With the idea of giving him a nice paintjob some time in the future, I recently acquired myself a Cancer Gun Tiger. Since the seller only included a stock picture of the figure, not the box, I didn’t know whether I would receive the NJR or the NAR version. So I was more than thrilled when it turned out to be the Japanese release because awesome box art <3 It’s a cute little Zoid that’s loaded with detail and being somewhat poseable is a really nice feature as well. I love the cheek fluff, and those big black feet will always make it look to me like it’s wearing oversized baby shoes.
Also how does one take proper photos of this guy I don’t know
Review:
The first thing you notice when receiving the Gun Tiger is that everything about this kit is tiny. Even the box. I’m not kidding, look:
What’s great about this is that the gates on this kit are amazingly tiny as well, and often located in well-concealed or less obvious places - so almost no nub marks! Despite being such a small kit, it contains a considerable amount of pieces with a ton of detail.
The Gun Tiger comes with six frames: three hard plastic red ones, one softer, shiny dark gray one, one very rubbery gray one, and a clear green one. Also some stickers that I didn’t put on because 1) I want to paint this kit and 2) I simply really dislike using stickers on my models lol
Despite the tiny gates, all parts were still on their frames and in perfect condition (the gray frame looks that way because I tested my nippers on it before realizing I should have taken a picture first. Whoops.) and a joy to cut off with my new GodHand nipper. First time this part of building a kit was actually fun. Except for the antennae, they behave like dense play-doh - you touch them too hard, they’re bent. This is a part of the kit you have to be super careful with if you don’t want them to look all bent and crooked like in many pictures. Also friction on this rubbery plastic will cause it to disintegrate so use a very sharp blade to cut it off and use wet fingers if you need to straighten or trim it with your nails (no sandpaper on this plastic!). Since you need to remove the whole housing of the Static Magnum gun if you wish to deploy it, it’s almost inevitable to bend them every time, so extra caution is advised. You can bend them back if they’re only slightly crooked, but don’t accidentally drop your Gun Tiger or it’s over.
The finished kit is very solid with barely any flaws and mostly very tight joints. Save for the feet, they are ball joints that hardly keep a pose and succumb to gravity. That plus the moderate range on the leg joints prevents the Gun Tiger from being posed in all too crazy ways, but for a small kit like this, his poseability is by far better than what you could expect. I only wish the tail would rotate upwards instead of downwards. The highest point is already pretty low, as the part that sits on top of it restricts it from rotating as far up as seen on the box. This is one of two differences between box art and the actual model kit; the other one being the part that holds the antennae, which is upright instead of slanted like on the box. It’s a shame because that would have looked more awesome imo.
Nevertheless, the Gun Tiger is a great small non-motorized kit, loaded with details, is poseable, and really fun to build.
