Gashapon Senshi NEXT Kshatriya

While I do collect a lot of shokugans, I don't really collect gashapons. Gundam gashapons have been around for many, many years, but this particular gashapon series called Gashapon Senshi NEXT (ガシャポン戦士ＮＥＸＴ) has caught my attention, mainly due to the fact that it's one of the few I know that has limited articulations. Me and AstrayP03 have both decided to draw one out each from a gashapon machine in Gundam Expo Hong Kong 2010, and we both got Kshatriya - arguably getting the best out of the buck as it's the biggest in the series ^^


3 smal bags of parts as well as 2 leaflets. The plain black & white one simply states that it's from Bandai Asia and listed a bunch of safety warnings on the back, while the colourful one shows that RX-78-2 Gundam, Char's Zaku II, Ex-S Gundam, and Unicorn Gundam Destroy Mode are also in this series.


All parts for movable Kshatriya laid out. 2 runners for the joints can be seen on the bottom right


The legs go on a simple distorted T-shape part and will support the waist/torso as well. A swivel joint is used for each shoulder, and the lower arms can rotate on their own without prior assembly.


All parts lined up for assembly, showing roughly which goes to where. No instructions were given on assembly, but as one can see it's quite straightforward.


And the finished gashapon miniture Kshatriya is here!


The back of Kshatriya is quite simple, but for a gashapon I can't ask for too much can I?


Kshatriya equipped with one beam sabre, while showing off the limited articulations it can handle


Dual-wield with ReZEL's pink beam sabre on the left hand as well, as seen in the first episode of Gundam UC OVA


As for size comparison, here is gashapon movable Kshatriya standing next to 1/144 GFFN ReZEL


This movable gashapon Kshatriya is one of the very few gashapons I have in my collection of toys, and certainly one of the more interesting ones as I have seen many Gundam gashapons before but an articulated one is something fairly new even for these SD (super deformed, similar to chibi or even Q-version). While assembling this little guy I'm reminded of Kinder Surprise all of a sudden, which both have something in common anyway.

For 12HKD a pop, getting a Kshatriya on the first pop is very lucky for me and AstrayP03 since it's what we were hoping to get in the first place ^^ Colouring is not bad for gashapon quality, though one can always do some more touch-ups with Gundam markers etc. A neat little toy for one's desktop I'd say~

Recently I have been going back to smaller toys while many I know are going bigger and bigger for their models or figure collections. It may be hard for some to imagine, but for me a bunch of little things can warm my heart up already - it's the little things that makes the difference I suppose. So, smaller isn't always "not as good", right?