"Takara 1/144 Votoms" Topic

I recently purchased three of the Takara 1:144 world Votom packs from ebay, Sets 1, 3 & 4. Each contains three identical Votom sprues and one vehicle sprue. The instructions are in Japanese, but the diagrams are pretty self explanatory though it is not always perfectly clear as to, which way round some more ambiguous parts are supposed to go. The Votoms are in a soft plastic, much softer than Dragons Panzer Corp kits, the detail is generally good, but not great and is probably compromised by the quality mould and the casting medium. The smaller parts do suffer and when I say small I mean a few mm's across. Because of the soft plastic a very sharp knife is essential for cleaning up though the amount required was apparently minimal, though on construction I found I had missed some. Some of the mould lines do affect detail. Each Votom is composed of around a dozen parts, a pair of legs, a "pelvis", skirt for the "pelvis", chest, arms and head. Unfortunately there is limit to the variability of reasonable poses you can achieve from the sprues.

Box contents
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Sprue Components
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The vehicles are cast in a more conventional harder plastic with the exception of the wheels for the APC or one-piece track assemblages for the tank. They are nice little models which go together easily, detail is good but not fussy. Both look a little strange, but I'm not familiar with the original material they are drawn from. In particular the turret on the tank looks a little hefty for the hull. The carryall aircraft didn't go together as well as the ground vehicles, but that may have been "operator error". The crew figures are of little apparent use, save the pilot for the carryall, aren't particularly well detailed and are made of the softer plastic.

Overall the look is nice if you're after Mecha that look more realistic/hard SF edge. They sit well with Takara 1:144 WTM vehicles and would probably work at 1:200 and even at 1:285/300 as big mechs. They are perhaps a little bit on the small side for 15mm, though they look fine next to Laserburn figures, and provide a nice large personal armour suit or robot. I can't comment on their "accuracy" never having seen any of the animation they are inspired by.

Comparison shot with 1/144 Nashorn, EM-4 plastic mech & 15mm laserburn mini
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Painted Votoms
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I've picked up the same sets, good stuff.

Great review, BTW. Oddly, the ATs in my box 2 came in resin, rather than plastic.

am I misjudging the size here, or do they actually look like they could work well in 28-30mm as power armor, cyborg, and/or man-sized android troopers, as well?

- Monk

Votoms are cool in any scale. Nice painting on there too.

@ Monk,
Bit small, slightly out of proportion and somewhat stiff looking for PA in 25-30mm IMO. Would do well for man-sized'ish robots/androids/total body conversion cyborgs etc though – they look ok next to a rogue trader-era SMurf.

For scale on the painted figures, their bases are 25mm square.

Ah, okay- thanks for the clarification.

I'd forgotten that the RoboTech-looking 'bot from Em-4 was actually a bit smaller than the other bipedal one, and was using that as a judge for scale.

Still, if they're reasonable, they might work for my purposes (I'm a compulsive convertor, and see everything as parts as much as I see it as a figure).

- Monk