Bandai Chogokin Fireball Drossel

Drossel von Flügel is the main character in the Toei and Disney Channel’s Fireball anime shorts. There’s already a Figma Drossel, a Nendoroid Drossel, and the Fireball Winter Package DVD that comes with a special ski version of Drossel. Even though I like Drossel’s design I never got the original figma release because it seems to be very flimsy. Despite I love nendoroid, the nendorid Drossel is actually one of those that I really don’t like. Nearly all of the nendoroids release so far are cuter than their normal counter part. Such cannot be said for drossel. The only thing I liked about the nendoroid Drossel is the fact that it’s got the LED lights in her eyes. Now this, Bandai Chogokin Drossel, is probably the best drossel released. Combining everything. The joints are metal and feels solid, has just about all the accessories and parts that was seen in the anime. And best of all, her eyes lit up just like the nendoroid.

Bandai Chogokin Fireball Drossel (バンダイ 超合金 ファイアボール ドロッセル). Released on February, 2010 with MSRP of ¥7,980.

Here’s the box. Front and Back.

Opening the box, and here’s what’s inside. Drossel’s body and her twin tails in a styrofoam box. The other clear plastic tray contains her flight unit Obruchev and her grapple unit Belinda. Comes with also 5 additional pair of hands on top of the one already on Drossel. It also came with a base that looked like the house she live it, you can secure one of her foot on the base for posing.

Here’s what she looks like in her default outfit. Front and back.

The Drossel is very detailed. Here’s the small prints behind her legs. The joints are very sturdy metal joints and holds very well. I’m not afraid to break anything as I bend them around.

Again more details on her heel and on her chest.

Replicated the same details on her twin tail as well.

Now the flight unit Obruchev when Drossel was using it just as a fashion accessory. The prints at the back is very beautiful.

And when Obruchev is in the actual flight mode. There’s a push button on the back of the head that extends the two jet nozzles out. You do need to swap in additional part to actually extend the two nozzles down, and you have to snap in the four wing pieces.

And here’s with her Grapple unit Belinda. Ojousan knows hows Kong Fu. 🙂

Ojousan does Lucky Star: “Bye-bii”

Ojousan does Macross Frontier: “Kira Kira Kyun”

Ojousan’s angry: “Arr… Are we still not done yet?”

Since Drossel is all white, I decided to shoot a few more in a black background for some contrast. If you find the following shots has some red colour on the lower part, that’s because I shot all these right on one of my desk which is solid bright red. I though some red matches with the title “Fireball”. All these shots are produced in the same manner as described in my recent “How to produce black background” article, with only exception that I used more than one light source.

Her joints are actually tight enough for me to do these posts without any other assists. Playing around with Drossel, I feel this is one the better chogokin toys. Certainly better than Bandai’s Macross Frontier VF-25F Valkyrie. The Valkyrie’s joints are too stiff at places while very flimsy elsewhere, terrible at holding any good pose. Drossel on the other hand has smooth joints everywhere and very good at holding poses.

Another one showing the back of her twin tails.

Here’s Drossel with the two different accessories.

In front of a black background, you can see more clearly the wings of the flight unit.

To show you what the LED lights in her eyes looks like, a black background is probably the only way. So here it is, to the left is when the LED in her eyes are turned off and to the right is when the LEDs are turned on. Too bad that the LED lights are not in the flight unit nor the grapple unit. Would be nice if those heads can lit up as too.

A little bit special effect. Here the shutter speed was set to a long exposure where I move the camera up and down to my left. The flash is set to fire on second curtain to capture her at the end of that long exposure. No Photoshop, straight out of camera and cropped.

Here I used more light to lit her up evenly while made the exposure to one second so I can drag out this long trail of light from her eyes.