Bankid Bonanza
Bankid. An obscure series and not exactly high on any want list, if its on the list at all. Even among popinica-esque toy lovers, these things are pretty well ignored. But I think their pretty sleek and cool in their own little way, so I figure what the hell, there’s only four in the series, so I’ll tell you a bit about them.
First up is the Baby.
In the show, there are three of these ships that sit on the Mother’s wings and seperate from it when the need arises. It has interchangeable nose pieces, launching missiles in the wings, and a small pod that sits in the cockpit. It’s a pretty nice piece.
Next up is the Ace.
This forms the nose of the Mother and can seperate for attack if needed. It comes with missiles and has two levers on the back – one for raising/lowering the landing gear and the other for the wing. Another decent piece.
Here we have the Standard Mother.
This is the big dissapointment of the group. It really is tiny. The Baby’s seperate from its’ wings and it has small plastic discs that can be lauched with a lever midship. The launching mechanism is a rubber band – that is inside the ship. So you have to crack it open to replace or adjust the band, and there are many pieces (mainly the landing gear) that will fall apart and have to be carefully put back when your done – not fun. Mine still doesn’t work properly and I have no inclination of trying again anytime soon. It’s only about a $50 piece deadstock, but unless your a completest or diehard fan (don’t think there is such an animal), I’d pass it by.
Finally, we have the DX Mother.
This is the piece I’ve searched for quite a while before finally getting. I’ve yet to see it show up on auction (Morphy’s will change that), and had to obtain mine in a private deal. Takatoku should have just released this one and not bothered with the standard version IMO. The Baby’s and Ace can sepearte from the Mother, it has a hidden missile launcher that, thankfully, is spring loaded, and it comes with a platform that the ship sits on or can be used to launch the Baby’s if you want. The platform is rubber band based, but is not that big a deal to replace – I used a small hairband from one of my daughters, as I find it works great and should last much longer than a rubber.
Well, that’s about it. Nothing earth shattering or must have here, but I figure any vintage gokin deserves it’s 15 minutes.
