kingdom figure line - the Mobile Armor Selection figures do not come with any bases at all. The awesome size of the Elmeth is indicated by the inclusion of a really tiny little Gelgoog figure (would be nice if it was moulded in red plastic) and it also comes bundled with one of its own remote bit-type Psycommu weapons. The Elmeth carries twelve of these and while that may have been a bit much I think Bandai should have included at least 3-4 of them for added playability and not just one.






MA-08 Big Zam (translucent green ver.)


The Byg Zam figure is the only one in this set that will put up some resistance while you try to figure out exactly how the legs and feet should attach to give it a stable pose. In part that is the fault of the original Byg Zam design which is rather top-heavy and not ideal for a plastic figure. The figure is complemented by a little green Core Booster spacecraft.






MA-05 Bigro (translucent green ver.)


The last green figure in the set is that wonderful Bigro mobile armour that marries a rather menacing looking body with a dumb set of grappling claws which I am sure are of immense use in long-range space combat. This mobile armour is one of the smaller on display here and its companion green RX-78-2 Gundam figure is quite similar in size to a Gundam Collection 1:400 scale figure which made the regular colour figure an interesting addition to that crew.






MA-04X Zakrello (translucent yellow ver.)


We are switching things up with some bright yellow making this the most tasty looking gummy candy wanna-be of the lot. The two bladed arms are as you can see a bit warped but other than that the sculpts are of really good quality with quite a lot of detail - that is not necessarily showing up that well in these photographs. The Zakrello is joined by the Gundam G-Sky variant which is also nearing the 1:400 scale.






MAM-07 Grublo (translucent red ver.)


Our last figure here is also my favourite; the clawed underwater menace known as the Grublo. One of the cool aspects of the Grublo's look is that its two arms look an awful lot like ship propellers when stowed underneath the hull, however actual propulsion comes from hydrojet thrusters located in the main body. The arms are held in place wit two sturdy pegs when not in use but can swing forward roughly 180 degrees but not move sideways. Another unlucky RX-78-2 Gundam figure in roughly 1:400 scale is included this time red and armed with a beam saber. Again, this Grublo figure is definitely a contender for use together with the Gundam Collection figurines.






Conclusion

As you can see this set is a pure novelty item and really gimmicky in nature. There is really no reason to seek these figures out if you are looking to expand your collection of Gundam-themed figures. The regular-coloured figures on the other hand are in my opinion a much better purchase, especially if you are looking to add some additional mobile armor options to a 1:400 figure collection.

Gashapon HG EX Mobile Armor Selection 2

This is Mobile Armor Week, Day 4. We will continue down the Gashapon route and look at the second of the two Mobile Armor Selection sets that this Gashapon HG MS sideline produced. MA Selection 2 was released in the year 2000 and the set contains five different figures, distributed through random boxes selling at 300 yen each.

Where Mobile Armor Selection volume one was a really homogenous lot volume two is all over the place. We have the G-Armor from Mobile Suit Gundam, the G-Defenser from Zeta and three monsters from Stardust Memory.

The Mobile Armor Selection figures are not to scale and volume two varies wildly from figure to figure, even more so than the figures in the first set did. This set also ties in more closely to the Gashapon HG Mobile Suit Selection line that it expands, even allowing some of the figures to combine with mobile suits from the MS line.
   

G-Armor

The box cover features the colourful and highly modular G-Armor hybrid design which has a whole family of useless vehicles that can be constructed out of it, just for the hell of it I guess. I wonder if anyone really cares that much about the G-System but Bandai sure seems to love dragging it out for most of their toy lines.

The G-Armor is the largest contraption to come out of the G-System and the figure appears to be size equivalent with the mobile suits of Gashapon HG MS which would put it somewhere in the 1:280 range. I don't really understand what the deal is with the tracks under its belly that don't connect with the ground because of the large wings on the booster section. It is possible that I assembled something incorrectly or that the designers didn't really think that you should keep the tracks on while flying around in space.

When I look at the components in this box I immediately think that the rear booster section should be able to attach to some Gundam figure's torso (to create the G-Parts type B / Gundam Sky) from the mobile suit figure line but there are no such instructions on the box that I can see, so perhaps there is no such option.

The G-Armor figure comes with a clear Core Fighter miniature to illustrate its scale. This gimmick was done throughout volume one but here Bandai actually took it a step further and decided to make it combinable with the G-Armor itself.

Yep, to no one's surprise you can pick the G-Armor apart and create both the G-Bull and the G-Sky options by making use of the clear Core Fighter as a nose section for the fighter.

The G-Bull looks alright, at least as far as G-Bulls do. At least I can't fault Bandai for the original design which looks like something made up out of leftover Lego bricks...

The G-Sky on the other hand looks awful. It was bad enough when Bandai designed the clear figures to go as scale comparisons for the figures in volume one but now that they want you to combine them with the actual coloured parts it just looks horrible. Would it have killed you to include a properly painted up Core Fighter in the box instead of this travesty?

