UNBOXING : Puyo Puyo Charagumin by Volks Inc.

As we reported last year, Volks Inc. released a huge batch of Charagumin model kits, while I was taking a look at them, I noticed they had some for Puyo Puyo characters in their catalog, they were pretty rad on the product shots. I was also feeling a little angst thinking in how I could achieve, in case I get them, to make them look as the ones in the pictures, model kits may require some skill, and even though I know the basics, I’m not that good with these type of kits. So when I decided I might give it a try I noticed all of them were sold out since a long time. I had to sadly pass on them… until, thanks to the Puyo Puyo 24th Anniversary celebration, Volks decided to re-stock most of their kits, so I had no second thoughts and bought them.

Luckily for us, the good guys at Volks Inc., think about us, amateur noobs, as a market, because this Charagumin line is specially tailored for us. These lovely model kits are more like a huge Gashapon / Kinder Surprise toy, were the plastic parts are already in the final figure’s color (regular model kits are regularly in plain white or transparent colored resin), leaving just a few detail parts to paint anyone can do, so you can just spend an afternoon assembling your kit knowing you’ll reach the same result as the product shots. Add to them a good price compared to a regular finished figure of that scale and you get more than motivated to get one. Besides, you’ll have a great time assembling these as a hobby!

We start by looking at the package, which by no means is your ordinary plain cardboard box model kit, these transparent packages are pretty as they can be. Which gives you an idea on how much care is paid to the Volks Inc. models. Once you get the pieces out, you notice this is well done, and relatively easy to do if not for the few painting parts, but saves you the hard time of detailing eyes by providing stickers. Their instruction manual is pretty clear too, you won’t have to translate it, the pictures are pretty self explanatory. Of course, we won’t discuss the assembly process here, I made a full detailed tutorial over here, so you can get the idea on how to do it yourself. We’ll focus more on the detailed figure pictures here.

We’ll start with Carbuncle and the Puyos. As you can see these ones were pretty easy to assemble, the sculpture for Carbuncle is a perfect volume translation for the character, in fact we only needed to paint the star tongue. The transparent plastic for the Puyos was a perfect choice, but sadly you can’t pile them together.

We take a look at Arle Nadja, which out of the 3 main girl characters is the one that requires more paint skills since her shoulder armor is pretty tiny, we provided some tips to assist you in this matter on our tutorial for this kits. As you can see, her plastic parts have different textures so it gives a cool visual appeal on her hair for example, I added a grain golden paint on the armor to give that 90’s Puyo game feel. It is awesome how the sculpture is pretty accurate to its 2D counterpart.

Amitie, was the easiest of the 3 to assemble and paint, you’ll only require to paint her belt and the face details, in fact it only took me 40 mins to have the figure ready. A cool extra feature is that her Puyo hat is removable, though it might give you a little trouble to assemble, but we covered that on our tutorial. Have a look:

Then, Ringo becomes the intermediate in terms of difficulty skills, however you’ll have to paint more parts than the rest, thought they are easy to do. I like that the plastic textures give her an extra appeal, and how well her details are sculptured, like her hair curls or her apple.

I also bought Pixie but I left him out of this cause you require to paint the whole figure,that would have taken more time and I only wanted the Puyo for this feature.

Now… how about some group photos? Sure, there you go!

You can get all Puyo Puyo Charagumin model kits at the Volks Inc store, there are lots of SEGA character figures to choose from including Sakura Wars, Shining, and Valkyria Chronicles series. They ship worldwide!

BONUS

As you know and we previously reported, a Puyo Puyo on stage play happened on Japan some months ago to celebrate the franchise’s 24th Anniversary, we got our hands on the DVD, we’ll report a review later, but here are the pics on what’s inside and a look a the Puyo Puyo 24th Anniversary scarfs that were only available at SEGA merch store during events this year in Japan.

We gotta say, we love swag, so here’s a look at previous anniversary stuff: