Japan's samurai mascot for 30 years
How’s this for an amazing fact? Bandai released their total figures of Gundam plastic toy models in its 30-year franchise business.
Around 400,000,000 Gundams were sold! That’s like…. A LOT ZEROS to count!!!
Talk about insane numbers that give local Japanese accountants to stay up all nights and days to reach this final figure!^^
Most of the sales come from 1/144 scale model range, and the first one (in 1980) sold was for US $3.20 or 300¥.
Now. That same model selling in today’s price is US $28.20.
Nine times the original price.
If Bandai were to sell that many toys at today’s price, they would be about $12 billion richer worth of its merchandise!! Guess there was a lot of public reason why Bandai really took the trouble to make their Gundam statue over in Odaiba last year! Just to commemorate this major special occassion.
When I was browsing the links of the news source, I found a couple of great Gundam plastic model (1/44) pictures on display, such as these ones.
It’s the exact model of the giant statue in the Odaiba park before they dismantled it. . ^^
It was interesting to gather understanding how everything works behind the scenes of making these robots in the mass production lines. They said how Gundam sales was ballooning so well towards mid 80s and suddenly it nearly died off completely thanks to the increasing but vast competition of electronic goods and video games swamping the youth market of Japan, from early 90s till now. It was thanks to new and innovative business ideas by Bandai Namco’s business leaders and renew faith by Gundam fans from elder generation that gets their children to get active in accepting Gundam (and other mecha) toys as part of the mainstream entertainment. Just as much as latest video gaming console from XBox, Nintendo, PS3, Wii etc. They’re equally as popular as the rest of today’s youth enterntainment, fun and games.
Good on them for persevering to the very end^^. And wish them for another great success for another 30 years!!
Source: ANN.com, Asahi.com, GameWatch, Images provided are owned and copyrighted by Gamewatch.
