A Good Head on Those Shoulders

18 Nov 2024 - Clint Fandango

Tags: Bandai Gundam Gunpla RG Unicorn_Gundam Gold_Plated

In most forms of media involving robots, mechs, cyborgs, whatever – there’s typically a scene where an inert body comes to life as the head is slowly lowered and inserted.

We have reached that milestone in our own story.

When it comes to the head on gundam models, there’s always a couple of gotchas, no matter the grade. The spiky crown thing on the front of the head is infamous for never staying in place, and the Unicorn gundam doubles down by offering three different choices due to its transformation mode.

Saucy!

If I had any concerns about the Head Unit, they’d mostly stem from the small pieces and stickers. The pieces would be difficult to handle due to their size and the stickers even more so.

I also hate stickers.

I love decals.

But I hate stickers.

They never look right and even if you can remove them from the sticker sheet without damaging them, or apply them to the surface without picking them up and adjusting them a dozen times, then losing them and searching all over the place just to find that they were hiding out on the back of one of your fingers, but one tiny part got stuck on the other part of the sticker and now you have to try and get them apart and argh – fuck it, we’ll just leave it off!

I’m not a fan.

I also find out that I need new tweezers because the ones I had were damaged (this is the first model I’ve put together in a year and I may have used the tweezers for tasks beyond their purpose and tensile strength).

Still, I managed to get the stickers on the head pieces without too much fuss and –

Who am I kidding? That’s a blatant lie. I put two gold stickers on the wrong head spike things (this gundam has like four pieces just for the head spike thing, and three of them get stickers) and had to re-adhere them without making it too janky. Which is saying a lot.

See, a lot of gundam stickers are the shiny foil type, so they’re easy to wrinkle or crease, especially if you don’t place them just so on the piece and you have to make minor adjustments or tamp it down to make sure it sticks. Any bad move can cause a crease to appear and throw everything off. It just won’t look good.

Luckily, I made it out of this one unscathed, with only one long gold sticker slightly off center, but I’m not going to be using the piece in the long term anyway, so it’s all good in the neighborhood.

Other than the usual sticker follies, the head came together fairly fast and looked great.

Next up is the backpack.

The backpack is a crucial component for a gundam, since not only does it serve as visual flare by looking like a jetpack, it’s also where you’re going to mount weapons and other items.

It’s also the last major component on this build. Other than weapons and decals, once the backpack is assembled and installed, the gundam will be complete.

It’s kind of a big deal.

I really liked the design and look of the one for the Unicorn Gundam model. They’re not just using the same gold plated pieces as all the other components; they’re also using bronze pieces, as well as the clear ABS orange plastic that we’ve been seeing elsewhere on the model for the transformation effect.

It makes for great color differentiation and visual appeal.

It’s also surprisingly easy to assemble. I kept stopping myself repeatedly during this part of the build to make sure I wasn’t trying to rush to get it finished, leading to sloppy snips off the sprue, but I wasn’t. It was just that easy.

The only issue I found was during construction of the lightsaber handles. Yes, I know what their supposed to be called, but they’re lightsabers. I’m not the Bandai corporation. I don’t have to worry about trademark infringement, so I can call them whatever I want.

The rest of the gold pieces in this model had undergates on any parts that would be plainly visible, and any other parts that might show a stress mark were hidden from view. The part design on this model was impeccable.

Except for the lightsaber handles. After finishing assembly and installing them into the backpack, the stress marks were front and center.

Since this type of plastic doesn’t lend itself to easily sanding & buffing out the marks, the only option is to airbrush them or use what’s called a “Gundam Marker” to basically paint over them and hope it color matches.

I’m going to leave them be for now, since I think they may be covered by a weapon or something that’ll be inserted at the end of all this.

With the completion of the backpack, I also emptied out several more sprues and it looks like the only ones with parts left are for the weapons and shield, which I’ll hit next time.

RG Unicorn Gundam (Gundam Base Gold Plated)