Bad Gundams!

Ask any mecha fan what they think is the most prolific mecha plamo maker is and more often than not, the answer you’ll get is Bandai. Aside from various Macross and Digimon figures and toys, they are also the sole manufacturer of the entire Gundam model kit and figure lineup, which they started back in the early ’80s. The very first releases were non-graded kits of the RX-78-2 and the Zaku II, which featured very minimal detail and poseability and required paint and glue to complete.

Afterwards, Bandai improved upon this by releasing the High Grade 1/144 series in 1990 and the High Grade 1/100 series in 1993. Featuring better detail and a new color molding technique called “System Injection”, these kits could be snap-fitted together and offered better poseability. The Master Grade series made it’s debut in 1995 followed shortly by the pinnacle of the Gundam model lineup, the Perfect Grade series in 1998. Ever since then, multiple mobile suits from different timelines have been produced from these lineups in various scales such as 1/550, 1/400, 1/220, 1/144, 1/100, 1/60 and the largest so far, 1/35 for the UC HardGraph series.

Bandai has spent more than thirty years updating and diversifying the Gundam plamo universe. It took a bunch of enterprising counterfeiters significantly less time to flood the knock-off market with cheap copies of famous mecha from the various branches of the metaseries.

First up is a figure that seems to be an amalgam of the Destiny Gundam from Gundam SEED Destiny and the God Gundam from G Gundam.

Next figure from this little shop of horrors is an almost passable Destiny marred by very-bright and very wrong multi-colored Wings of Light.

It appears that someone at Armory-One was too drunk to notice that the Freedom had gone through the wrong painting line and came out decked in Zaku colors.

This last one at least gives buyers a chance at multiple variants. You get to choose an “RX-78-2” with a Gundam Mk.II shield (complete with Neo-Zeon markings) or a Sazabi shield.

Edit: Unfortunately, we’ve lost a lot of the original images used in this post.