Finished building my Shogun Megazord! So satisfying when it’s completed. I have the deluxe one from childhood with the miscoloured pink arm. 11 year old me would have loved this!
With Bandai’s own Super MiniPla Gaogaigar on the way at the end of the month, I figured why not take a look at the previous minipla entry for the mecha by Kabaya. I don’t know what it originally retailed for, but i picked this kit up second hand from mandarake for 200jpy plus postage.
What’s in the box?
A delightful packet of plastic, with all the sprues tabbed together. Kabaya are the only company I know of that does this. Separating them gives us 6 sprues and most of Stealthgao as a single part. To go with our plastic is a hideously large stickersheet, 47 individual stickers in total. As a candy kit, also included is some ‘candy’. Don’t even bother trying this, the gum is terrible. It’s very faintly lemon flavoured, but drowned out by so much vanilla you can hardly tell, not that it matters much because that flavour lasts about 30 seconds of chewing before becoming tasteless mush.
The basic build
The unstickered build will give you a Gaogaigar that is very plain, but has the core colours needed. It’s not a complex or indepth build, mostly just pressing halves together. Detail is what lets the kit down though, mold degradation has not been kind to the kit, many panel lines are not crisp details with some having vanished all together. Others were never there, such as the tread detailing for Drillgao, the outlines of the red strips on Stealthgao’s wings, and the edge of the red cuffs for Gaogaigar. Bulletgao suffers most from lack of detail, its only panel lines being the cockpit window.
For the scale (only 7.5cm/2.95inches for Gaigar, and 9cm/3.54inches combined as Gaogaigar) the combination process is surprisingly accurate to the show, and i can forgive the cheats it has. Bulletgao does not run through the chest of Gaigar, instead splitting in half with the biceps folding down from the centre, and them plugging onto the mane armature that connects Stealthgao to Gaigar.
My main complaint with the process however is that there are no tracks guiding Gaigar’s legs into the Drillgao shins, meaning plugging them in is mostly fumbling in the dark until you luck out and find the socket for Gaigar’s foot. Gaogaigar’s feet are also rather far forward, making him unstable with Stealthgao on the back. Both of these are things I plan to modify and fix, as well as restore the missing panel lines. Personally I also find the helmet rather narrow and the faceplate not wide or detailed enough, Gaogaigar’s iconic layered ‘mouth’ shape is simply a single panel line going across with very little depth to it.
Accessory wise the Dividing Driver is included, but the articulation means no decent pose can be achieved. The driver is only one colour, the same yellow of the rest of the kit and not orange as it should be. It’s completely hollow underneath and lacking and detail to look like the driver apart from having the basic shape, so I didn’t bother taking pictures with it.
The completed build
The stickers really help to brighten up the kit and add it’s proper colour, even if some things are still missing such as Galeon’s claws. The stickers however, are absolutely garbage. They aren’t cut to fit properly, especially the forearm and Drillgao treads, the adhesive is the weakest I’ve ever encountered (though that may be the age of my secondhand kit) peeling on anything but a flat surface despite many having to fold over parts and around corners. One of the stickers is absent from my photographs, the final part of the red mane detailing as it ripped completely when I took it off, the layers of paper separating into a strip with adhesive and a strip with the ink.
Overall opinion
For such a tiny kit as this is, I’m actually very impressed, even if my review so far has sounded pretty negative. To combine at this scale I think is incredible, and to be as well proportioned as it is amazing when other larger figures have failed that task. The detail the kit originally had is excellent, and it’s such a shame it’s been damaged by mold degradation from it’s many re-runs. If you want a cheap tiny Gaogaigar for your desk I’d call it perfect if it weren’t for the poor stickers. For a perfectionist modeller like myself though, it’s a tiny challenge of skill with modifications.
