Available now from HobbyLink Japan!
Following the PG Unicorn, we received some additional kits here in the office for building display models for a local hobby shop, and the SD Winning Gundam was one of them. Seeing the perfect opportunity to get a couple more of us in the office started on gunpla builds, I was assigned this little guy.
I started dabbling in gunpla when I was in junior high school — many moons ago — so while I have a little experience, it’s been a long time and the kits have certainly changed since then… You can take this as a returning modeler’s approach to gunpla. And if you’re new to the hobby, or returning yourself, maybe this will help encourage you! Even though the SD Winning Gundam has several transformation modes made possible by a handful of ball joints, the build is fairly simple and it’d be hard to mess it up.
Here are all of the runners.
The joints and stickers. You can see he has four different eye settings to choose from. I went with the standard look since this is going to be a display model.
First, the head.
The piece which the eye sticker goes on is actually flipped around for one of the transformations and is identical on the opposite side. You could put one of the other eye stickers on the other side and give yourself two options without having to remove or cover the first sticker.
You can already see some of the parts that are going to be used for the later transformation sequences.
The torso.
The arms. The hands are in fixed poses for weapon-wielding. The ball joints here feel nice and tight. We’ll see how this turns out.
The legs.
The waist, viewed from the front. This section is only made up of three parts and stickers.
So far, so good! The basic body is complete!
With the addition of two optional weapons, this cute gunpla just got fierce. Included are the beam machine gun and buzzsaw. Attach the antenna part to the beam machine gun, and you can also create the beam bow gun!
With weapons in hand, the joints feel a little heavy and you might need some glue to keep the arms up. Of course, gluing this kit would seriously limit its transformation capabilities, so this might just have to be taken as a loss.
The backpack has been added. The buzz saw can also connect to the shoulder.
Here’s the core fighter transformation! No extra parts needed, and the transformation requires only the kit’s head.
Here’s core booster mode. Core booster flight mode is also possible, but not pictured.
The last transformation I built was the jet transformation from parts leftover from the Winning Launcher transformation.
There are, of course, several other transformations available, particularly those which turn the Winning Gundam into an accessory for other kits. The Winning Launcher and Winning Knuckle are two such examples.
This was a pretty simple build despite all the joints and possible transformations. The transformations do take a little work and I felt like the core booster mode looked a little clunky, but seeing as it’s only one of several transformation options I don’t think it’s a problem. I was particularly impressed by how the head-only core fighter mode was pulled off so easily.
For display, some Gundam markers would do the trick to get the coloring a little sharper and define some of those panel lines, but out-of-box it’s pretty solid thanks to the variety in plastic and the stickers. The stickers themselves were a bit of a pain especially for the arms, but I think that will just take some practice for me.
Overall, this is a pretty cool kit. The finished product stands about 10cm tall and poses well for such a compact kit, particularly when empty-handed.
Thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to bringing you more basic builds soon!
Sup3rSPEED
That’s it! I’m adding this to my “to get” list.
Daniel
It’s already in my PWH. It’s not every day that you get the chance to buy a 1/1 scale SD Gundam!
Thundr-Knight
i was worried to how they would pull off the transformations but it seems they are preatty good, i wouldhave like to see every form thou, im sure you guys have the other builds to use the winning knuckle such.
still it looks like a cool build and i cant wait to see what the come up with on the sD front as far as joints go.
Anna
We’ll definitely be showing off the Winning Knuckle soon. 🙂 Stay tuned.
teetee580
What a nice little kit. And it even transforms! And for that, I know Ryan will be so stoked! LOL
You did a great job Anna. Hope you enjoyed the build. Looking forward seeing more of you models. Thanks for sharing
Anna
Thank you! I think the transformations are pretty impressive for an SD kit.
GeN_GiM
One of the best SD I’ve ever seen. Anyone knows from what Gundam this is based on? It’s somehow reminiscent of Gundam ZZ but only close.