Act 9: Bazooka Pack
Spiral Zone: Act 9 Bazooka Pack
Bandai’s SFG Spiral Zone released only three optional weapon sets for their Spiral Zone deluxe figure sets and optional Coating Armor sets. Acts 8, 9 & 10 would be allocated for those releases. They are:
Act 8: Personal Floater
Act 9: Bazooka Pack
Act 10: Type Scout III Monoseed
Act 9: Optional Backpack Unit Bazooka Pack was a “Monopole Accelerative Rail Gun / Missile Launcher” that was developed in 2005 that fired a 70mm round. The entire unit carried 20 rounds total with four being carried in the breech and the other 16 in the backpack storage area (as stated on the box). Although all the Spiral Zone figures can use this backpack, it is colored for Act 1: Bull Solid of dark OD green.
Typical of all the Spiral Zone release the front of the box has clear windows that display some of the parts and the other side of the box illustrates a beautiful painting of Bull Solid in action with the Bazooka Pack.
The small box contains: 2x green sprue, 1x preassembled backpack, 1x barrel, 2x metal springs, 1x rubber hose, 1x thin plastic wire,1x red wire, 1x sticker sheet, 1x instruction sheet, 1x file card.
I bought this toy from a dealer for $15.00 at the San Diego Comic Convention back in 1987 and it had already been assembled. This purchase was also my last Spiral Zone toy purchase for many years until I bought an Act 12: Figure Type II (Brown) from eBay about two years ago.
Assembly of Bazooka Pack is almost pure model kit with some nice added touches that take it to Spiral Zone levels. I suggest buying a good pair of sprue cutters to cuts the parts off the sprue. Some of the great features are metal spring tubing that connects the gun to the backpack and the twisted red wire that is very simply assembled but very effective in scale. I also love the antenna that comes from the top of the unit.
The Gun also has some nice features as well such as moveable handles for better positioning the Spiral Zone figure with it. When the Bazooka is not in use it can be folded in half and fit neatly into the backpack unit. The bazooka is held to the backpack with a folding arm from the backpack.
My only problem with this backpack is how the gun tends to fall apart in the middle when you are folding it in half. That can be fixed with a couple of drops of glue, but I elected to keep together without glue.
Later a very cute looking Gashapon version of Bazooka was released that also fitted on a small Gashapon Spiral Zone figure that could be placed on the figure’s hand and being able to fit into a backpack that also connected to the Spiral Zone Gashapon figure.
This is one of my favorite Spiral Zone releases, as it looks great when displayed with a Spiral Zone figure. It is an impressive looking gun when deployed and I like to think that one of the parts on the side of the Bazooka is a small machine gun, which gives it even some more play value. I do not see the Bazooka Pack for sale that often on either eBay or Yahoo Japan Auctions, in fact, the last one I saw for sale was the one I bought back in 1987 that I used for this review. A great toy definitely worth picking up for the Spiral Zone collection!
©2008 Leonardo Flores & CollectionDX.