If COVID-19 gave us anything - apart from respiratory damage and loss of taste and eroding faith in our government to adequately respond to crisis - it was new hobbies!

Some people got really into bread making.

Others got really into telling people they make bread.

As for me, I picked up Gunpla, the hobby of building and customizing model kits of big ol' anime robots.

Okay, they're basically Bionicles for adults.

Better?

Okay, cool.

Let's get into it.

Friends and folks, welcome to Flyover Culture, your guided tour of pop culture and entertainment in the Midwest - and the only show that has small pieces not intended for children ages 8 or younger.

I'm Payton Knobeloch.

Mobile Suit Gundam: to many, it's one of Japan's most enduring cultural touchstones, luring you in with bright, bombastic designs and action, but with strong themes about the horrors of war and those caught in the crossfires.

And to others like me, it's - heh, robot big.

But no matter your history or level of interest in Gundam as a property, you might be into Gunpla.

It's the practice of constructing plastic model kits by snipping parts out of plastic sheets called runners and then snapping and sliding those pieces together, step by step, until what you're left with is a fully posable, customizable figure.

You don't need glue, you don't need paint and you definitely don't need to be able to read Japanese.

You just need a few simple tools, and in no time you'll be fielding calls from American Express asking if you really meant to spend that much the toy store.

The word itself is a portmanteau ported from another manteau: Gundam plus "plamo," short for "plastic models."

The history of Gunpla as a hobby goes back almost as far as Gundam is a franchise.

It's a tale as old as time: cartoons made to sell toys and vice versa.

To explain more, I reached out to writer and founder of the website Gunpla 101, Lauren Orsini.

My name is Lauren Orsini.

I am a reporter and blogger.

I write for Anime News Network, I'm a contributor to Forbes and I am the person behind Gunpla101.com.

As more people were building and customizing Gunpla, I had recently seen a blog that was making fun of people's Gunpla builds.

So I wanted to create the opposite of that.

The blog's material has progressed along with my own experiments in Gunpla building, but our posts on the basics are still our most popular.

Mobile Suit Gundam, produced by Sunrise Inc., premiered in 1979 and offered viewers something distinct from the other giant mecha series on Japanese TV at the time.

So when Gundam came onto the scene, there were already a lot of robot shows that showed these very colorful, very unrealistic robots in kind of a fantasy setting.

What Gundam did was imagine, what if we had these robots in real life as part of the militaries on Earth?

And going hand in hand with this more realistic view of something as fantastic as these giant robot suits, we were also getting these human dramas that played on real emotions.

When Gundam hit the TV, Sunrise enlisted toy company Clover to produce toys for the series.

But their designs were less than show accurate - kind of like if the military ordered its giant mechs off Wish.com.

While the show's idea of more realistic robots was distinct, it didn't necessarily spell success.

The anime was cut short and cancelled, and Clover pulled out of their deal.

But not long after in 1980, Bandai was able to slide in with their own brand of plastic model kits.

Sure, more rough around the edges than what we have today, but the bones were there.

Bandai was not the first toy provider that sunrise went to when they created the first Gundam anime.

That was Clover.

You'll notice Clover is no longer around.

So, even as clunky as the first Gundam model kit was, it was still better than Clover's.

Model kit sales were pretty good, at least enough to give Sunrise the opportunity to launch a sequel series called Zeta Gundam in 1985.

It's worth noting that Gundam wasn't just different on-screen but also off.

What the director and creator Yoshiyuki Tomino has said is that it was actually female fans who rescued it afterwards by making it a cult hit.

It was not the audience that anyone was expecting for this show.

And the rest, like they say, is history...s. Histories.

Like multiple timelines and reboots and spin-offs and stuff.

But why get into the hobby, other than because you get excited at the idea of a franchise that would literally take you two weeks to watch?

Well, a few reasons.

I'm curious, you know, speaking very broadly, what do you think it is about the hobby that draws so many people into it?

What do you, yourself included, what attracts you to it?

What makes Gunpla special is that it's a screen-free hobby that lets you do something with your hands.

I don't know about you, but I get so few opportunities to do something tactile, and Gunpla scratches that itch.

You can just zone out and snap a Gundam kit together, or you can just turn it into this intense creative outlet with paint and putty and customizations and expensive tools.

I mean, it's a hobby that you can scale up or down to be as relaxed or as in-depth as you prefer.

Just be aware that nothing you build will ever be as good as this Guy Fieri custom Zaku we found on Reddit.

That's art.

But with such a massive skill ceiling and no shortage of ways to build, how do you even get started?

Gunpla 101 is of course a fantastic resource, but you can always head into a local hobby shop and ask for yourself, which is exactly what past me with markedly worse hair did up at Saltire Games in Indianapolis.

