Gran(d) Nasca
I’ve always loved the various large carrier vehicles, airplanes, and space ships in many TV series, both animated and live-action. As a kid I always thought there were too few toys made of such carriers. Who wouldn’t have loved to have an Autobot space shuttle play set, a Battlestar Galactica, or one of those cool motherships from various animated series? Sadly, those that we did get in the Netherlands tended to be horribly underdetailed and inaccurate, often having weird proportions and being only vaguely recognisable as the original. The good ones were very expensive and from somewhat before my time.
Fast forward a few years, bring on the internet, and bring on me starting collecting toy robots. I discover a lot of those motherships and carriers actually had pretty nice toys in Japan. Sadly, most of them are now prohibitively expensive (or I am cheap). Some that seem to escape from this fate are the various ships from Metal Hero series. My first one was the DX Vavilos from Shaider in an European box. Love it. Knew of the Gran Birth, but I only discovered the DX Gran Nasca from Spielban one or two years ago. It took me a bit of time to hunt one down, and the first I bought is accidentally incomplete (oops). Some more time passes, and I pick up another one, near mint condition, missing an arm. Some parts from the first one are added, and we have:
This one pushes all the right buttons. Large. Represents something that would be truly huge in reality. Detailed. Transforms. Spring-loaded gimmicks. Diecast.
One thing that I love about the Gran Nasca is that it seems to be more like the Gran Birth in its design, being a sleek futuristic spaceship instead of the somewhat lackluster spaceship that is Vavilos. Something it shares with Vavilos is that it rolls around on 4 tiny metal wheels hidden in the landing gear tracks:
The landing gear can be retracted. One very nifty feature is how the hands attach to the front landing gear pods to keep them in place. I believe I have the spaceship slightly mistransformed. The arms are supposed to be rotated 180 degrees at the shoulders and upper arm swivels, so they fit a bit better and don’t make the front landing gear pods sit at an angle. However, the upper arm swivels are extremely stiff, and indeed the second Gran Nasca I got had an arm broken off at exact that point. So I prefer to do it this way. Having two Gran Nasca also allows me to document these little mold changes. These changes prevent the nosecone from falling down in robot mode. Obviously you need to try to get the newer version.
Another thing the Gran Nasca shares with Vavilos is having a gun mode:
However, unlike Vavilos, the Gran Nasca’s gun mode doesn’t have a functional trigger. Instead, the missiles are fired by pressing down the two grey tabs on the barrels. The Gran Nasca’s gun grip is simply formed by the arms. I should mention that the gun barrels/legs’ transformation system is spring-loaded.
A look down the barrel, showing the molded gun sight:
I haven’t tested the missile firing capabilities, as I don’t have the missiles.
Robot mode, as expected, is a brick:
You don’t buy these guys for the articulation. Indeed, what is shown below is about all the useful articulation the Gran Nasca has got. The shoulders can also rotate, but not without interfering with the wings or the front landing gear pods:
Although Bandai toys from around this time (1986) often have truly excellent detail the metal hero ships take the cake. Everything on these toys has been lovingly sculpted to show as much detail as possible, including in places where you would not expect it, like the robot’s back.
So what has the robot mode got as gimmicks? Well, apart from its size (25 cm tall at head-height, 30.5 total), nothing. It looks nice. It is somewhat more humanoid looking than previous metal hero robots. It has nice detail. It has a nifty little feature in that the legs slide outwards a little bit, giving it a less uni-legged stance. (Okay, I’m pushing things now). This guy just needs to be appreciated for what he is.
