LONDON - An official store selling plastic model kits from Japan's robot anime "Mobile Suit Gundam" series opened Friday in London, becoming the second "Gundam Base" outlet in Europe after Germany.
About 200 products were on display inside the shop and customers holding boxes of "Gunpla," as Gundam plastic model kits are known, formed queues to purchase them. Some waited for hours outside before the shop opened.
"There's so many kits I found here that I didn't expect to see," said a 22-year-old man who had waited with his sister for about five hours.
The Gundam anime series became a huge hit after its first title was aired in 1979, spawning a successful franchise including sequels, movies, comics, video games and plastic toys.
The story revolves around Gundam giant robots known as "mobile suits" fighting wars in space and on Earth.
The Japanese anime series began to take off in Britian as more English-language episodes became available following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Kazuichi Kojima, an executive at Bandai Namco Amusement Europe Ltd., which operates the store.
Kojima expressed hope that the new store will make Gundam even more popular in Britain.
