Bandai's Beauty Selection Series : Sailor Moon 美セレクションシリーズ : セーラームーン

Banda's Beauty Selection Series was a line of small scale figure model kits that touted easy, quick assembly for a "beautiful" finished figure. The line died out, perhaps not intriguing enough for youngsters new to the hobby and would have preferred a pre-painted figurine/action figure, nor intriguing to the experienced hobbyist who could get more from resin kits than the cheap plastic and smaller scale of these kits.

The lineup of sailor moon characters included all the inner scouts plus super sailor moon and sailor neptune. Sailor Moon had the most kits and seemed to be the focus of the Beauty Selection Series, but not before they could come up with a few kits of characters from Yu Yu Hakusho and Marmalade Boy.

That's 12 kits in total, with the last one being super sailor moon. The inner scouts pop up once in awhile on shops that specialize in used model kits like Mandarake, but everything else seems rare or at least uncommon. Yu Yu Hakusho's cast commands something like 3000yen each, but the more common inner scouts are 1500 - 2500yen.

Intrigued by the notion of painting another Sailor Moon kit, I picked up Usagi Tsukino so that I could have a figure of her, painted, wearing her Sailor Moon uniform. I'm currently putting together a resin kit of her in her school outfit(which you can see here, built by Leona...mine won't be as pretty!), so I thought that even a small one of her as Sailor Moon would compliment it on my shelf. Plus, I really just wanted to have an excuse to try my hand at using Mr. Crystal Color, the shiny paints that come out with a nice reflective, metallic finish, perfect for the sparkling Sailor Moon outfits.

The parts come in a slightly different plastic than most model kits, a little bit stiff and perhaps a little on the lower quality range. The parts are mostly in their correct colors and in a shiny, high gloss with stickers for smaller details. The molds are not too bad especially on her body. The eyes are pre-colored in with what looks like a stencil or decal. Not too bad if you don't plan on painting the kit. The flesh parts are made of that pseudo rubber material similar to polycaps in most mecha kits, or the small character figure you get in some gundam models.

The clear pink runner comes apart to form a base for Sailor Moon, and this top flap of the box can be cut out and inserted into the bottom.

Straightforward manual. It only takes a few minutes to snap all the parts together, but it took me quite a while to wrestle with the pieces and joints. Many times the pegs were too large or the parts didn't align flush with each other. I gave up and cut mine up since I'm going to be painting it anyways. 

"Almost done!"

Not quite. Painting and modifying the kit will take a little while, but thanks for the encouragement, Usagi! 

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Chris