RGM-89 JEGAN ジェガン

I will try to update this blog with one completed kit a week. The first one to make the list is this one

RGM-89 JEGAN

Personally I like these mass production type MS a lot, they all seem to make more sense then the Gundams. If we will ever have robot type weapons, they will most likely look like them.

I have painted these kits with minimum effort, MY goal is for them to pass for children's toy. So I am not going to go nuts and fix every detail.

Here's the rear view.

Jegan comes with a pretty decent arsenal, from rifle, swords, shield, grenade and flying fist(??)

And of course the missile launcher shoulder pack.

I went a bit overboard and got multiple units. This particular kit is extremely easy to paint, so it didn't really take much time to put them together.

I prefer the standard type, because the shoulder pack restricts arm movement, making it EVEN HARDER to pose.

Last but not least, a group shot.

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Making stronger guns. スプリングガンをパワーアップじゃ。

So I have received the model kits I ordered and got excited to start putting them together. The first component is of course the little spring loaded gun.

"Umm, something is wrong."

The spring that comes in the G Generation package feels very.......soft. Anyway I will put it together and see how it goes.


"................................."

What the..........this bullet barely made it through the barrel, I guess the toy safety law has forced Bandai to switch to weaker springs. That's fine, it's just a spring, there must be a fix for that. I just need to measure the dimensions, calculate the load and make sure i don't get a spring too strong that would destroy the gun itself.

The world has become a better place, they have website that allows you to design your own spring:

http://www.planetspring.com/pages/compression-spring-calculator-coil-calculator.php?id=compression

The BB senshi springs are 12 coils, 9.652mm in free length and 0.254mm for the wire diameter. Thank whoever invented the caliper for this.

So i went to Enco ( http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRHM ) to look for similar spring, and the closest thing I find is a 0.444mm wire diameter spring. I punched in the numbers and here's the result:

it looks like the 0.444mm one would do the trick, about 9 times stronger then the G Generation ones.

I ordered three dozens of it, and have put them on the gun. Here's what they look like :

The custom spring is about twice the length of the original one, so I cut it to the same length as the original ones in order for it to fit.
















This time we will use Jegan to perform the shooting test.

The bullet we are using is the heaviest one in his arsenal. We will start with the GG spring(weakest).

Ready, set.............

GO!

Pretty pathetic, it almost made me cry.  Now let's try the original BB senshi spring

An improvement, but not that big a difference. Let's try the Enco Spring

Woohoo! I think we have a winner! The rotation of this picture screwed up, but you can see Jegan at the lower right corner. Judging from this, I will be using the enco spring for all of the other kits.

The shops.

After HOURS of searching online, I have finally found most of the kits I am looking for, just in case anyone is interested in getting them, here's a little list of the shops that I purchased from:

Sears
http://www.sears.com
the most surprising place!  Search for SD Gundam and you will find a few.  I actually got a few rare kits from here.

Hobby Wave
http://www.hobbywave.com/
I like their website, everything is nice and simple, may be I will borrow their screen shots for my future posting.

G Wing
http://gwing-online.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=
Very good, the seller is responsive and nice, I asked him a question and he got back to me within hours.

Hobby Link Japan
http://www.hlj.com/
Directly from Japan, very good shopping site too, I got paints and kits there.

888 Anime
Amazon seller, they are very good too, i just don't have a direct link to their site.

Hobby Search
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/
Another excellent shopping site, I have no idea how they can manage to pack everything in to a box so nicely.

At this point, I have collected all the MS with guns and then some, now the only task left is to build and review them.

The Shopping List!

In order to get the project started, I need to create a shopping list of the model kits I need to get.  I am sure most people would agree with me that this is the fun part.

As I had previously suspected, the original series is 20 years old and it is a little bit hard to find.  Fortunately, Bandai release a series of games called "G-Generation" and they have capitalized on the series by releasing many of the old BB senshi in new packages.  Here's what they look like:

Both these boxes contain ALMOST the exact kit.  Yes, the new version actually have a little add-on, in this case it is the tiny Fin Funnel.  Both of them are the same price anyway, so I am not complaining.  The only thing is, when I buy them, I need to know which old kit is the same as the new one, so here's a list that i put together:

Now that the list is completed, TIME TO SHOP!!!!  :-D

Update(Summer 2012):
As it turn out, I am actually missing a few kits in that list, they are the members from the G-Gundam series.  What happened here is because the original G-Gundam kits have too many BB Senshi original gimmicks, at the time of its sale, they were promoting freedom of creativity on the BB series.  I guess for G-Generation they will have to conform back to the standard.  In any case, each of the original G-Gundam BB senshi has a crystal power up item AND a spring gun, so I must also pick them up for my project.  :-D
 

BB Senshi Project

Thank you very much for visiting my blog,  this blog will focus primarily on BB senshi because I am obsessed to them recently.  Please leave me some messages if you have any suggestion, comments and concern, I will try to reply them as quickly as I can.

Back in the late 80s, there is a line of toys called BB Senshi produced by Bandai. The name BB Senshi( BB Warriors) comes from the BB bullet shooting gimmick that came with every single one of them. And at the price range of 300 yen (about 3 USD), that was about as affordable as GUNPLA gets for kids with very little access to money.

Here's the list of all the BB Senshi in Japanese:

BB Senshi List

Just recently, I got nostalgic and started to look for some of these toys. Much to my surprise, the new releases have taken out the series's namesake gimmick, the new BB Senshis does not come with the little gun that shoots out the BB bullets(or the missile type bullet for that matter)! Apparently the toy safety regulation in Japan has gotten tighter and the tiny spring guns are deemed unsafe for children! I am all for child safety, but taking the fun out of the toys is just not right.  So for the love of the series I feel like I must get all of them before it is too late(I think that's a good enough excuse).

So now the hunt is on, I have to find all the BB Senshi with the gun gimmick. In a way it is good that they stopped the spring gun gimmick, this way I only have to go after a finite number of these model kits. They actually have four main series as it turn out.

1. Mobile Suit Gundam
2. Samurai Gundam
3. Knight Gundam
4. GArms (kindda like Gundam Force)

Due to time restriction, I know i won't be able to build those colorful knights and samurais, so I will just limit my collection to the Mobile Suit and GARMs. But I am not ruling out the MUSHAs entirely because I was a big fan for that series too.

Here's a list of kits that I have finished: