Space Robot

Last year’s Easter Basket Gundam Junior Machinder caught me totally by surprise, but this year I started looking a couple months back. Every time I stopped in a Walmart or somewhere that was selling Easter Baskets, I’d check to see if there was anything similar this year. No dice. All this year’s offerings seemed pretty boring. Cars. Dolls. Balls. Typical kids toys. But the other night I got the word from JoshB that there was indeed another Gundam up for grabs this year. But it was only sold at K-Mart, a store I really never go to. The hunt was on.

But either this one was produced in smaller numbers than the other baskets, or just sold much quicker, because between Sanjeev and I, we checked 4 different stores before I was lucky enough to find this one specimen, buried in an aisle display at a Big K-Mart. I had thought it was just a recolor of last year’s toy, but as soon as I picked it up, I could tell it was drastically different.

As you can see, it’s packaged the same, carded and placed inside a basket with some candy and a bow on top. But everything else is different. The most disappointing thing about it is it’s size. While still a significant toy at 11″ tall, it pales in comparison to the previous one. The whole thing is molded in black with gold and silver painted highlights and with some absolutely garish and nonsensical stickers all over it. “Power Robot”, “V Power RX08 GP00″”, “H-02”, “MSF-0071”, “King”, and my favorite, “Win” are written on the stickers.

This Gundam is not as cool as the last one. While it has a new gun and shield, it is not nearly as well articulated. It can move at the neck, shoulders, hips and knees. The arms only raise and lower, though. You can’t spread them out sideways like before. And the legs are permanently in that slightly outstretched position. Techincally, I suppose this gives it even more of a Machinder aesthetic than last year, which makes it even more a disappointment that it’s smaller.

This one does have a feature not included before though. By pressing a button on the back, you get that favorite of bootleg toy makers….a light on the front.

It’s interesting that this says it is made by a different company than the last one, especially since the card from last year has a picture of a black Gundam toy that looks much like this one. The mold is not the same, but all the stickers are.

As with before, this is only for Gundam and bootleg fanatics and I’m not a big enough Gundam fan to know where the design is taken from. So if anyone would like to clarify, please leave a comment.