With the G Gundam series, Bandai’s method of making and marketing Gundam kits started to become more standardized and predictable.  The idea was to offer both 1/144 and 1/100 scale kits of the series’ main mecha.  The smaller scale kits were cheaper, simpler and geared more towards younger fans, while the 1/100 HG kits were far more detailed, poseable and complex, and were intended for more serious modellers.

When Wing Gundam hit the airwaves, this practice was refined even further, and the level of standardization at the 1/144 scale level was really quite impressive.  Each small scale kit used the exact same polycap rack, and the construction of each kit was more or less identical.  While this made the small kits easy to work on, it also made working on them a bit boring: you knew exactly what you were going to have to do as soon as you opened the box!

This practice continued unabated into the X Gundam series kits.  I myself have built many of the small X kits over the years, and I cite their ‘cookie cutter’ nature as being one of the primary reasons that I became somewhat bored with, and almost gave up on, mech modelling altogether. After building about 5 of these things in a short time frame, I began to really loose interest.  My skills were such that these little kits didn’t challenge me, but at the same time, I couldn’t seem to get any better results every time I built one.

The Kit:

The 1/144 Airmaster Burst kit is, like all of its brethren, a decent little kit.  It comes moulded in light grey, dark blue, medium blue, dark grey and yellow.  It has the standard 1/144 polycap rack as well as a sheet of self-adhesive foil decals.  There are no clear parts in this kit, which is in keeping with the small-scale G/Wing/X line.

Also included are clear pictorial instructions complete with full-colour views of the completed kit.  This is one thing that never fails to impress me about mech kits: they all seem to have full-colour painting guides.

As is standard on 1/144 kits of this family, the amount of surface detail is not extensive, but it is passable.  There is some surface detail, although compared to its 1/100 incarnation, the little Airmaster Burst is almost naked.  There are nice little details like vernier rockets moulded in the legs and backpack, and the head is well detailed for such a small unit.

Unfortunately, to save some money, the 1/144 kits often cheap out on some features.  In the case of the Airmaster Burst, this occurs on the guns.  These are moulded hollow on one side.  The guns are one piece, instead of being in halves, which would have eliminated this problem.  This is really the only major flaw of this kit, although given that the guns are the mech’s only armament, it is a pretty severe and noticeable corner-cutting exercise.

Building the Kit:

There is not a lot to say about building the Airmaster Burst.  It is, at heart, a standard 1/144 mech, and there’s not a lot that can be said about that.  The major subassemblies come in halves, and there’s only very little build-around.  This occurs on the legs; you have to build the upper and lower legs together, since they both fit around the same polycap knee hinge.

The Airmaster Burst is a transformable Mobile Suit (MS), and that lends this kit a bit of extra complexity.  Unfortunately, the transformation is not overly convincing nor is the “mobile armour mode” particularly pretty.  Thus, as usual, the transformation gimmick is more hindrance than help. (This is the exact same problem I have with the Aegis from Seed.)

Because of the transformation, the booster packs on the Airmaster Burst’s shoulders are somewhat more complicated than they need to be.  The wings need to swing out, so they must be completed first and the packs built around them.  Modellers who’ve built any kind of variable geometry aircraft (like F-14s, F-111s, Tornados or VF-1/VF-0 Valkyries) will know exactly what this entails.  This makes life much more of a hassle than it needs to be.

Thus, since I wasn’t going to be transforming this suit anyway, I decided to cut out part of the wing so I could just slide it in when I was done.  Since the wing is held in place by the weapon/engine pod anyway, there was no problem with loose fit or sagging.  Doing this saved a lot of time and trouble, and I could avoid pesky masking.

As mentioned earlier, the guns are moulded ‘hollow,’ so they required some attention.  The rifles were filled with Tamiya modelling putty and sanded smooth.  This took several iterations to get looking right, but the results were worth it.  Hollow guns just look cheap.  That having been said, I think if I were to do it again, I’d put a coat of CA over the putty, since it did pull away form the edges of the holes a bit.

Live and learn…

Painting and Finishing:

The Airmaster Burst is, as you can see, primarily white.  I airbrushed all purely white parts using Floquil Reefer White lacquer for a primer, and then hand painted on my Newtype (pun intended) Gundam White.  This is the same jar of white I mixed up for use on my little 1/200 Valkyrie, and which also got used on my F-90 II L.  This jar of paint seems to be lasting pretty well, actually!

The blue is a new mix. I wanted a colour a little more subdued than the standard GM Engine Block Blue-based colour I normally use on Gundams.  I started with some Tamiya X-14 Sky Blue, but I added some Model Master Acrylic white, as well as a little grey (that was also a mix).  The end result was a nice, bright but not cartoony blue.  It was hand brushed over MM Gunship Grey.  The black is standard Virsago Black, and the grey on the guns and intake ramps is Gunship Grey.

All paint was sanded smooth and coated with many applications of thinned Future.  This was then sanded with 6000 and 8000 grit cloth, and a final two coats of Future were applied.  This new method of sanding the Future really helps to give a nice shine, even on parts that are big flat plates!

The engines were done MM Jet Exhaust on the outside and Badger SP Daylight Orange on the inside.  All nozzles were black washed inside and out using really thing MM Acrylic Aircraft Interior Black.  The yellow accents are from a mixed Badger paint that is now so old it is almost gone.  The yellow is the same as that used on the Zaku HB custom I did a while back <link>.

No decals were used on this kit, although I was tempted to use the decal for the white patch on the mobile armour’s nose section (this is the pointy thing hanging on the back of the mech).  However, I didn’t like the thought of cheating, so I used dymo tape and my scriber to cut some new panel lines into the kit instead.  This was the first time I’ve etched anything like that on a bipedal mech, and one of the only times I’ve had to etch anything on a Bandai kit. (I had to etch the Arcadia, but that was for a different reason – tired moulds!)

Conclusions:

In many ways, this kit tries to be too much like a toy to be much good as a kit.  This is, in fact, why Bandai marketed the very similar kits from Wing as “Action Figure Model Kits”, whatever the heck that means…  However, if you treat it with some respect, it makes a nice little project that can give some good results.

Is it big enough, flashy enough and detailed enough to win anything at a contest?  No, I don’t think it is.  That having been said, it makes a nice addition to a display shelf, and looks great next to some 1/144 armour or aircraft.  If you’re looking for something with a bit of a challenge, this is not a bad kit either, since you can make it as hard or as easy as you want.  It is a good kit for new modellers, though some of the parts might be a bit small for little fingers.

Bottom line: I liked building it, painting it and it looks neat on display.  What else do you want?  Oh yeah… it’s cheap too!