Plastic models

I used to like building and painting plastic scale models, mostly historic military figurines and WWII armour. Now, I am getting back into the hobby with my daughter. She is interested in anime, and so I find myself switching genres – our current project is the Freedom Gundam mobile suite. Our particular master grade (1:1000 scale) kit is made by Bandai, and in terms of details and build quality it’s way ahead of the Tamiya kits that I built in the past. And I must say that the Tamiya models are excellent in their own right, but one thing that Impresses me quite a bit with Bandai is that the parts snap together without any adhesive. I am not sure if the whole Gunpla (from Gundam Plastic models) sub-universe has always been ahead of the rest of the model types, or perhaps I am just easily impressed, but the ability to fully assemble the model and then to partially take it apart for painting is a huge positive factor for me. With the models that need to be glued together, I’ve tried painting every single part before assembling them. This resulted in a lot of wasted effort, as some of the parts are structurally necessary, but almost invisible in the finished model. Conversely, leaving painting until the model is fully built made it difficult to access certain parts.

I think the technological leap from the plastic models of WWII tanks that I built in my youth to the modern kit of the sci-fi mobile suite is incidentally reflecting the difference in the technologies that these models represent. Maybe, the comparison is not quite fair, considering that there are no real flying mobile suits yet, while the tanks have been around for a while. Then again, a moving life-size Gundam sculpture has been built recently…