Vinyl Chloride Spirits Full Color SD Gundam The Pop3

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!

Vinyl Chloride Spirits Full Color SD Gundam Vol. 2

After a minor interruption we continue investigating the second volume of this self-released guidebook series documenting Bandai's tiny Gashapon SD Gundam figurines (and as we shall see, some not so minor entries as well...). Rather than repeating myself needlessly again I refer to the post covering the first volume in this series for the background lore and history of these publications. In short, these books were self-published by a fan and released through the 102th Comic Market exhibition in Tokyo in August 2023.


The first book covers the original SD Full Color figure series and clocks in at 156 pages. This second volume focuses on various spin-off series and figures released overseas and is about half the size with a total of 74 numbered pages. I was very surprised to find that the important SD Full Color Custom successor series is completely omitted here, as are many of the other later series published by Bandai such a Bind, Data SD or Impact. The author didn't address this in the forewords (not as far as I could tell anyway) but does mention how the project kept growing so I assume it is possible he had to scale back the ambitions for the book series and perhaps will return to cover them in the future. So at current, we still don't have a through bible covering all figures in the Full Color and the Full Color Custom series.


The book is sub-divided into a couple of chapters that loosely group different figure sets together. Chapter one here features the SD Full Color Extra series which are together with the larger SD Full Color DX series technically part of the SD Full Color series I suppose. We also have a couple of limited promotion releases at the end.


Each chapter starts of with a little summary - here mostly talking about the history of the series - tables showing the names of each figure in each set as well as tiny pictures of the Gashapon vending machine cardboard mounts that are a bit tiny to try and read and mostly included here for reference.


Each figure set will be covered in detail as seen above, typically with two photos of each figure from front and back, usually shot at a bit of an angle. The SD Extra figures that we see here were actually released during the life of the original SD Full Color series and were interjected between the regularly numbered sets. All figures represent characters or monsters from the Sengokuden, Gundam Force or similar spin-off Gundam fantasy-universe that I know practically nothing about.


Some figures have more elaborate gimmicks about them and at the books will usually throw in a couple of extra images to show how a figure may feature an additional display mode or in cases where two figures connect together can form something different.


The SD Full Color DX series consists of two volumes of slightly bigger figures, most of the mobile armours of some sort and each also comes with a little pilot figure which is really neat. It would have been really cool if these tiny pilot figures had been a thing of their own as they would have been really fun to collect.


Many of the DX figures feature gimmicks such as Sayla Mass' G-Armor which can combine with the RX-78 figure to combine the usual forms of G-this or G-that. I had no idea that the Elmeth figure has a little "cockpit" for Lalah Sune to climb into but it doesn't look like she will fit inside when it is fully closed up. I haven't tried it out on my own figure as I have no idea where it is located at the moment. :)


Here we see another couple of gimmicks for the Devil Gundam and Ramba Ral's Gallop-class Land Battleship which is now sporting the turret of the Magella Attack Tank figure (which is a regular SD Gundam Full Color figure).


The chapter closes off with some promo figures like the G-3 Gundam here which was released through the Comic BomBom magazine. The figures in this section are displayed together with images of the basic figures they have been derived from; the basic RX-78-2 Gundam in case of the G-3 and non-pearl colour versions of the Knight Gundam RX-78 on the opposite side.


Bandai also cooperated with Comic BomBom to produce six larger boxsets featuring translucent-colour figures with boxes that could be cut up to function as mini-dioramas. Here we see the three main figures from the White Base crew, there is also a troika of figures from the Cosmic Era timeline including the Freedom, Impulse and Destiny Gundams.


Here is a novel item I had never seen or heard of before; a Perfect Gundam released as a little box-set of its own. I am not entirely sure if this is the same figure that comes with the SD Gundam Full Color Official Collection Book published by Kodansha.


Next up we have a couple of the large space battleship playsets that are intended to swallow up the mini-figures inside their hangars and that typically also contain bridge sections that can be opened up and even feature miniature character figurines of the crew. These figures are of the same type as the ones released together with the DX figures. The playsets regularly show up on secondary market sites like Mandarake but are very expensive now and sell out very quickly.


Here are another two playsets of the Minerva in two different colour styles. We also have images of the product retail boxes on the side there. Personally I have not been trying to get these figures as they are so large (and not entirely in the spirit of SD Gundam I feel) even though it bugs me that it is the only way to get hold of the tiny crew miniatures. :)


The cylinder-shaped O'Neill-type Space Colony is another odd promotional release for the 30th Gundam anniversary that I have never seen available for sale anywhere. The premium edition is filled up with a whopping 30 Zaku II figures (exact type or types unknown to me), it would be fun to get my hands on this item one day.


Here we have another transparent edition of Char's Musai-class vessel and a promotional box set that recycles various Gundam-figures from the SD Full Color line.


The book then shifts focus onto the Overseas market to display all the awesome figures released for the U.S. market that for some reason were never released in Japan. In part I believe this is due to television series like Mobile Report Gundam Wing being much more popular in the U.S. than back home and so there are many cool designs from that show that are impossible to find in Japan unless you want to purchase them as scale model kits. Just look at the Bird Mode form of the Wing Gundam for example; you'd think it would have been a staple in Gundam figure series yet we have not seen it in either SD Gundam Full Color, Gundam Collection 1/400, Gundam Converge or Mobile Suit Ensemble even though all series are rife with various forms of the Wing Gundam. I find this really strange.


I get really envious when I see these Aries and Maganac mass-production suits here. At least we now have the Leo in Gashapon Senshi Forte but so many of the Oz mass-production type suits have never been seen in SD form after all these years. Gundam Converge spends an awful lot of time on obscure one-off figures but never seems to address important figures such as the Leo or Virgo for some reason.


The SD Gundam Fight sets feature many of the incredibly obscure figures form the G Gundam show that would be fun to collect but these figure sets are so incredibly rare in Japan that you practically never see any of them for sale. I don't know what the market looks like in the U.S. but I can imagine you would be able to score used figures in random lots in yard sales or perhaps on online auction sites (presumably at a considerable mark-up).


We actually have a fairly nice Gashapon release of the Devil Gundam mobile armour mode released in the somewhat larger Gashapon HG line but it is dwarfed by this enormous thing.


Just look at this box-set, imagine getting it as a Christmas present when you were a kid. My eyes would have popped out of their sockets in awestruck disbelief. Yeah, good luck trying to find any of this type of releases these days.


More novel items here from the Gundam Force sets. Unfortunately I do not own any of these types of figures so they are unlikely to ever make it onto the catalogue section here on the blog.


Holy-moly, a black Gunperry! These box sets truly are something extra! The only U.S. releases that tend to show up on Mandarake are the character figure series which typically go for several thousand yen and sell out more or less immediately. I couldn't even imagine the price tag on this thing if it were to show up there but I could guess it would easily be in the 20 000-40 000 yen range somewhere.


The Americans have a couple of space battleships of their own too. Here is the Ra Cailum-class battleship that goes together with the Chr's Counterattack figures that were also produces for the Overseas market, although these are completely different from the SD Gundam Full Color sculpts and look nothing like them.


The Rewloola is also available seen here with a couple of the U.S. Char's Counterattack figures for scale. Notice how much better painted and sculpted the Overseas edition figures are, these being sold as traditional retail item sets is also completely different to the random-distribution Gashapon-thing that went on in Japan. The book finishes with a somewhat random inclusion of the one Gashapon figure set Bandai produced for Armored Trooper VOTOMS television series. In a way it makes sense though, as the figures feel very similar and you could easily imagine them being some custom force, mercenary or otherwise. This marks the conclusion of the flip-through of these two exciting publications but the author also has one last card to play and so we will return to this book-series shortly.

Vinyl Chloride Spirits Full Color SD Gundam Vol. 1

"What the hell is a vinyl chloride spirit"? I hear you grumble. Well, in this case it seems to be a messed up translation or play on words of "PVC Soul", a series of self-published books related to anime figurines, also known in Japanese as Doujinshi or Doujin for short. The author of this tome - going by the alias of Jadou - apparently has written several such books in the past and now the turn has come to the adorable SD Gundam Full Color family of figures. This self-published book is not released through a traditional publisher but you would be hard-pressed to spot a difference in quality - the most obvious telltale sign is the lack of barcodes, logotypes or other such formalized jargon. The book was released through the recurring Comic Market convention that takes place in Tokyo. More specifically it took place at the 102nd instance on August 12, 2023. At the time of writing this review the next event will be Comic Market 106 (typically shortened to Comiket 106 or simply C106) and it kicks off on August 16. The place seems to have had some incredible crowds in the past and looks like a bit of a nightmare to attend in person but if you are up for it, it should be a real spectacle. :)

Below are a couple of links for further reading:

A history of the Comiket-phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comiket
Official page of C102: https://www.comiket.co.jp/info-a/TAFO/C102TAFO/cmkfor_ticket.html
The author's own old-style website: https://jadou.sakura.ne.jp/


This book is the first in a series of three different titles and a rather heavy tome containing a total of 156 numbered pages and has a stylish wrap-around cover with a nice glossy finish. The binding is similar to other Japanese hobby books that you may have come across. It is very tightly bound and it will refuse to lie flat on a table unless it is closed.


The book is split up into three chapters each covering roughly 20 waves of figures. Here we see part of the author's foreword on the left and the chapter 1 introduction page. I skimmed through the foreword using google translate and it feels mostly like placeholder text written for the sake of having a foreword. It is mostly the author lamenting the lack of a seminal bible for such an important figure series - that once sold over 100 million units - but is now an antique. In his words, a baby that was born after the SD-series ended will now be a fully grown adult.


