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The Mike Toole Show - This Year's Model




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thenix



Joined: 18 Apr 2012
Posts: 265
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 2:23 pm Reply with quote
I looooved these kits as a kid. I'd make the 1:144 kits and think they were amazing. Eventually I stopped being able to find them at Walmart or anywhere. Eventually I grew up and could afford kits and could find them at a hobby store. I built the newer Perfect Grade kits and I can't go back to the little ones anymore
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R. Kasahara



Joined: 19 Feb 2013
Posts: 643
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 3:01 pm Reply with quote
This history of plamo is pretty interesting! I do remember seeing Gundam Wing kits at Toys R Us; it was weird, but cool, and I even bought a Deathscythe kit at the time (though I ended up selling it unassembled). One little correction, though: it's Beargguy, not Bearguy Anime catgrin + sweatdrop

I got into Gunpla for real a few years ago (long after the Deathscythe was sold) and have assembled a few kits-- and built up a big backlog-- since. Said backlog not only includes HD and SD Gundam kits, but also Kotobukiya kits (mostly of the HoiHoi-san variety), some Desktop Army kits by MegaHouse, a Mechatro WeGo set by Hasegawa, and Fujimi's Hatsune Miku Ptimo kit. I'll get around to them all someday...
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 3:55 pm Reply with quote
thenix wrote:
I looooved these kits as a kid. I'd make the 1:144 kits and think they were amazing. Eventually I stopped being able to find them at Walmart or anywhere. Eventually I grew up and could afford kits and could find them at a hobby store. I built the newer Perfect Grade kits and I can't go back to the little ones anymore


Real grade kit are about on par with perfect grade as far as engineering goes so you might want to give them a shoot. Master grade ver ka and 2.0 (and the 78 3.0) are also very well done.
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kawaiibunny3



Joined: 10 Aug 2008
Posts: 534
Location: Houston, Texas
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 4:11 pm Reply with quote
This is really interesting to read!
I bought one of the early U.S. gunpla when G Gundam was airing, it was fun to make but I never really could get into the show itself so the hobby didn't stick long with me then

What really made me interested in Gunpla was when I got into Keroro Gunso, and the "Keropla" line Bandai made for the series. They made so many weird spin offs that they even started devoting AUs to them (anyone remember Musha Kero & the goofy pirate line??). I fell for Sunrise/Bandai's master plan for using Keroro to get me interested in Gundam, and I wanted to crossover into the actual Gunpla but still never got there. Maybe one day though.
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doctorx0079



Joined: 26 Jun 2010
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:15 pm Reply with quote
These days the easiest way to get Gundam kits is to order them direclty from Bandai Hobby on Amazon. If you want to see them in front of you first though, there are Hobbytown USA stores that have a bunch.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:23 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Young fans in Japan seemed to love everything about Thunderbirds—the dashing and debonair heroes, the cool matching outfits, and especially the vehicles. Incremental gains in the manufacturing process also made these kits more attractive to burgeoning model builders—some of these kits snapped together more reliably, detail improved by leaps and bounds, and some manufacturers were including sheets of decals to heighten the realism even further.

The domestic market for such a franchise was rather austere by comparison. A young Tunderbirds fan who wished to make a Tracy Island diorama was most likely to rely on papier-mâché landscaping and some televised instructions.
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Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1168
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 6:04 pm Reply with quote
My favorites are still the SD Gundam G Generation kits, which places like Suncoast and attempted anime specialty stores at the time had tons of for some reason, I guess because they had cool 3DCG cover art and were cheap. This was a bit before Gundam Wing aired, even.

Those are fun because they had something from everything, down to really obscure stuff (this is how quite a few people back then found out Crossbone Gundam was a thing). Amazingly, a lot of those kits still hold up and look really good with minimal effort.

The current Cross Silhouette SD line looks pretty good, although I haven't picked up any of those yet. It's neat it now features Mazingers for some reason!
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Nyghtwynd



Joined: 24 Jan 2012
Posts: 61
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:26 pm Reply with quote
Literally juts got a WIng Gundam Fenice kit in the mail today. I need to find his bike before I start building him.
Oh and find space for a half dozen or so unbuilt kits too...
That trip to Japan in August increased my backlog a lot lol
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9798
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:05 pm Reply with quote
Several years ago, I found a Five Star Stories Knight of Gold model kit at a local store. I picked it up since it was on clearance at the time. The owner of the store said he stocked the kit because his customers were bugging him to get more Gundam models than he could obtain. He figured "it is just as good and they probably won't know the difference". He couldn't understand why it wouldn't sell very well. This didn't bother me because I liked Five Star Stories (this was back when the FSS manga was still coming out) and had no interest in Gundam.

This was the same comic book/gaming/whatever store where I had gotten my first anime on VHS. They had given up on stocking anime about the time of the transition from VHS to DVD. They have since gone out of business for some reason. Wink
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:38 pm Reply with quote
This article is worth it for the Tora-san plastic model alone. (Can you believe that after 20 decades, they're doing a 50th anniversary 50th Tora-san movie, with Kiyoshi Atsumi playing the role posthumously somehow?)
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Denys Lalande



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:47 pm Reply with quote
Then there's the _Macross_ and _Sun Fang Dougram_ kits -- or, as most Americans know them: The "Unseen" _BattleTech_ 'Mechs.... >:)
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber



Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3016
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:34 pm Reply with quote
Kicksville wrote:
My favorites are still the SD Gundam G Generation kits, which places like Suncoast and attempted anime specialty stores at the time had tons of for some reason, I guess because they had cool 3DCG cover art and were cheap. This was a bit before Gundam Wing aired, even.

Those are fun because they had something from everything, down to really obscure stuff (this is how quite a few people back then found out Crossbone Gundam was a thing). Amazingly, a lot of those kits still hold up and look really good with minimal effort.

The current Cross Silhouette SD line looks pretty good, although I haven't picked up any of those yet. It's neat it now features Mazingers for some reason!


All of the Cross Silhouettes have been good so far, you really can't go wrong with any of them, especially the Mazingers!
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 28 Oct 2018
Posts: 480
PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2019 12:24 am Reply with quote
Man, I remember that Gundam kit commercial! What marveled me (pun not intended) was seeing a badass ad for G Gundam model kits in an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man that Marvel put out for Free Comic Book Day back in 2002 or so. You wouldn't see anything like that these days, I feel. But I digress.

I've dipped my toe with model kits--but the Kotobukiya kits are way too much of a headache. Flimsy, can't pose right, can't balance right, can't hold their weapons right... I keep wishing I could get a kit for the Blitz Gundam or that weird fire-red Burning Gundam Custom they made for Build Fighters.

This was a fun column. Thanks, Mike!
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Silver Kirin



Joined: 09 Aug 2018
Posts: 1099
PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:48 pm Reply with quote
I became really interested in Gundam model kits since I read about how popular they became it the early 80s and some years ago I managed to get kit of the original Gundam and some time I got Heero's Wing Zero Custom from Endless Waltz. Sadly, they're the only ones I got, Gunpla model kits are really expensive and hard to find where I'm from, but I hope to get more in the future and from other mecha series too.
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