My son builds Gundams. He loves the things. As to what they are? I'm sure one of our members here can explain that better than I. But think of them as an oversized flying and fighting suit. Each one is crewed by a single human. They are from several Japanese anime series.

Tanker-Builder

Okay!

       Will somebody educate this old man? I know what Transformers are, My first little boy loved them. Now, I do have some Maschinen Kreiger figures. I kinda like them. But these things with blades and angles sticking out all over. What are they? Robots? If so, Why don't they look like robots instead of super fragile assemblages of what seems disassociated parts?

 

That's a big question, and can take a lot to answer in full. I'll let others with a bit more time weigh in, but, in brief: Mobile Suit Gundam started as a manga/anime property, much like Macross, Robotech, Starblazers, and the like. A Gundam is an enormous mobile suit--think a humanoid-shaped tank that can also fly and travel in space. While there are differenent classes/types/versions, Gundams are often bipedal, have arms and heads, and sometimes wings. They are driven by pilots.

The models, produced almost exclusively by Bandai now (which owns the property), represent mobile suits seen in the novels/manga/movies/TV series. Bandai's range is, to be frank, enormous, with all sorts of models ranging inscales from 1/144 to 1/48, and varying degrees of difficulty and detail.

Gundam models are one of the largest model markets, popular around the world with modelers of all ages and abilities and is a huge part of Bandai's portfolio, which is, counting all of its pop culture licenses, widely viewed as the single largest producer of plastic models in the world.

Nico Suratos wrote a basic build for FineScale Modeler that you can read here.

For more on Gundam in general, here's a wiki page.

Oh!

 Then they do have operators? I was wondering. I do know my MaschinenKreigers do!

Yep TB, they are like tanks with arms & legs!  Or as I like to put it, Mobile Suits are manned fighting machines with the performance of a jet fighter, firepower of a main battle tank, and the sophistication/complexity of a spacecraft.

I once built a large 1/60 scale Gundam GP-01, and it kicked my butt.  It was then that I came to the firm realization that Mobile Suits would be way too complex and fragile to duke it out like you see them do on TV.

Gunpla (Gundam model kits) are an entire universe unto themselves.  But get too close, and you'll fall in!  I was an aircraft/armor-only purist back in 1983, but I got careless, got sucked in, and have been building them ever since.

Yeah as the guys said. Since they're piloted I call them 'mechs' rather than 'robots'. 

Basically as I understand them they're giant sized samurai or knights. 

Aha!

       So then they are Pertankerflyers!

Tanker-Builder

 Then they do have operators? I was wondering. I do know my MaschinenKreigers do!

Yeah, I say 'pilot' instead of 'driver' since it just seems more 'right' to me. I guess 'operator' or 'driver' would make more sense though. 

Some weird Gundam trivia:

Gundam = General purpose Utility Non Discontinuity Augmentation Maneuvering weapon system.  

The mechs in Gundam are referred to as Mobile Suits, the "Suit" = Space Utility Instrument, Tactical.

The non-humanoid mechs are Mobile Armors, but I forgot what "Armor" stood for.

Oh, and the "magic" aspects of the older Super Robot shows sort of morphed into the concept of New Types, people living in space who have gained the ability to remotely sense and mentally communicate with others.  The main character of the original TV show, Amuro Ray, was a New Type.  His arch nemesis Char Aznable was one as well.  Their abilities allowed them to be able to predict enemy attacks and carry out their own attacks with incredible precision.  Later shows had ordinary people being modified by the military to acquire New Type abilities, but with usually disastrous results.

Gamera

Yeah, I say 'pilot' instead of 'driver' since it just seems more 'right' to me. I guess 'operator' or 'driver' would make more sense though.  

I guess Kow referred to the soldiers in the suits as pilots.

When I first learned about MaK, I thought of "soldier" or "trooper", a la "Starship Troopers" or Drake's Hammer's Slammers.

Just one of those things about the subject...

Gundam a hobby genre changed over the years. It mostly refers to anything from the franchise that started from mobile suit gundam 0079. 

In the 70's/80's there were 2 generes of giant robot anime, super robot and real robot. Gndam was originally, part of the 'real robot' as in some pretense science vs 'super robot' genre which don't really care for the science part but rather a prop for the plot.

Anyhow it got relatively popular later on and Bandai this plastic toy company accquired the rights to it and started churning out model kits which were very popular. Over time the relationship between model kits as merchandise for the shows, has been turned on its head and the model kit business now mostly drives the production of new shows. And partly due to this, now you get more and more elaborate or maybe outrageous designs (as you described, with bits sticking out everywhere), to keep the business growing. 

