Gunpla Build - 7-Eleven Gundam Part 2

In this post, we will be going over all of the 7-Eleven Gundam’s body parts. Yes, all of them.

I was on a real roll over the last two nights. Everything just clicked. My painting skills were on point, and everything seemed to dry faster than usual¹. As a result, I got the everything but the feet (which I built earlier) finished and assembled in just two nights.

Feet

This is where I started to have some fun with the build. Here is how I painted the internal framing of the feet:

That’s a mix of pink and red paint with some white weathering compound slathered on top. That’s because I decided that this Gundam would be fueled by frosty, cherry flavored Slurpee:

I intend to add this Slurpee-themed coloring throughout the internals of the model.

I forgot to take a photo of all the parts for the feet. Suffice to say that they are fairly similar to the Revive Gundam’s, both in terms of construction and appearance. It has one extra piece (for the sole of the foot), two decals, and a few extra panel lines, but that’s it.

Legs

Here are all the parts for the legs (well, all the parts for one leg):

Remember how I just said that the feet were almost identical to the Revive Gundam’s? That isn’t at all the case with the legs. They look different, and the build is very different (and weird).

I’ll use some diagrams to explain. Here is the leg on the Revive Gundam:

Now a similar diagram of the 7-Eleven Gundam:

This part separation (or lack thereof) doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I can think of some justifications for why the knee armor is attached to the leg armor, but it feels like an unnecessary cost cutting measure. It also forces you to do some otherwise unnecessary detailing - you’ll want to paint the gap in between the armor pieces to make them look like separate parts:

As for the shin armor, I have no clue what is going on with that.

I’m also curious as to why the hip joints are colored white:

These are always hidden under the skirt armor, so you’re never going to see them. Why not color them grey like all the joints and polycaps?

Eh, whatever. Let’s move on to the detailing. I painted the internal part of the knee silver, just like I did on the Revive Gundam:

I also painted the pack section of the leg in “Slurpee Red” and gold:

Here is the fully assembled leg, complete with panel lines:

Let’s do a quick test of the articulation:

Ooooof. That is not great. For comparison, here is the Revive Gundam showing off its flex:

The 7-Eleven Gundam’s knee bends to a 45 degree angle at best, while the Revive Gundam’s almost folds in half.

Skirt Armor

Here are all the pieces of the skirt armor:

Two things stand out to me:

1. The two front skirt pieces are separated. This is something that a lot of High Grades, even modern ones, do not do, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.
2. The side skirts are mounted via ball joints, which is really smart. It allows them to more easily move out of the way whenever you position the legs for a pose.

It is strange to me that the skirt armor is much better engineered here than on even the most recent High Grade kits (especially considering that other parts of this kit fare much worse in comparison)

Let’s talk about the crotch arrow. On the Real Grade, the crotch arrow is made out of separate, color accurate pieces:

On the Revive Gundam, you use a decal:

On this kit, you get a single piece of plastic, and you have to paint the arrow. I tried doing this on the Revive Gundam, but the paint always dripped off. This ultimately wasn’t a big deal, since I had the decal as a backup. This time, however, I had no choice, so I first used a layer of primer to see if it would help:

That’s good enough I suppose.

Here is the skirt armor after final assembly:

We are finally starting to see some color in this model. Those red decals are a sharp addition.

Upper Torso

Here are all the parts:

No surprises here, except for that weird piece in the bottom right corner. That plugs into the inside of the backpack (perhaps to reinforce it?).

In terms of detailing, I went with black panel lines on the red plastic, and white panel lines on the green parts:

Then there is the backpack. Despite the lack of parts separation, I am impressed as how much it looks like the Real Grade’s pack.

It also reminds me of a certain real life machine …

Behold, then, the Slurpee machine backpack, complete with rocket nacelle-shaped dispensers:

In retrospect, I should have painted all the Slurpee detailing on the right side of the unit blue, rather than red. Too late.

One more thing – I noticed that in the manual, the chest vents had a greenish tint to them. I added a thin layer of green paint in the creases to achieve the same effect:

Here is the upper torso fully assembled:

This is by far the most colorful part of the unit. It looks quite good.

Head

The parts:

Again, no surprises here. I like how the V Fin plugs directly into the head. On the Revive Gundam, only the red crest plugs in, while the V Fin itself is sandwiched in between the crest and the helmet. It is a fragile design; any unintended pressure applied to the V Fin during assembly can cause it to break (I know from experience). The design here is much safer, and more stable, and like with the skirt armor, better than what we see in more modern kits.

In terms of detailing, there is the usual panel lining, and I also chose to pain the vulcan cannons and vents on the sides of the head:

Arms

Here are the parts:

Let’s cut to the chase – either I screwed something up, or these elbow joints are some of the worst examples of engineering I have ever seen on a Gunpla.

Normally, a Gunpal’s joints have enough give that you can move them, but enough resistance that they stay in place once it is in position. That is not what I am seeing with these elbow joints. They are less like joints and more like … I dunno, hinges maybe?

They behave like the hinges on a toilet seat cover. If you lift the seat all the way up, to a 90 degree angle, it stays in place. However, if you lift it up less than 90 degrees, it flops back down onto the toilet.

I’m serious - you cannot bend the arms further than 90 degrees, and if you bend them any less than that, they flop back down. I checked the manual to verify that I didn’t miss a part or a polycap, but it doesn’t look like I did. So here I am, stuck with these janky arms, with no explanation as to what went wrong.

Part of me doesn’t care about these noodle arms, because they aren’t going to matter. I don’t plan on posing this thing at all, so I don’t need much in the way of articulation. However, I still don’t like this in principle. I plan on testing some action poses anyway, just to see how bad these arms really are. Even if I got this kit primarily for its color scheme and special branding, part of me still wants to review and assess it not as the 7-Eleven Gundam, but as the High Grade G30 Gundam.

Anyway, here they are once assembled:

Conclusion

I have no idea how I built the mobile suit built so quickly, but there you have it. In the next post, we’ll take a look at the finished model.