Kodansha Comic BomBom SD Gundam Full Color Promo (2001)

Here we have another Comic BomBom magazine promo intended for its readers, the RX-78 as a "pearl metallic" colour version. I am not sure exactly how it was distributred, perhaps through a coupon in the magazine; the text in the accompanying booklet is machine translated as "present for all readers". We have the release year of 2001 on the booklet which sits well in line with when the figure this variant is based on was released. You rarely see these promos on the secondary market but they aren't particularly valuable, and so were likely produced in large quantities. I picked mine up a couple of years ago for 800 yen.


Even though this is a Gashapon figure at heart, I don't think any capsule was involved in the packaging but I could be wrong.


The figure comes with a single-colour 4-page booklet containing the usual disclaimers, safety notifications and helpfully provides an guide image explaining what the completed item is supposed to look like. You can never be too clear it seems.


The figure is a moderately sized SD figure in a fairly static pose. The original sculpt is intended to be compatible with the G-Fighter from SD Full Color Stage 25 which explains its slightly smaller size compared to some of the earlier RX-78s. The pearl colour effect comes through nicely even though I tend to think of pearl and clear colour figures as rather gimmicky. The colouring on the white sections have some dirty looking gold smudges, presumably from the painting process as the item is fresh out of the packaging.


This figure is a repaint of the version 8.0 Gundam which appeared in the 25th Full Color set in May of the same year. Whenever I see repaints of the SD Gundams I think it would be fun to grab a set of them and have them repainted into variants like the G3 or C.A. but such projects keep sitting on the backburner. All in all this is a decent figure but hardly essential, something for the completists to chase I guess...

Kodansha Comic BomBom SD Gundam Full Color Stage 0 - G-3 Gundam

The summer season is proving a bit hectic over here and so I'll be pushing through some smaller reviews in the coming weeks starting with this peculiarly numbered promo figure. This is a team-up by Bandai and the publisher Kodansha responsible for the Comic BomBom magazine, which lived between 1981 and 2007. Number zero might lead you to believe that this figure was intended as a teaser for the upcoming Full Color Gashapon series but these had been out since late 1997 already and this booklet clearly says 1999.


The note is a corporate-style excuse for the shipping of the figure being delayed. We can at least learn that intended delivery was to take place in the end of October (per the September issue of the magazine) but that it got delayed due to a high number of applications, implying you had to sign up to receive it. I don't know when this item was actually delivered but probably around the end of 1999.


While the figure does indeed have a booklet it is single colour only and doesn't contain much in the way of information. The cartoon character advices us that the figure is a special release for the magazine's readers only and the text below the picture advices us to pay attention on how to assemble it. Yeah, I think most people will be quite able to figure this one out.


That is a rather pale looking G3 don't you think? I don't know what it is with the G-3 Gundam but Bandai never seems to be able to decide on which colour to use for it. Some of the early Converge figures also had a very light gray applied while the most recent figure seemed to hit perfection with its medium gray. This is one of the earliest sculpts of the Gashapon SD RX-78 and is of decent size and posture I quite like it.


This particular G-3 is a colour variation of the original RX-78-2 from the first wave of SD Full Color figures, released in October 1997.


Lifting in an old picture of different G-3s, from left to right: Stage 20 (October 2000), the Stage 0 Comic BomBom promo, Stage 63 (February 2006) and a more articulated version from the Full Color Custom series (Volume 14, November 2007). There aren't a whole lot of G3s in the SD figure line, and as you can see many are really brightly painted bordering on white. Does the G3 have some alternate artwork in lighter colours that I should be aware of?