Model kits from this franchise typically require minimal painting as parts are divided up and pre-molded in color, no glue needed and allows some doll-like articulation/playbility. It appeals to a wide range of audience and can be picked up by modeler/non-modeler's alike easily.

The most popular gundam is the Turn A Gundam creddited to famed designer Syd Mead and don't let any haters convince you otherwise :)

potchip

The most popular gundam is the Turn A Gundam creddited to famed designer Syd Mead and don't let any haters convince you otherwise :)

Oh-ho Potchip, don't you be starting a flame war making those claims!  

We'd better get outta here before the G-Gundam and Seed fans show up.  

If you're interested, watch some episodes on Youtube or what ever you use.  I was watching the series in Okinawa back in the early 80s and have some episones on disc.  The original designs were the best they have gone overboard since then as far as I'm concerned.  The original Gundam unit was a prototype built to fight the M.S. 06 units from the enemy, which were the main machines.  Each unit had a single pilot, seated in teh center of the whole thing.  As I remember, the prototype was on an orbiting space colony going through its final testing when the colony was attacked.  As it was being transported the vehicle was disabled with the transporter crew killed or running off.  A local teenager, with a knack for understanding machines found the Gundam laying on its vehicle and decided to hide in the cockpit for safety.  As the enemy approached, he ended up flipping through the pilot's manual and got the thing started.  It broke its restraints as it sat up and while he was trying out the controls he became the main attention of the enemy pilots.  As it turned out the armor on his machine was a new alloy type that was more resistant and he managed to fight back the others to the point he could escape the colony which I think was eventually destroyed.  He somehow joined up with other fighting suits, one of which was carrying twin cannons and mounted on treads.Like I said, it has been some time since I saw the show.

Other shows followed with mobile fighting machines like Votoms, Crusher Joe, Macross, and so on.  Battletech, Robotech, and Mechwarrior had used these designes for their games and got caught up in legal problems.

I still have many figures from these games as well as the computer games.

I don't particularly like those gundam things, but everyone is different...

disastermaster

I don't particularly like those gundam things, but everyone is different...

 

Exactly. Nico's how-to for assembling Gunpla kits was the best performing how-to story on FineScale.com for December 2022 and ranked No. 6 in the top 10 for traffic on the entire site. Build models of what makes you happy and captures your imagination. 

I started watching Gundam when it first came to the U.S. I was really interested in it for many years and built a lot of kits. I lost interest in my late teens and attempted to get back into building Gundam kits again.

Haven't been able to it's a mix of it's not what I prefer to work on and the fact Bandai has become extremely greedy with releasing kits under their Premium label called P-Bandai. 

I've also watched some of the newer series and none of them catch my interest. 

I have no excuse - I was in college (1983) when I first encountered Gundam.  A random model kit led to a catalog book, which led to more kits, and then finally the 3-volume condensed movie of the original TV show, rented from a seedy Japanese video joint.  My mother went to Japan in 1986 or so and brought back a Gundam Mk.II and a Hi Zack, both from Zeta Gundam.  These designs really piqued my interest, and so I began to search for Japanese model mags and rented more videos from the seedy Japanese place.

I was forced to go to Japanese school for nine years by my parents, but had succeeded in flushing it all out during high school.  So when I started buying Model Graphix and Hobby Japan, I hit a roadblock trying to read any of it.  It took a long time, but some of the lessons crept back bit by bit until I could read what something was, how much it cost, when it would be released, and what it featured.  I stiil can't read the Asahi Shinbun though, only model-related stuff like "instruction sheet" (setsumei sho) and CA glue (shunkan setchaku zai).

I did manage to read a scathing kit review/diatribe of the original Master Grade Dom, where the author concluded that if Bandai Master Grade kits were going to be like this from now on, he was not interested.  Hopefully he cheered up when Bandai revamped the kit last year with some definite improvements.  I also read a movie review of The Nest, which was so hillarious that I went to the video store to rent the movie.  But it was Blockbuster, not Japan Video.  

Here are two of the first 1/100 Master Grade kits I built:

This is a GM Custom, an Earth Federation mobile suit from "Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories".

This is Ramba Ral's Zaku I, a Zeon mobile suit that actually did NOT appear in any of the original anime series, but was retconned into canon lore later on.

And this relic was my first mobile suit kit, the ancient 1/100 Zaku II:

The Zaku I and Zaku II are very similar designs, yet the more modern Master Grade Zaku I amply demonstrates the improvement of these kits over the years.