Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1

Product Information/Specifications

Introduction

Before purchasing the gashapon set of Binchou-Tan from J-Hobby, I brought these trading figures.  I felt these were better in terms of value & appearance.  The owner showed me a "full" set & I brought them on the spot.  What I meant by "full" is that it isn't really the full set.  You'll see when you read this review.

The Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1 figurines have been sold out for a long time now & were never reissued.

Some of the pictures aren't clear & good.  If I have time, I'll redo the bad ones & repost them.

The Review

The "full" set of Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1

The Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1 has two sets for a total of ten figurines, which are actually sceneries.  One set has the normal colours, while the other has the alternative colours/versions.  The set I have here is a mix of the two sets.  I'll state which one later.  Overall, 80% of these figurines are Binchou-Tan.  Kunugi-Tan is the other one.

The trading figurine box is quite interesting.  Although it's not shown properly here, it's packaged like a milk carton & it's kind of cute.  It's really well designed & made with a lot of drawings around it.

The assembly of these sceneries are a real pain in the ass.  Some of them don't fit in their designed holes/slots well & some of them were bent.  I broke a chair leg on one of them just trying to put the chair in its peg holes.  I ended up gluing the leg back & carefully place the chair in place.  There were other pieces that didn't go all the way in.  Some of them are not put in place properly.  Let's look at each scenery.

Quack!

This is quite a cute & well done scenery.  The paint in terms of colour toning is very nice on the rocks.  The ducks are well done as well.  Well drawn, designed & painted

YAY!  Toy store!  Toy store!

This scenery was a little bit hard to assembly with a lot of small pieces involved.  Since there was no instructions or pictures to tell you where to put the toys in the display window, you pretty much design it the way you want it too & they all fit nicely in the peg holes.  In case you are wondering, Binchou-Tan does have a face.  Yujin didn't get lazy not to make one just because she's looking at the display window.  You'll see it later in this review. 

The colour of the building looks dull, which is quite good in my opinion.  It gives me the feeling that it's an old building.  Overall, I like this scenery as it seems that Binchou-Tan really wants that Pukashuu doll that she's looking at from the window.

Brrrr!!!!

This is the alternative version in my set that I was talking about.  The normal version has Binchou-Tan sitting up.  This one has her lying down & the scenery has different colours.  She's suppose to be lying down, not leaning against the wall really.  I only did this so you can see how she looks like. 

The colour toning on the walls & floor is good.  It shows its age.

I had some troubles with this scenery as the walls & floors didn't want to be put together.

Dinner is served

This scenery gave me a lot of trouble to put together.  I broke a chair leg in trying to get it connected to the floor & the wall above the chimney didn't want to go in until I used some glue.  It was really frustrating.  However, I think the work pays off.

The atmosphere of the scenery is elegant with the table setting & the chimney nearby.  But I felt the colours used here are a bit on the bright side.  It would have been nicer to have them in duller colours instead.

There is a problem with the Kunugi-Tan's face that I didn't notice.  You'll see what it later in this review.

This scenery gave me some problems assembling as well.  The trees are so soft that they didn't want to go to their peg holes.  Forcefully pushing them down causes them to bend a bit.  Luckily, they know how to bend back to shape.  Even that bird bus sign gave me problems.  The peg is short & was hard to make it stay in position.  The details of this scenery is done well though.  The colour of the trees & grass gives it some life.  Even the old sign is showing some aging.  Very well done.

Because of the sizes of the sceneries, the sizes of the girls are different.  Some are large enough to get a good close up of the face shots, while some weren't.  Looking them, they are done very well.  For figurines at this size, it's very good.  The only problem I have is Kunugi-Tan's face.  The painter or machine screwed up on her cheek blushes.  I thought it was a blush on the nose until I saw her left side.  This gave me the conclusion that this is a factory error.  I'm not sure if all of them are like that.

In terms of the facial expressions, they all look the same.  They can be very bland to some people & I'm one of them.  It would have been nice if Yujin gave them different facial expressions on at least one of them.

Overall Conclusion

The Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1 are designed nicely.  The sceneries are well done at those small sizes & it gives off some pleasant feelings thanks to the colour toning.  I had these displayed ever since I built them for the first time.  Never have they gone back to their boxes.

I give Binchou-Tan Trading Figure Series 1 an 8/10.  The beautifully designed & colourful sceneries are the strong points.  The weak points came from assembly problems.  It's pretty bad as I got frustrated building them at times.

As much as I really recommend this series, these are extremely hard to find now.  Because of it's popularity in Japan in the past, this set was considered to be pretty valuable.  I don't know what the collector's price for this set is as the series is going down now.

Photos were taken using Sony DSC-F828 digital still camera.

Last updated on February 12, 2008