Thursday, January 13, 2011

HCM-Pro Tieren Part 1

This is no Zaku, boy! No Zaku!

My head is totally fixed on the title above when I was trying to come up with a good catch line for this figure. ^^; That is actually the same title I gave to the first posting on HG 1/144 Tieren Ground Type back in February 2009. Since Tieren gives me the same impression in terms of its distant resemblance with Zaku II from One Year War no matter what merchandise format it's in, I figured I might as well assign the same title to this HCM-Pro version of the MS. ^^


Released back in March 2008 when the anime was ongoing, HCM-Pro Tieren came out as one of the many Gundam Double O merchandises pushed into the market by Bandai Hobby Division. It was during the time when the HCM-Pro series was going strong as well, at least from my point of view. No one could foresee its decline just about one year after this Tieren set came out, and when I look at the whole scenario with this product series now, it's kind of amazing to see how fast and "cruel" business can be when it comes to the fate of certain merchandises, especially if one is a fan of the series. That's of course another story, but back in March 2008 when the HCM-Pro line was extremely hot, it did seem to me that all the popular MSs from the anime that received the plamo kit treatment would eventually be released as a HCM-Pro figure. Tieren was just one of them. ^^



Closer look on the front of the box


Illustration and label on the left and right sides of the box.

As mentioned in the first posting on HG 1/144 Tieren Ground Type, I'm a big fan of Tieren's design. It's probably the most realistic design if we're to have giant robots fighting against each others 300 years into the future. XD Bulky, heavy, slow-moving, a lot of design features from various weapons of today that we can see and relate can be found on Tieren.

It's the same association that inspired the realistic military-style redesign of Tieren Ground Type's details in its 1/100 scale plamo release I believe. ^^

It's certainly great (or maybe not) if we could get very natural-looking humanoid robot design with powerful beam weapons in the future, like what we see in Season 2 and the movie version of "Gundam Double O" when GN Drive is almost like a household equipment among the warring factions, be it real or fake ones. ^^; All the MSs become extremely powerful and "human-like", especially when many of them get to hit the Trans-Am button every now and then. XD Amidst all the awesomeness and craziness, Tieren remains as cool as a cucumber. XD

This HCM-Pro release is quite special as it contains not only the ground type, there are also parts to convert it into the long range artillery type, or "Tieren Cannon" I would call it. The artillery type only showed up in one or two episodes in Season 1 I believe. I'm not really a fan of it since it saw too little action in the anime I just couldn't be bothered about it. ^^; My main interest in this HCM-Pro set is still the ground type. However, I do like the idea of interchanging parts to swap between the main model and its artillery type variation. I'm very curious to see how that would work out for the two configuration. ^^

Another HCM-Pro release of Tieren, the only other HCM-Pro release I should add, the Space type that was out two months after this ground set is also a bundled set, with parts to convert between the regular and space commander type.


Introduction on the back of the box.


MSJ-06II-A Regular ground type.


MSJ-06II-LC Long range artillery type.


Opening the box.


The content on the plastic tray only occupies about two third of the entire space.



Quite a few runners of extra parts stored on the back of the tray.


The rather "accurate" molded silhouette of Tieren on the back of the tray is quite interesting to see for me. XD



Extra runners and manual.


The runners.
Almost all the parts for Tieren Cannon require a little bit of assembly.


With the top cover of the tray removed.
A "container" on the left of the tray can be used to store all the extra parts that are included.





Tieren Ground Type with the parts on the top tray - the ones that do not require assembly.

After mounting the smooth bore gun and carbon blade onto the right forearm and rear skirt armor respectively, Tieren Ground Type is good to go. ^^ More images of the figure in the next posting. ^^

2 comments:

Q said...

I was tempted to get a couple of these guys. The artillery version may not look as cool physically but the big artillergy gun is still very cool IMHO - other than the HCM-Pro version the only other toy I've seen with the artillery version is the gashapons.

It looks like that the runners for extra parts are mostly for the artillery version, save for the extra hand parts. Being able to mount on the smoothbore gun and carbon and you're good to go! That's literally playable straight out of the box!

Anonymous said...

Tieren's design look familiar to me..
Tailgeese maybe?