Gundam Seed Model Kits from Bandai

[Harima Kenji]

Somewhere last week I was fed up with just having my kits unbuilt in my room.
In 4-5 days I've built almost all my kits. Since most of them were 1/100 HG, that was pretty easy. Building the kits started te become a small obsession. I spent hours on end building. My neck didn't like that. I was forced to take a day off to restore the feeling in my neck.. not funny, I guarantee.

The MG kits were amusing, great detail, but not too hard to build. They just take longer.
Yesterday I started with PG Wing Zero Custom. When I saw the hands, I couldn't stop drooling. I just couldn't help myself and made both arms/hands 'give the finger'.

The irritation started today...The legs were completed without much trouble, although it took me a while to figure out what the springs were for.
The bad luck started when I started with the waist part. I attached a piece wrong, and tried to remove it... SNAP! It took a while to realize that I just broke a part of an expensive PG kit.
Luckily some glue could undo the damage, and now it's as strong as ever .

It wasn't until I started with the wings that I wanted to start throwing stuff. I can't understand how somebody can think of a construction with spring like thingies that just refuse to stay in the place where they belong. When I finally got both of the wings working like they should (they should release a bigger part of the wing when the wing is raised), I heard the now familliar sound of a spring-thingie that shot out of it's place.
What happened then almost caused me to cry.. I tried to open the wing to redo the springs.. when once again I heard the bone crunching sound of breaking plastic. I almost broke the wing in half. It now has an annoying crack somewhere halfway. The wing was só stuck that it just wouldn't let go anymore.
After saying some words that will get me banned here I managed to fix the springs. Only to find out that the other wing also stopped functioning. This time it opened up like it should. Tomorrow I'm gonna glue those stupid springs in place so they will never be able to shoot loose again.
The sad conclusion of today: I mutilated a PG kit that cost me about €200..

Now I'm getting a bit scared to start with my PG Strike and Skygrasper kits.

Is it just me, or does everybody have problems with braking part every now and then?

Total damage report:
Broke the pin on the Shield of Wing Ver.Ka -> fixed with glue.
Broke a part in the body near gattling guns of Wing ver. Ka -> didn't influence the stability and you can't see it.. no probs.
Broke the upper part or the leg of MG Zeta 2.0 -> glue fixed it
Almost broke a whole wing in PG W.Zero Custom -> Ever with glue you can see the scar.. I'll see if I can fix that by filling it up or something.
Broke a pin in another wing of PG W.Zero Custom -> Doesn't influence stability and you don't see it, so no big deal.

It looks like I'm better at wrecking kits then building them...

Have you guys ever had building disasters?

[darkshadow]

i only broke the arm connection on my zeta 2.0, but it wasn't even during building, i had it posed so damn long, that when i tried to move the arm, it didnt want to :P, it just broke after i forced it a bit, then i used some crazy glue and its back on again.

Oh and i broke the stand of my strike freedom abit, although its no big deal at all.

[Harima Kenji]

All my kits are built now, and Strike Freedom Full Burst is so cool it's insane! I did manage to kill the standard.. luckily not the one with the dragoons, but the normal one. I don't know how I can fix it, but I'll try to make it healthy again.

I'm wondering about something:
The PG Strike has a feature that I can't place in the anime: The Full Hatch Open.
It looks really cool and all, but I kinda miss the function. When I look at it only one thing comes to mind: Hyper mode.

I want to paint the Strike Freedom FBM with the same shiny gold parts as the hands etc, but I can't find the color that matches it the best. HLJ doesn't list any of the gold paint, only markers. Anyone have an idea?

Btw: I really hope that the other weapon packs will be released for PG Strike.. Both the kit itself and the Skygrasper are designed to mount them. It would be a waste not to use it.

ps. I found this on HLJ: http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN948215
This looks really cool. Does anyone have one of these?