Now that I think about it I wonder if it is possible to construct a G-Fighter from the parts in this box. The box art only illustrates the G-Armor coming apart to form the G-Bull and the G-Sky. I will have to look into this again but since it is not on the box my guess is the G-Fighter is a no go.
   

FXA-05D G-Defenser

Next up we have the G-Defenser from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam piloted by everyone's favourite character Katz Kobayashi. The Defenser is definitely to scale with the mobile suits in the HG MS line and is actually designed to integrate directly with the RX-178 Mk-II from HGMS volume 15.

The figure itself looks quite good but I it feels kinda flat. I would have appreciated some sort of build instructions as it wasn't immediately clear to me what part goes where and the tiny artwork on the side of the box isn't much of an indicator. The figure would of course also have benefitted from some sort of action base.

As you can see we have a pair of arms for the Gundam Mk-II included in the box. These are of course designed to work strictly with the Mk-II from the Gashapon set I just mentioned, which was released some time in mid-2000 as well.

There are several incarnations of the RX-178 present in the Gashapon HG MS line but only this figure will be suitable for transformation into the FXA-05D+RX-178 Super Gundam.

Converting the Mk-II into the Super Gundam was much easier than I expected. There are actually conversion instructions printed for this on the inside of the box although I didn't need to refer to them. Several components here make use of different size pegs or reverse designs where the peg and peg-hole switch places on the other side of the figure.

I have to say this Super Gundam is looking pretty great. I would definitely consider picking up a spare of each figure so that I can place all different combinations side by side.
   

RX-78GP03 Gundam GP03 "Dendrobium"

The Dendrobium mobile armor feels very different from the previous two figures that both had a chunky and cartoony feel about them. The Dendrobium seems to be a much more serious attempt at creating a super detailed figure and looks very busy and complicated.

I have to say, I'm not entirely sold on this figure. While the detail is quite good the whole body feels flimsy and it feels like the figure will fall apart just by me looking at it. It doesn't help that the whole thing is a dull white colour save for a few details painted in gray.

Notice the tiny Gundam GP03S Dendrobium Stamen figure that goes in the center of the mobile armor. At least this time they had enough common sense to actually paint it up in white (it even has some additional detail) rather than plonking a transparent figure into the mobile armor. One wonders why the Core Fighter for the G-Armor couldn't be managed in the same way.

See what difference a nice stand will do. The Dendrobium no longer looks like a crash landed pile of junk but like the bird of prey that it is. Notice also the optional fuselage parts where the two claws have been retracted.
   

MA-06 Val Walo

The second mobile armor from Stardust Memory is the bizarre Val-Walo, fielded by the Principality of Zeon of course. This is the only figure in this set which feels like a spiritual successor to the mobile armors in volume one. The best thing about these oddly shaped machines is that you have no idea what to expect from it. It has a menacing and alien feel about it which I love.

Just like the Dendrobium however, the colour applications on the Val Walo leave a lot to be desired. A little bit of detail here and there would have been appreciated.

The Val Walo comes with a tiny RX-78GP01 Zephyranthes figure in clear plastic. Notice also that most of its coloured detail is on the underside of the body.

The figure has a gimmick which allows the Val Walo to deploy its two large claws by rotating them 180 degrees to the front, similar to the Grublo figure from volume one.
   

AMA-X2 Neue Ziel (AMX-002)

The last figure in the set is the Neue Ziel. This figure comes off as much more detailed than the Val Walo and features some different coloured components. This makes it the best painted figure of the three Stardust Memory machines in my opinion.

I also love how the figure comes with a proper stand that props it up from the ground but then again with such a weird body shape the designers kind of had to do something for it to be displayed properly. Still, I don't see why a similar set of bases and pegs was not developed also for the Val Walo and the Dendrobium figures. Mobile Armor Selection 2 is all over the place in this regard.

The Neue Ziel comes with what appears to be a MS-09R-2 Rick Dom II figure in clear plastic to illustrate its size. I have to wonder why Bandai decided to make an action base in white rather than black, which is the commonly used colour for other Gashapon figures that use this type of stand. It is a space only mobile armor after all.

Judging from the tiny Rick Dom and the Zephyranhtes figures it seems like the Neue Ziel figure is in a slightly larger scale than the Dendrobium. When looking at the two mobile armors next to each other however, I feel that the Dendrobium is the one that is too large.

Here you can see the Neue Ziel figure together with its counterpart from Converge and a Zaku II from the 1:400 Gundam Collection range. Although this Gashapon Neue Ziel is way smaller than the actual 1:400 figure that is out there I still think it is a decent figure to use together with the 1:400 figures.
   

Conclusion

Overall Gashapon HG EX Mobile Armor Selection 2 is a bit of a mixed bag, quite literally. While all the figures are engineered very well they lack something that binds them together. It doesn't make sense to display them next to each other for example, but the G-Armor and the G-Defenser would look great next to mobile suits from the 1:280 range. Even the three Stardust Memory figures could have been presented in a more standardised way to make them more similar to each other; i.e. in flying poses on action bases. Still, I like all the figures in this set (except maybe for the Dendrobium) and I would wager that most who enjoy the cheaper Gashapon Gundam figure ranges would too.