When we crack open the box, we see that the Tallgeese II has all its stuff, which is a huge relief:
I count one Dober Gun, one shield (with two beam saber blade handles), and two thrusters. Also included are an Action Base adapter, and a single trigger finger hand for holding the gun. That’s a full armament for the Tallgeese, and when you consider that the Gundam Universe version of the Leo is missing its shield, the fact that we got all this stuff is greatly appreciated.
(granted, we don’t get a second beam saber blade, but that’s fine)
But then we put it all together, and it … kinda underwhelms.
Let me be clear - all the Gundam Universe figurines look too plain out of the box, but the Tallgeese II fares a bit worse than the others in this regard. That’s largely due to the fact that’s far less colorful than, say, the Shining Gundam, or even the Sazabi (which might sound crazy considering the Sazabi is all red, but the GU figure uses two different red tones, and that helps a lot). And because it’s less colorful, everything just kinda blurs together.
The other problem it has is that the plastic feels even more toylike than the others, with an extra plasticky sheen that easily picks up fingerprints and grease. If ever a GU figure needed topcoating, it’s this one.
So, yeah, this one is in dire need of plussing up. As a matter of fact, this is the perfect opportunity to try out something I’ve been meaning to experiment with - printing my own waterslide decals.
Mrs. Wolfe got me a pack of printable waterslide paper ages ago, but I’ve been quite intimidated at the prospect of using them. But this seemed like the perfect canvas to try them out on, so here we go.
As it turns out, designing and printing them isn’t as hard as I thought. You just have to open up something like GIMP, size the canvas to the same size as the paper, and then paste-and-resize whatever logos or icons you want. There is some guesswork in figuring out how big you should print them, but you can always try out a bunch of different sizes just in case.
Once they’re printed, you have to let them dry, then topcoat them (to seal in the ink), and let them dry once again. It’s not a lot of work, but it is a lot of time.
Anyway, I’m not 100% sure if I did it all right, but either way they didn’t end up looking as I intended:
As I’ve come to learn, the paper is still transparent even when you print onto it, and so the color of the plastic underneath is going to bleed through. There are two ways to work around this - either paint the area underneath the decal white, or only use the decals on light colored plastic. Lesson learned for next time.
With that out of the way, it was time to get back to basic paints, panel line markers, and topcoat. Here now is my best attempt to class this figure up:
I still wish I could have gotten the decals to work, but this still looks leagues better than it did before. The extra linings and markings break up the monotony of the coloring, and the clear coat cuts right through that sheen.
That being said, I’m still not sure that it’s on par with some of the other GU figures. One of the signature traits of the Gundam Universe line is that each figure tweaks the proportions and shape of certain body parts, as well as adds new and unique panel lines, to create unique spins on these classic designs.
The Tallgeese II kind of does that. If you stand it up next to the Real Grade Tallgeese, you’ll notice that the legs are a bit wider and bulkier:
But everything else looks pretty much the same. So too do the panel lines. Other than a couple new lines on the legs, there’s really nothing that stands out as being new or unique.
And then there’s the matter of gimmicks. The Tallgeese II just doesn’t have many. For example, it’s verniers can’t open up like on the Real Grade, which is a crying shame:
But it doesn’t stop there. The lack of holding hands means it can’t quite recreate its signature pose
The control arms that the gun and shield are mounted to have almost no articulation, so you can’t really position them where you need to for action poses. For example, this is the only real angle it can hold its gun at:
Sadly, there’s just not a whole lot interesting you can do with it.
Conclusion
This is a decent enough figure at $12. From a purely visual standpoint, you can make it look decent enough. But it’s just not very playable or poseable, which feels particularly egregious for an action figure.
The lesson to be learned here is that certain mobile suits are too complicated to be rendered well in a simplified form, and the Tallgeese is one of them. The control arms, as well as the thusters, make it a highly gimmick-laden design, and I think Gundam Universe is just not the product line to make that happen.