Generations  Generations / Accessories

How Does Bandai's 1/144 Scale Hobby Base 2 Do With Transformers?

With some Christmas money burning a hole in his pocket, RAC took a visit to his local hobby store yesterday and walked out with a Bandai stand designed for 1/144 model kits. He thought might be useful for toy photography, and it is! ...up to a point. Read on to find out how well a competing toy company's stand works with Transformers products.

The Hobby Base 2 is designed primarily for Bandai's Mobile Suit Gundam model kits in 1/144th scale. As such it's really only designed to hold figures of a certain size and weight... but it does so reasonably well.

The stand has a pair of latches helping to support the main strut and lock the stand at the elevation of choice. Seeing as how clear plastic stands have a bad habit of shattering over time, this is a good idea. (Though as clear ABS, the same stuff Legos and such are made of, it may have a slightly better shelf life.) The stand has swivels at the top and bottom, as well as a side-to-side swivel beneath the top.

The top of the stand has a mounting point for five different mounts - again, each designed with HG 1/144 kits in mind. There's a pair of U-shaped pieces designed for ball-joint hips with support shafts of either 6mm or 7mm - but neither fits any Transformers I tried them with. It nearly fit Kickback, but he's unusual in having a very narrow crotch and no kibble to speak of. There's a small tab that doesn't fit any TFs I had handy either. What does work fairly well is the 3mm post, which fits the sockets TakaraTomy has been including for their own Transformers Stand product.

Bandai Hobby Base 2 1/144 Scale

Most but not all recent Legends and some larger figures have these. It fits well...

Bandai Hobby Base 2 1/144 Scale with Titans Return Legends Bumblebee

...but perhaps not as snugly as you might want. Also, while I didn't have any trouble fitting any Legends I tried on the stand, Titans Return Deluxe Chromedome was an issue; his back kibble and the shape of the stand didn't really get along.

The final mount replaces the 3mm peg with a 3mm screw, and may well be more secure. Didn't want to chance doing any damage to any of my figures with incompatible hardware, though, so I didn't try.

In the end, it's not going to be super-useful for most Transformers applications. It's good for small stuff with very little kibble in the lower back area... which rules a heck of a lot of TFs out. But it does have its uses, and at $5 it's fairly cheap too.

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