How well do you really know the Gundam industry?
After years of buying Gundam model kits and even running my own Gundam modeling site, I would have guessed I knew it pretty well. But no longer.
Recently, I spoke with Nick Minarik of Gundam Planet, a New Jersey-based indie hobby shop that is nevertheless one of the biggest names in Gunpla. Despite the warehouse’s small team and single physical location, its outsized online reputation has led to misconceptions among customers about its power and abilities—many of which, I now realize, I shared.
I interviewed Nick about the 7 most common misconceptions he encounters at work. Did you also believe any of these myths about the Gundam industry?
1) No, we don’t get paid to build Gunpla
This is the number one most common misconception Nick faces at work.
“People will walk in here, look around at the display models, and then be like, ‘I wish I got paid to build Gunpla.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, me too!’” he said.
Since starting his job at Gundam Planet in 2012, Nick has filled a variety of roles including website copy editing, managing Gundam Planet’s social media accounts, and most importantly, operational logistics: that is, figuring out where kits are in the warehouse and getting them shipped promptly to the customers who have ordered them.
But at least he gets to build Gunpla on the clock, right? Not so fast.
“Nobody sends us free samples. Well, Tamashii Nations would be so mad if I say that—but they’re the only ones who do… Literally everything [else] you see on display, we eat the loss on the cost, and then we build them at home in our free time—we don’t even get paid to build it—and then we figure out how to display it. There’s no corporate guidelines on how to display. All of it is ‘Here’s the kits, just figure it out yourself.’”
2) Gunpla content creation isn’t easy
As the social media manager for Gundam Planet’s accounts, including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X (Twitter), and many more, Nick spends a lot of his time figuring out how to promote the store. While he’s appreciative of fans’ offers to promote Gundam Planet, he said the model of having a fan promote them online in exchange for a free model kit isn’t exactly a bargain.
“We get people who are like, ‘If you send me a model kit, I’ll shout you out into my videos.’ And I reply, ‘Okay, what’s your plan past that? What’s your plan before that? Like, how exactly do you think that you are going to set yourself apart from the white noise and the pros?’”
When Nick creates video content for Gundam Planet’s accounts, he relies on a specific set-up including seven lights rigged to illuminate a cutting mat to zoom in on team members building models. Even then, it’s not guaranteed that his videos will get more than a few thousand views.
“Those 12-second videos that you see on Instagram that are just a really high quality stabilized zoom of a Gundam on a rotating base? That person probably put multiple hours into making that video perfect,” said Nick. “Everyone thinks, ‘I can do that.’ But you can’t just ‘do that.’ I’ve been trying for the past 15 years to do that and it’s just so much work.”
3) Watching every Gundam show won’t get you an industry job
Nick said working at Gundam Planet is his dream job (even if he doesn’t get paid to build Gunpla). And he’s not the only one—job applications are frequent. However, Nick said that applicants often don’t understand the qualifications required for the gig.
“We aren’t hiring, but people are welcome to send their resumes,” said Nick. “But then they send an Instagram account of the models they’ve built. Or, there was one guy who said to us ‘I’ve watched all the Gundam series.’ There is an assumption in the general public that you become qualified to work in the industry if you have encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter. It’s like, if I thought I could become a game developer because I’ve played so many games.
“I told him that what we actually need are people who understand operations and logistics, how to optimize the flow of inbound shipments and outgoing orders. And he was shocked. He was like, ‘It’s more than the models?’ Yes, we need people who function as part of a workforce.”
So how did Nick get the job, if not for his Gundam anime knowledge? After he searched online and discovered a new Gundam store in his home state of New Jersey, he found that its website was riddled with typos. A college English major at the time, he reached out and worked out an internship: Nick would fix Gundam Planet’s web copy in exchange for college credits. After he graduated, he converted that internship into a full time position.
4) There are no street dates in the North American Gundam market
Don’t you hate it when a Gundam store’s website (for example, Gundam Planet) writes that the kit you’re looking forward to building has a release date of September 30, for example, only to be released on November 18 instead? Nick hates it, too!
As it turns out, North American Gundam model kit sellers don’t have any better of an idea when kits are coming out than their customers do.
