Question - what do you do when your three year old children love your Gundam model kits (or “your Gingums” as they both call them), but you don’t want them to play with them like they’re toys? Not because you’re anal about keeping your kits pristine and perfect, mind you, but because you don’t want to have continuously reattach parts when they fall off - and because you’re still a little worried about them choking on a piece.

You might think the answer is “just get them some sort of robot action figure. Anything will do”. But you’d be wrong - they know their Gingums. They know the colors, the design of the head … You can’t pull a fast one on these tykes. It has to be the real thing.

So a Gundam action figure it is. Except in my experience, those aren’t super easy to find. They exist, but I don’t think we get them here in the States as often as we get model kits. Thankfully Target started selling them back in the fall alongside a handful of model kits, and as luck would have it, my local store had one left in stock.

Here it is - A “Gundam Universe” action figure of the Strike Gundam:

What is Gundam Universe?

The Gundam Wiki spells it out nice and simple:

Gundam Universe (ガンダムユニバース Gandamu Yunibāsu?) is a line of real robot action figures by Bandai, featuring mobile suits from the Gundam metaseries. Introduced in 2019, the line is non-scale, with mobile suit figures designed to be 6” in height. These figures feature higher durability and lower price than their Robot Damashii counterparts and are targeted to international markets

Before we drive deep, let’s get one thing straight - this is not so much an action figure as it is a cross between an action figure and a model kit.

Let’s put the figure through its paces, and you’ll see what I mean.

Action Figure Plastic

I’m not a chemical engineer, so I don’t know the technical terms for different kinds of plastic, but this figure is definitely made out of what I’d call “action figure plastic”. It’s the same kind of stuff that a lot of children’s toys have been made of for the last 20-ish years. It is a bit heaver, slightly more textured, and slightly more rubbery than the stuff they use for model kits and Lego.

This is good news for me, since this kind of plastic should stand up to the rough handling of a three year old. However, I don’t think I would buy it for myself. This definitely feels like the kind of thing you buy to play with, rather than put on display.

Model Kit Parts

If we zoom in and otherwise take apart the figure, we will see some things that will be very familiar to anyone who builds Gunpla (or reads this blog).

For instance, if we take off the side skirt, we see a very familiar looking polycap:

Take apart the leg, and we see a simple ball joint:

The same is true of the head:

The ankle guard uses the same one-sided connection as the High Grade Heavyarms:

Meanwhile the arm joint looks very similar to the ones I’ve built for several recent model kits:

Even the shoulder armor is mounted in a similar fashion:

Hopefully you get the point by now. This figure isn’t assembled similarly to a model kit, but exactly.

To be blunt, this is a problem. The whole point of buying this figure was to prevent what happens when my kids play with a Gunpla model. They can’t go two minutes without bringing it to me looking like this:

It took all of a single afternoon for both of them to figure out how to remove the skirt armor and the head.

If there is a silver lining, it is that while they may be able to take the figure apart, I have a feeling it will be much harder to flat out break anything. That should prevent some future tears and sadness.

Model Kit Detailing

Just like a model kit, this figure has a lot of panel lines. And just like a model kit, you have to fill them in yourself.

This is a bit of a problem, in the sense that if you don’t panel line, the figure looks way too plain and bare.

For example, here is how it looks straight from the box:

I’m no fan of the Strike Gundam, but even it deserves better than that. So do my kids. So I took out my paints and jazzed it up:

I’d say this is definitely a net improvement over the stock version of the figure. However …

Action Figure Plastic (apparently) Smears

I discovered that excess paint doesn’t wipe off cleanly from this kind of plastic. It smears very easily, unless you take to it with a wet paper towel (not even a magic eraser seems to work well on it). I’m 99% sure there’s a layer of clear coat paint covering this plastic, which may account for the smearing. Whatever the reason, it made it more difficult and a lot less fun to paint versus a model kit.

Action Figure Chunkiness

One of the side effects of this being an action figure is that it has even less parts separation than a High Grade model kit. You can “fix” this to some extent with panel lining, but it only goes so far.

Model Kit-Style Accessories

The figure comes with a full set of standard accessories, including a shield, beam rifle, and the Strike Gundam’s signature daggers. It even comes with holding hands, including a right trigger finger hand:

It’s pretty cool to see all this gear, but once again, it all needs to be panel lined.

Gummy Action Figure Hands

The holding hands on this figure are a single piece of semi-soft, semi-pliable plastic. To attach a weapon, you basically have to move the fingers out of the way just enough for the weapon grip to slip into place:

The easiest way to do this is via sheer brute force, but I worry that doing that enough will eventually damage the plastic. It isn’t all that intuitive of a design.

Great Articulation

The articulation here is about as good as you’d get from a model kit. It may not have the maximum range that you might find in the best kits, but it nails the basics with aplomb:

Furthermore, I’d say I’d go so far as to say this figure has a certain sense of presence that you don’t always get with Gunpla. Even in the simplest poses, it somehow manages to radiate a ton of personality. Maybe it is its bigger size, or maybe it’s that the extra weight makes it easier to do these poses without having it fall over.

Whatever the case, it is admittedly very fun to mess around with.

Action Base Compatible?

The figure comes with this little thing here, which looks an awful lot like an Action Base adapter:

However, I don’t think it is actually meant to be used on a traditional Gunpla Action Base. On an Action Base, the adapters are shaped like this:

But as you can see, the adapter that comes with this figure is much smaller:

No way that’s fitting on the control arm of an Action Base. But maybe we can plug one adapter into another …

Let’s see if it actually works.

This photo gives the impression that it’s a perfect fit, but looks can be deceiving. The connection between the two adapters is not very snug, so the one on top spins around freely. If you try for certain poses, gravity will have its way with the figure. For example, if you try to position it so that it is facing upward, it will almost certainly flip around to face downward.

Price

These Gundam Universe figurines have an MSRP of $24.99. If not for the fact that I was desperate for something for my kids to play with, that would have been a deal breaker for me.

The high price makes this entire product line irrelevant:

• No adult collector is going to spring for this when they could just pay more to get a much higher quality Robot Damashii figure.
• No teenager is going to pony up $25 when they could spend half as much on a Gunpla that they’d also have fun putting together (and will, at minimum, have roughly the same out-of-the-box detail).
• No parent is going to buy it for a small child unless you’ve got money to burn or, like me, you’re desperate.

So who exactly are these figures meant for?

Gundam Universe feels like an unhappy middle ground between a model kit and a pre-built figure. It boasts some of the pros of each, but essentially all of the cons. If it were ten bucks cheaper I might feel differently, but as it stands, I think this is a full blown strikeout.

Other Thoughts

There is a counter argument to be made that these are in fact better for tweens and teens than a model kit. Basically, the argument is that a teen or tween Gundam fan is more likely to find a Gundam Universe figure (say, on the shelf at Target or Walmart or some place) than they are to not only know _about_ Gunpla, but to also know where to buy them, what tools to buy (and to have the money to afford those tools), etc.

Here’s why I think this argument is wrong. For one, I don’t think these figures are being sold in bountiful quantities in big box stores across the country. I’ve only seen a few at Target, and once they’re gone, they seem to be gone. So I don’t think they’re actually all that discoverable.

Second, teens these days are extremely online. A teenage Gundam fan is almost certainly going to hear about Gunpla somewhere, and once they do, they won’t find it difficult to learn more about it. They’re probably also more willing to research the cheapest places to buy kits and tools, so it probably won’t cost them all that much to get started. At that point, they’re going to become a Gunpla fan, and they’ll have no use for a figure like this.