Ban Dai and the King of Robots

Giant Gundam near Ban Di headquarters in Shizuoka

Ian has a friend at Ban Dai, the third largest toy maker in the world. Ban Dai's products include Ben 10, Gundam, Godzilla, Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Teen Titans and many more.

 He was able to get us special permission to visit the Hobby Shop in Shizuoka where they make all the super high end ultra-geek toys.  Many of the sections on the tour were TOP SECRET kind of like Wonka land.  The whole company was required to wear Gundum character uniforms.  Everyone except the top five company members were required to be "good guy" earth federation characters and the president and top four employees are allowed to be a "bad guy" Zeon rebels.  They are really, really into Gundam and toys.

Special ID card door to enter the third floor design area

in the conference room

the factory

Precision is everything and they use a special laser to get the fine detailing and fit.

None of the models use glue so everything must fit perfectly.  The machines that fabricate these Gundam are top secret and the work is done on site because they don't trust the Chinese to create the quality product they seek and not to copy them.

showing the level of detail: blue Gundam character with one yen coin behind it (size of a dime) and to right of  blue one on edge of coin is a super miniature version in gray about the size of the blue Gundams shin

This was a fully articulating hand

all pieces come attached to plastic sheets

Automated assembly with 27 machines working around the clock with only 1 person on the floor over seeing operation at a time

plastic color

Somehow the pieces come with very sophisticated movement, that seems ball and joint, but isn't.  They say they are able to do it by sparing the plastic on in different stages.  I couldn't understand it, but this is part of the top secret design.

Alec and a perfect grade samurai Gundam model

fancy models

Our guide, a 50-something employee, showed us the uber elite large models perfect grade (above high grade and master grade) models with 1,000 pieces to assemble.  they absolutely put Lego to shame.  The guide said that the models take him 12-13 hours to assemble, but that the master designers could easily do it in 5-6 hours!  He mentioned that it might take someone not so used to it a little longer to assemble.  So Scary!


After the factory and design tour we went to a model site with a giant Gundam that has been traveling around Japan.

Let's just say that while the boys, especially Jack and Alec, had a great time, big and little robots just aren't my personal thang.  But what made the trip perfect for me was that I finally got my million dollar view of Mt Fuji.  There are only few days are a year when Fuji-san is cloud-free.  We got to see it in all it's glory on the bullet train trip there and back as well as from the headquarter's lunch room which had a perfect picture framed view of the mountain.

Ahhhh, perfection