“Manufacturers say, ‘Here’s the Japanese release window. This is coming out in September in Japan. And then they’ll say, we estimate a one to two month turnaround to North American sources. Then we have to choose, ‘Do we say that it’s coming out in one or two months? If we put two months to be a little more honest, it turns into a rat race where stores that just want to look like they’ll get it first write ‘one month,’ and then customers think, ‘This store will get it sooner,’ even though everyone is just guessing.”
For example, Gundam Planet expected to receive the MG Sinanju Stein Ver. Ka in June but didn’t receive any kits until July. This led to many confused emails from customers wondering why their pre-orders were a month late.
“We are just perpetually in a cycle of flying blind and doing our best to give people as much information as we have without inventing things,” said Nick. “So many of our customer emails are like, ‘We legitimately don’t know why we don’t have that.’”
5) No, we aren’t hiding Gundam “secrets”
I’m not the only Gunpla fan who assumes Gundam retail stores know something we don’t. But as it turns out, since Bandai has a monopoly on Gundam models, they completely call the shots. They control the information and the distribution of model kits, and there’s only so much that retail stores like Gundam Planet can know or do.
It’s natural for customers to feel frustrated when they’re unable to track down a Gundam model kit that was allegedly supposed to release at a specific time, but what Nick wants these fans to know is that he’s just as frustrated as they are.
“Everyone thinks we’re guarding some secret with our lives, but we are the most open books ever,” said Nick. “There are people who come in asking, ‘Do you guys know anything about the next Perfect Grade?’ We don’t. We find out when something’s gonna happen the second that the public finds out it’s gonna happen.”
Could this ever change? Nick doesn’t think it’s at the top of Bandai’s priority list.
“You’ve built Gunpla models. You know they’re the best. Bandai has done a very good job setting the bar so high that everyone else has to catch up,” said Nick. “But they spend all those resources making the model kits so much better, that they might not be dedicating those resources to other things, like making them widely available easily.”
6) Bandai doesn’t take marching orders from stores
Another myth Nick cleared up is the idea that Gundam Planet has Bandai’s ear in any meaningful way.
“We get this a lot: people asking, ‘Can you ask Bandai to do this?’ But it doesn’t matter how established we look or how long we’ve been around. No one will be able to say, ‘Hey, Bandai, can you reissue MG Heavyarms Custom? No, it will never happen,” he said.
However, Nick said that there have been times in years past when Gundam Planet has attended conventions where Bandai representatives asked him, “What are your customers asking for?”
“I’d say, you really should just rerun the Gundam Wing Robot Spirits, period. You would print money. That was in like, 2013 and they said, ‘Oh, that’s good to know’ and wrote something down in a notebook. Nothing ever happened,” said Nick.
There can be exceptions, Nick added, like when Bandai partnered with American Target stores to sell exclusive kits. But Gundam Planet, which doesn’t have thousands of stores around North America, doesn’t have the same kind of pull.
7) Special orders do not exist
Anyone who has ever lost a Gunpla part might already be familiar with this final misconception. If your local hobby shop doesn’t have a kit in stock but you really, really want it, it’s still not possible for them to make a special order on your behalf.
“People walk in like, “I didn’t see it on your shelf. Can you special order the MG The O? Or maybe, a HG Neo Zeong? That’s everyone’s favorite question. Unfortunately, it’s gone until it comes back, and it won’t come back until Bandai makes it.”
Fair, but some customers argue that Gundam Planet might be able to use its connections to track down a kit at a store in Japan and ship it to them. Nick has a reply to that, too: “If you want us to track something down in Japan, we’re going to have to pay market price, just like you would have to pay market price, and then charge a service fee. So it’s not even worth it.”
Instead, just be assured that Gundam Planet buys the max amount of stock possible. “We buy everything we can from our distributor, literally everything,” said Nick. “If we can get it, we have it, and then once it’s gone, we will get it back if we can, and if we can’t, we gotta wait. There is no other system than that.”
You can get to know Nick by following Gundam Planet on its many social media accounts. Just do him a favor and don’t ask him if he gets paid to build Gunpla. For the last time, he does not.
Gundam Planet is a minority-owned, family-operated independent business that strives to use their collective passion to foster a community that is safe and welcoming for builders of all ages, backgrounds, races, and gender & sexual identities. No, they will not price-match Amazon.