Next follows a chapter introduction segment that also gives a quick summary of all the figures contained within each wave. Each figure is numbered here although numbering wasn't technically introduced from the start. We use a similar system here on the blog page basically numbering the early sets from right to left based on how they are listed in the booklets. Exceptions are made for volumes 10 and 17 that are two sets completely made up of reissues.


The final part of the chapter introduction displays miniature images of the Gashapon machine cover mounts, you can't really see anything much on these images, we will return to this topic in a separate book review shortly. On the righthand page there you can see the introduction of volume 1 which starts of with a little generic text blurb and a picture of the booklet front- and back-sides. The begins the meat of the book which presents each individual figure with one photo from the front and one from the back, at a slight angle to better show off the features on the sides. The figures are not shown disassembled into components.


As you can see the pattern continues forward, volume 2 follows immediately after volume 1 and so on. Here and there little blurbs and "tips" are inserted into leftover areas on the pages discussing various gimmicks or tidbits of information surrounding the figures. Seen here on the left for example the discussion is focused on reprinting of SD figures, something that was typically never done. With the exception of the two Best-of sets mentioned earlier (Stage 10 and 17) almost every wave was printed and distributed only once, much like how figures are still released today. On a comparative note, many of the current-day Mobile Suit Ensemble sets have enjoyed a second print-run but Converge figures have been reissued (as "Revives") on very few occasions (not counting the recycling of older figures into new versions that is).


Another way to fill up gaps in the presentation is to include mini-dioramas often involving multiple figures. While the layouting is sometimes a little messy the overall presentation feels very much like a fully commercial product that you would expect to see issued by any of the larger publishers.


Here the author discusses how to spot the difference between the original RX-78-2 Gundam figure from volume 1 and its reappearance in the volume 10 Best Selection wave.


The Zeta Gundam and its Waverider form figure were designed to use each others accessories and so the book takes its time to show a couple of extra panels in situations like this.


Here the author discusses the fact that some sets actually feature different print runs of the mini-booklets with minor differences and the sweet hell of deciding whether to attempt to collect them as well. Personally I was not aware of this before reading the book and feel content enough not to consider it further... :)


Another neat little stand-off between Londo Bell and Char's new forces from the rejuvenated Neo Zeon faction. That Alpha Azieru figure is really wimpy looking, too bad it didn't make it into the larger DX series.


Chapter 2 covers the middle of the SD Full Color life-span. The figures from this era tend to be the most readily available on the secondary market in my own not so scientific observations. I would be really interested to learn about the size of each production-run, I have a sneaking suspicion that the figures from the lates 20s and early 30s very produced in larger numbers than the others due to how often I encounter them but I have nothing to back that statement up.


Here the author is discussing the popularity of certain mobile suits and ranks them based on how many times they have been issued in the SD Full Color series. Unsurprisingly, the RX-78 sits in a class of itself. Practically every early set would contain a new form of this iconic suit and it remained a constant even in the later era of the series.


Mobile Fighter G Gundam mini-diorama time. The Death Army Gundam Heads are cool modular figures that can actually be extended into even longer necks but for that to happen you first need to get hold of more than one figure and good luck with that!


The Adzam mobile armour with its Adzam Leader drone is actually compatible with Gashapon capsules to imprison the RX-78. Unfortunately in all my time collecting these figures I have never come across a single SD Full Color capsule but I am sure there are some of them out there somewhere.


The late era SD Full Color series was dominated by the advent of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and the Cosmic Era figures become very numerous in the series later years. Unfortunately that same era has been really dead on the collecting front for the past 20 years now.


The third and last chapter covers the last third of the Full Color saga up to its final sixty-third stage, an impressive feat indeed. I always thought it was strange that Bandai didn't at least keep the series going to a round or at least even number like Stage 64.


Here we see some of the various features of the Zaku Tank from Stage 51. Its rear platform is even compatible with the tiny mini-figures from the DX era (or the larger spaceship playsets).


While the SD Full Color series was concluded with Stage 63 there is also an official SP set that came out at the end to promote the Bonds of the Battlefield arcade game. I have never come across any of these figures or its booklet but as you can see they are a collection of older figures brought back to life with some slight paint modifications.


The last page of the book collects the 17 miniature Mechanic File-sheets that accompany some select figures in the sunset stage of the SD Full Color era. I'll close off this mini-review by stating that this is the best SD Gundam Full Color file I have come across out there and it is a lovely piece of nostalgia for the right-minded person. I see this volume coning and going in the Mandarake shop from time to time, expect to pay maybe 1500-2000 yen or so to get your hands on a copy.