Bandai 1/144 Dragonar-3 + Lifter-3

A lot of giant robot anime in the 80's was made to sell toys and frankly, a lot of the stuff remained pretty obscure here in the West save for the big hitters like Gundam and the like. I seldom hear about series like Dragonar, another run-of-the-mill big robot sci-fi series that never got a US license or was released over here. I only knew about it from the Another Century's Episode series of games where they fight alongside big hitters like the Gundam Wing robots, Dunbine, and more obscured stuff like the little mechs from Brain Powered.

When I got to Japan I saw these Dragonar kits at one store and thought they looked pretty neat, especially the grunt suits. Unfortunately someone else got to these and I haven't seen them since. Dragonar kits are hard to come by but I did get the odd spherical head version of Dragonar, its third unit, which has easily become a favorite. The Dragonar-1 unit has a kind of run of the mill gundam-like head and I prefer this one much better. 

The flying saucer of a head is pretty novel. I think it looks great.   

Some great artwork on the suit's specifications in the manual. I love the artwork included in these older kits, that old, 80s sci-fi look. If not for the kits inside, the paintings used for the box art is a good enough reason to collect these older kits and put them out for display. The newer CGI stuff just doesn't cut it sometimes. 

The kit originally retailed at only 500yen, which is a steal considering it came with all these parts and included polycaps. (Yours truly paid 600yen for this beauty) An entire tree is dedicated to lifter unit that attaches around the head, the big jet-pack type add on. It's easy to remove so the kit can be displayed with or without it. 

Hopefully I come across more Dragonar kits!

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Chris