And I'm here with Tim Haskill to get more into the wild and wonderful and warmongering world of Gunpla.

You know, there's the obvious one, the whole global pandemic of it all, but what in the in the recent past have you seen really bringing people in to ask, "Hey, what's the stuff back here?"

Some people just, like, they've seen the series before but they're...There's so many of them at this point.

but they just look at it like, oh hey cool.

They i didn't know they made models for it.

And what do you think is like a big misconception or something people might worry about that they don't necessarily need to worry about when they're getting into it?

I think it does come down to like the glue, paint, all that stuff that people don't want to deal with, at least to start out with.

The hobby doesn't just mean Gundam.

It's a whole mess of properties: Star Wars, Hello Kitty, uh...Cup Noodle?

And and...Pokémon - is that giant Magikarp?

May need to come back to that.

But really, there's something for everyone.

Everyone's entry into Gunpla is different, and as Tim told me, his just had a few more bumps in the road than most.

I had a really large stroke in 2013, and i'd been really into Gundams for a while and then just kind of moved to playing with miniatures.

And then after pandemic started, I started getting into the Gundams again.

Gundams require a lot of, like, dexterity, carpal tunnel, yeah.

So what kind of challenges does that come with, with having to recover from a stroke?

I just have to figure out how to put a piece together.

It'll take me a while to figure out if I need to use my right hand to hold something or my left hand and to put them together-type thing.

Other times it's pretty easy to figure out how to do it, but sometimes it's just it takes me a while to figure it out.

So Tim, let's talk about like scale and grade.

So that's typically the way that Bandai classifies these guys, right?

Yep scale is like if Gundam were real, the size of it.

So like, the one in Japan that's outside Gundam Base is like a 1:1.

Yeah something like that big giant thing.

The SDs are kind of the one that kind of is the outlier, right?

Yeah they're kind of the chibi version of the normal Gundam series, I guess.

And then from there, bumping up is what you said you recommend to a lot of people, is the high grade.

Yes, this one this is 1/144 of a scale - rolls off the tongue.

But these are kind of like - will run you, what, like 15 to 30 bucks.

Yeah, most of the time.

Up from high grade, kind of not so much in difficulty but more in scale, is the master grades, which personally is my favorite to build.

So this is 1/100 of a scale.

I think difficulty gets thrown around a lot, but it's still like doable, it just takes a lot more time.

Yeah yeah, it's going to just come down to how much time you want to spend on it.

The real grades - yes, they're the exact, they're pretty much the same part count, but they're small or they're the same grade, or the same height as the the high grades.

Right.

Still 1/144 and a little bit more intricate.

And then the big holy grail of it is the perfect grade - signified by the fact it gives you a handle.

Tell me about perfect grades.

Well, this one in particular actually has the all of the LEDs in it.

It's just lots more detail, a lot more parts to deal or put together, like, it took me about six months I think to put this together.

The others, you know, it's what you want to pay, it's what you want to sort of buy into, and then the perfect grade is like, "Cool let me see your credit card info."

Yep.

Like we mentioned earlier, no paint or glue required, but you do need a few tools.

Most crucial are nippers for...nipping purposes.

These will cut pieces you need out of the plastic runners.

A hobby knife can slice off any plastic left by the nippers, and sandpaper or a file can smooth those bumps down even more.

And tweezers are a godsend for decals.

There's never been a better time to get into Gunpla, and I don't just mean that to be sentimental.

Like, the engineering of the model kits is literally miles ahead of where it was a few years ago.

Bandai hobby has just spent the last 40 years I'd say refining their technique.

The plastic is brighter, the gating system is less intrusive and you don't see the imperfections on your finished kit.

And they pose better and are sturdier.

Even like, if I'm building a Gundam that - a Gunpla kit that was built today, compared to one that was built 10 years ago by Bandai Hobby, I can tell that they are easier and nicer.

But speaking anecdotally, the Gunpla community online has been notably supportive.

People are more than happy to answer questions and no one gets gatekeepy about anime nonsense.

There's no rules, really.

We like to quote a character from Gundam Build Fighters who says, "Gunpla is freedom.

You can build it as you like."

And I think that sometimes people really forget that there really aren't any rules.

There there are best practices if you're going to enter your Gundam into a competition.

But you do not have to do that, you can just sit at home, build Gunpla for your own enjoyment and often that's what I do.

I think it's really important to remember that you don't have to be the best of the best in order to show off and be proud of your Gunpla.

Try to find a build night in your area or start one with your friends.

And send me photos, please!

A couple weeks ago I asked people on Twitter to send me pics of their builds, and you might have seen them pop up here and there in this video.

Just take it slow.

Things can get overwhelming and you can get over-excited, and then all of a sudden you're spending way too much money on stuff you don't need.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Guess what: it grows the economy.

Benefits everybody.

Hurts nobody.