Gunpla #53 - P-Bandai HGUC Emergency Escape Pod - Primrose Review

Youtube review: https://youtu.be/MQdYu-pd60s

Hi, guys. It’s me again with another gunpla review. This time,  I will talk about the recently released premium bandai exclusive add-on for High Grade Universal Century, Emergency Escape Pod, Primrose, from Advanced of Zeta series. Anyway, I would like to inform you, who have not watched the unboxing video of the kit before, that it has the original price of 1404 Yen, excluding the shipping cost of course. This add-on follows HGUC Hrududu which has been released few months earlier. The remaining questions probably, what could you do with this add-on kit? How many variations could you make from one kit? Does it worth your money? In order to answer those questions, without further ado, let’s review the kit.

Firstly, I will talk about how many kitbash variations you can make from this kit, based on the manual. If you read the manual, it said that we can make five kitbash variations using the primrose, which are: Hazel Owsla, Hazel Next-generation mass production machine, primrose equipped with hrududu, primrose equipped with tri booster unit, and the last is primrose equipped with enhanced shield booster. It also said that you will need at least two primroses to make all those variants. Furthermore, you will need one unassembled pbandai Hazel Custom with expansion parts, two unassembled advanced Hazel with expansion parts, one assembled Hazel II and one assembled Hrududu. You probably think the requirements are too much, anyway, you don’t actually need all of them. I will show you soon how to make those kitbash variants with minimum requirements.

Anyway, this is the original form of primrose. It’s quite simple and you could actually build it less than 10 minutes. Basically, it consists of three parts, the main body, the backpack and mega particle cannon. The mega particle cannon could be deployed by moving certain part to another peg connection. During the assembly process, you will have to choose between Hazel Custom type and Advanced Hazel type backpack. For this review, I will use Hazel Custom type backpack. Anyway, if you want to make a single kitbash kit, I strongly recommended you to choose Advanced Hazel Backpack. Why?? This is the reason.

Here are the backpacks of Primrose on the left, and Hazel Custom on the right. It’s obvious that they are nearly identical. They also have same gimmicks for the booster connection. The main difference is the colors. While Hazel Custom backpack mostly uses different color parts, the primrose use ... well ... stickers, which is quite big messy to put on the kit.

Anyway, the main point is, unless you just want to make primrose in its original form, separately, without kitbashing with other kit, you practically don’t need to make a second Hazel custom backpack. Furthermore, If you simply want to make Hazel Owsla, you won’t need Hazel custom backpack. And that’s why you’d better choose Advanced Hazel backpack type.

Another thing, similar with Hrududu, even if the manual said you need pbandai Hazel Custom and Advanced Hazel, you actually could use the retail or normal versions of those kit, which were previously released in 2005, because they are actually identical with the only difference was the expansion parts for making Gundam TR-6.

Hazel Owsla

Anyway, this is the first kitbash variation of primrose, the Gundam TR-1, Hazel Owsla. To make this mobile suit, you will need : Hazel Custom for the head, arms, legs, feet, beam rifle and shield. Advanced Hazel for the scope, sub-arm, and feet booster, Hazel II for the backpack, Hrududu for the blade rifle extension and finally the primrose for the torso, shoulders, mega particle cannon and special hand to hold the blade rifle.

It looks badass and I personally prefer this Hazel form compared to Hazel-Rah. Hazel Owsla also has pretty good articulation and quite easy to pose.

Hazel Next Generation (Mass Production Machine)

The second kitbash variation using primrose is Hazel Next Generation Mass Production Machine. This mobile suit is basically Hazel Owsla stripped of its armors, beam rifle and shield with Hazel custom backpack. This Hazel variant only uses beam saber as its main weapon. Honestly, it looks so cute compared to other Hazel machines.

The third kitbash variation is primrose equipped with Hrududu. I didn’t make this variation because in order to do that, I have to disassemble the Hazel Owsla torso back to primrose original form. While it’s possible, it will be quite complicated to do that. Anyway, of course, you can make the Hazel Owsla to use Hazel-custom backpack, and connect it to hrududu. And viola ... you will have this.

Hazel Owsla - Rah (?)

The forth kitbash variation is primrose equipped with tri booster unit. It’s almost similar with the third kitbash, except you will need Hazel II backpack and two mega particle cannons. That means, you will need two primrose kits. I also didn’t make this because I only bought one primrose.

The last kitbash variation is primrose equipped with enhanced shield booster. Again, it’s similar with the third variations, except you will need two shoulder armor parts of primrose, two booster shields and advanced-hazel type backpack, another reason why you’d better chose it while building primrose.

In summary, these are the (very) minimum kit requirements to make kitbash variations with primrose:

1. Emergency Escape Pod/Original form --> 1 Primrose
2. Gundam TR-1 Hazel Owsla --> 1 Primrose, 1 Hazel Custom, 1 Advanced Hazel, 1 Hazel II, 1 Hrududu
3. Hazel Next Generation Mass Production Machine --> 1 Primrose, 1 Hazel Custom, 1 Advanced Hazel
4. Primrose equipped with Hrududu --> 1 Primrose, 1 Hrududu
5. Primrose equipped with Tri Booster Unit --> 2 Primroses, 1 Hazel II
6. Primrose equipped with Enhanced Shield Booster --> 2 Primroses, 1 Advanced Hazel (or 2 Advanced Hazels, if you prefer more accurate shields)

Of course, aside from what manuals said, you can actually make other variations since AoZ kits are pretty easy to kitbash. One more thing, this kit also comes with one (very standard) stand base similar with HGUC Hrududu.

Hazel-Rah and Hazel Owsla

And, finally, it’s time for the verdict. Well, I would say that the primrose is a fun add-on because you can make many kitbash variations, of course, if you have the kit requirements. Anyway, Rather than using those ugly stickers for part separation, I think Bandai should give us better backpack for this kit, because they actually have produced it before with the old Hazel Custom. Also, I couldn’t understand why they still keep telling us on the manual of the necessity for pbandai version of Hazel Custom or Advanced Hazel, while we actually could do kitbashing with the retail released kits.

Nevertheless, I think this kit is a must buy for the fans of AoZ series. If you are short of budget, you can just buy one primrose. But if you want for kitbash kits variations, you’d better buy two or even three primroses.

Okay, that’s all for the gunpla review this time. Thank you very much for reading, and ... see you again next time.  

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Emergency Escape Pod - Primrose

Pros:

• Very wide possibilities for kitbashing
• The Hazel Owsla form is quite solid and has more articulation than Hazel-Rah

Cons:

• Extensive use of stickers, even though the (old) original backpack of HGUC Hazel Custom has been already used specific parts for color separation.
• Quite expensive, and you need to buy at least two primroses for making more kitbash variations